The Family Chuckle

This collection of humor pieces from ten years of newspaper columns shares the highs and lows of the author's life with her husband and four children. Anyone who has been part of a family can empathize with events that only seem funny after enough years have passed to smooth the rough edges. Has the baby ever spit up on your dry-clean-only blouse as you walk out the door to an important meeting? Have you stretched the food dollar until it screams for mercy? Have you ever had to tell your children, "If you call me at work one more time there'd better be blood, or at least a life or death emergency"? Have you lived on a farm? Chased a pig out of the neighbor's prize-winning flower garden and all over the pasture in your best robe? Herded a neighbor's escaped pedigreed bull armed with only a broom? Toiled over gardens for a harvest bounty of zucchini, wormy radishes and rocks? Have you dealt with sibling rivalry that threatens out-and-out fratricide? Gone on family vacations that rival TV survival reality shows? Coped with the virus that is resistant to antibiotic, means changing beds and laundering pajamas at three a.m., goes through the family one by one, and seems to last from Christmas to Easter? Have you ever hung up on your mother when you called her whining for sympathy, and she told you that someday you'd look back and realize these were the best years of your life? When the kids were all out on their own, did you realize she was right? Does hearing a certain song bring back a memory so poignant that you want to clutch it and never let it go? When you remember Christmas and other holidays, do they become a little more golden with each passing year? Have you realized that if you and your mate have made it through loving (or at least tolerating) the inlaws, cranky pregnancies, poverty, toddlers throwing up in the wee small hours, emergency parent/teacher conferences, teenage drivers, menopause, and kids flying the nest and leaving it empty, the marriage is a keeper? The "sickness and health" vow is the only one left, and after all you've been through, surely that one will be a shoo-in. Often a good laugh is what you need to keep going. You'll find it in "The Family Chuckle".