Funny is as funny does.
My husband asked me the other day why my blogs have been so dry lately. And I don’t think he meant that he wanted them to be wet…he wanted them to be more funny. Flooding the stove was pretty funny…and pretty wet…but who can flood a stove every day? Oh, I probably could…but would I really want to?
No, not even for the laughs.
The truth is things have just been slow around here lately. I haven’t waxed any poles in a while. In fact, I’ve learned my lesson about the whole waxing thing…especially the bikini waxing…so don’t expect me to attempt THAT again. I haven’t flooded anything, attempted any bizarre diets using chopsticks, or bought any new omelet pans. The girl scouts aren’t due to curse the town again until next spring. And it’s just too hot to wear the crazy pink sweater.
So what is the key to being funny? I try to be as honest as possible without giving too much information (otherwise my family may disown me.) I’ve shared some pretty funny (i.e. embarrassing) moments directly out of the pages of my very own life, and I’ve done it with what I like to call grace. It’s as close as I can come to grace anyway, as I have never been very graceful. I’ve written over 150 blogs now. They can’t all be funny.
I guess I just need to get out there more. Stop being such a homebody, and find something adventurous to do.
Sometimes things just happen for a reason.
Today was a great day. The kind of day I haven’t had in ages, and it was wonderful. My sister invited Mike and me to spend the day swimming at her house. My mother had driven down for the weekend, and my niece was visiting too, which made it a fairly large family affair—even if we were still missing a few of the regular characters.
The challenge for the day was a combination of “raft races” and “sit on the ball.”
Raft races are somewhat self explanatory. My sister has inflatable pool rafts, and the name of the game was to stay on the raft while crossing the pool faster than your competitor. The trick of it was to mount the raft from the water.
I found this to be an impossible task.
I have managed to fail at balance games on the Wii Sports Resort video game…why would anyone think I could pull off balance in the wild?
I never managed to successfully mount my raft.
I first tried to tackle it from the side, much like getting on a horse. I was able to hoist myself out of the water and pull myself across the center, but never could manage the turn to throw my leg over the side to lie down. I flipped the raft and gave up that angle.
Next I tried to pull myself from the end, attempting to slide my body up the raft until I was at the head. I never made it out of the water further than my waist. The more I pulled and kicked my legs, the more out of control the raft became. It was akin to mounting a saddle-less horse that had been thoroughly rubbed down with Vaseline. Not that I have ever attempted to mount a Vaseline coated horse, but amazingly, I have attempted to mount a horse without a saddle. Vaseline or not…it was a failed attempt.
As was my attempt to mount the raft.
My mother cheated. She climbed aboard her raft from the pool steps, where she could both steady it, and climb up from a higher vantage point. As usual we let her get away with it with little more than a few choice comments. She wasn’t going to win the race regardless.
In fact, she wasn’t really able to propel herself across the pool at all. So my sister decided to play “bumper rafts” instead. It was like a game of raft “chicken” as my sister crashed her raft into Mom’s again and again, attempting to knock her into the water.
While my sister was battering my mother’s raft with gusto, I was attempting our other pool skill…sit on the ball.
My sister has a beach ball in her pool that has been inflated to the maximum. The game was to tuck the ball under your rear and sit on it in a floating position without letting the ball up for air, but without holding it between your legs.
My mother cheated at that too. She secretly deflated the ball slightly under the water and held it between her legs. She still couldn’t keep it under for the full 60 second minimum.
I captured the ball after it had been fully re-inflated and tucked it under my behind to attempt the balancing skill in the deep end of the pool. Just pushing the ball under the water took some degree of physical strength. Balancing it under me like a floating cushion was another task altogether. This was a task that I could pull off. Despite being balance challenged, I have good posture, and this was more about maintaining good posture by holding the seated position without shifting. I passed the one minute marker and went for the five minute marker.
I pushed the envelope a little further and attempted to cross the pool while seated on the inflated ball. I made it all the way across and turned to go back. Somewhere in the middle, my balance shifted slightly. The ball that I was so completely in control of just a moment earlier became a volatile creature squirming beneath me.
I felt a twinge of concern. I wanted to win the challenge—that was part of it—but moreover, I could feel the power of the caged ball fighting against the water pressure. If it escaped me, it was going to break the surface with some force.
When the ball did get away, it surged out of the water, hitting me in the face and sending me down where I took in a nose full of pool water.
I didn’t drown. I lived to try again. And the point I was trying to make was that I managed to balance on a ball in the pool for more than ten minutes! That must be some sort of record for me.
Unfortunately, a storm decided to move in about that time and we had to leave the pool for the safety of the inside. All in all it was a great day. We even went out to a Japanese steak house for a hibachi dinner. I didn’t have hibachi…I had sushi…but I did managed to knock my glass of ice water onto the grill while the hibachi chef was cooking the rice.
All balance points earned in the pool were immediately stripped from me.
Oh well…at least I didn’t lose any of my sushi in the soy sauce. And as for the day as a whole, I managed to infuse some of the “wet” into my blog that my husband must have inadvertently been referring to the day before.
I suppose I could try balancing again tomorrow. It’s pretty good exercise. Of course, tomorrow is Father’s Day, and my husband will get to pick the activities. I will probably be pulling weeds in the yard or some other nature activity. We can’t play in the pool every day after all.
Until the next time…I’ll be planning my Father’s Day blog (with plenty of sunscreen on!)
