The best medicine

Stupid power outages. And other things. We had a second flat tire on our car, can you believe it? In an attempt to keep away the mosquitoes at night, Asa has been burning citronella candles while sleeping. He was sleeping in my room last night (because it has ac!) and in the morning I went in to get something and discovered the entire room covered in soot: all the sheets, stacks of towels, the walls, my clothes, my books and papers, everything coated in black soot. Maybe Asa knew how I would react because he had tried to pile up some of the towels on the floor and then just left for school. Tonight we’ll negotiate who gets to wipe down the walls, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be me.
Our coffee pot dropped and broke the other day so we are making coffee in a teapot. The generator keeps running out of gas…. The night before last, the power went out and Burton had to stay up late to study and didn’t want to leave me alone at home (there were 2 strange guys loitering in the shadows outside our house), so he made me come with him to our classmate Anita’s house to study. There ended up being 9 of us studying there and at 2 or 3 a.m. I went to sleep sharing a teeny double bed. We got up at 5 to get ready for school, but by sometime in the afternoon I was a mess. Everyone was stressed and grumpy at school and there were several arguments and it was so hot I felt like passing out in class. At dinner time Burton looked at me across the table when I was falling apart about something stupid and he just said, ‘go take a nap’.
Last night I slept okay except for getting up at 2:00 because the power turned off (and hence my fan) and I heard footsteps outside my window (Burton turning off the generator), and I got at 5:00 because Asa slammed the bathroom door, the bedroom door, the kitchen door, the fridge door, and the toilet seat. (Why can’t he just close things normally?)
At school we were supposed to take an online exam but the internet went down and we had to restart and then our next class was late. Anita and Marina were so frustrated that they haven’t even showed up yet. Dr. Rust is boiling mad but she lost her voice so she can’t yell at anyone. Actually the whole island is suffering….. the source of the power outages is a feud between the company that owns the power plant and the current corrupt government…. And the island is running out of gas and places like the school, which don’t have a functional generator, are not doing so well. (The generator is missing a part…. They sent someone to Puerto Rico to get it… the airline wouldn’t load it because it wasn’t crated….. when they finally got it crated, they didn’t have a forklift to move the crate…. The dean of the university is trying to hire a private plane to get it here….. there is a tropical depression heading this way and gas has gone up to $13/gallon so no-one wants to fly….)
Sometimes it just makes me laugh. It’s the little things, like going to turn on the generator and accidentally putting my hand on a giant lizard…. Stepping out the door and stepping into a fire ant nest….. taking a cold shower by candlelight …. Being halfway through cooking dinner when the power goes out and it is pitch black….. giant cockroaches under the dining room table…. The stray dog that Asa let in the house that had fleas….
I think the trick is to laugh. Proverbs 31 talks about a godly woman, and I’m encouraged by some of her character qualities. She is clothed in strength and dignity, it says, and she can laugh at the days to come.
Laughter reduces stress hormones, increases life expectancy, increases oxygen to the body tissues, burns calories, helps with sleep, improves work performance, and improves over-all well-being. The average adult laughs 4 times a day, the average child laughs 100 times a day.
Laughter helps us survive the tragedies of life by allowing us to view them as comedies. Happy Heather’s Hullaballoo categorically supports the use of laughter as a survival tool and a necessary daily therapy. Think of me this week and have a good laugh over something.