Much-needed laughter

I wrote this on Friday night but never posted it...

I had told you that yesterday was a really tough one, but that I had been to town and picked up mail - a care package or 3 (for Christmas). One of these had some card games in, so tonight we all had dinner at David's house and we played Phase 10. It provided some much-needed moments of really good laughter. Not at the game itself, really. Just random stuff.

So we learned a few things about each other tonight. Some things, we already knew. Some were new. Some are as a result of the bad stuff (can't think of a more effective euphemism right now) happening around us.

I joked about making a list for the blog. And because my little sister teases me about my lists, I'll go ahead and make one, regardless.

• Allison gets quiet in stressful situations. She seems calm as a cucumber.
  
• And she has this unique gift of regular burping. It has nothing to do with stress or calmness. It's genetic, she says.
  
• She may not like me telling the whole world about this gift, but typical of Miss Calm, you wouldn't really be able to tell. She'd be calm about it.
• She's really very much a lady. Don't let the burping habit fool you.
  
• Michelle used to be a ballet dancer.
• And an ER nurse.
• Between her and Juli, they have some really funny ER stories to tell.
• Maybe the stories aren't that funny. But we thought they were. Maybe it's because of where we are right now.
  
• Juli also used to work in the ER.
• Being a nurse in rural Kenya is very, very different from being a nurse in a nice American hospital.
• There are infinite reasons why that's true. But it doesn't mean the Kenyan option's always worse. It's amazing what Kenyan nurses get to do.
• Michelle has a hard time getting rid of sentimental stuff. Like the dried roses from her wedding. Despite there being no room for it in her inn.
• She's very competitive at games, though.
• So much so that you may have to go through debt-counseling after playing Monopoly against her.
• Not that we'd know. We've never played Monopoly in Kipkaren.
• But Michelle has confessed that she's really that competitive.
• (She didn't use the counseling analogy, though.)
  
• Adele can get pretty mean during Phase 10 and skip competitive people like Michelle more times than is fair to be picking on one person.
• But Adele isn't normally mean.
• I could say lots of nice things about Adele. But that wouldn't be fair.
• Adele likes to be fair.
• Though she knows life simply isn't always fair.
• Juli has picked up a strange habit since things got bad in Kenya of saying words she wouldn't usually say.
• Not really a bad word. Just a no!-Juli-didn't-just-say-that-type word.
• Nothing that would make you question whether or not she's a really passionate follower of Christ.
  
• But it's a completey involuntary reaction to what's unfolding around us.
• Juli has a term for that. She can give it a fancy medical label.
• Because she knows what to call all kinds of conditions that Adele has no clue about.
• Only Michelle really understands. Since she's a FNP, too.
• Maybe Allison also understands the fancy terms. But she doesn't tell.
• Allison is very honest. She actually confessed to accidently putting down a "run" instead of a "set" while she was already on the next round. And then voluntarily redid the previous phase. So it's fair.
  

So, we played for a long time. An entire game of Phase 10. Not the shortened version. Juli was behind the entire time. But then she won. Which really made all of us feel good, I think, seeing the underdog win.

Strange what makes us laugh these days.

If we wouldn't laugh, we'd be crying. A lot. We've done some of that.