Welcome to the Funny Farm

by Karen Scalf Linamen

  © 2001 by Karen Scalf Linamen

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-3576-3

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

  Scripture marked NASB is taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE ®. Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

  Scripture marked KJV is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  Chapter 26 is adapted from myth #7 in Happily Ever After (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1997), 86–96. Used by permission.

  The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Welcome to the Funny Farm

  Winter

  1. No Woman Is an Island

  2. No Batteries Required

  3. Common Treasures

  4. The Best-Laid Plans

  5. More Than Meets the Eye

  6. Shop ’Til You Drop

  7. It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot like Christmas

  8. Name That Tune

  9. Christmas, a Labor of Love

  10. The Christmas Babies

  11. Cold Weather Sports

  12. The Secret to Foolproof Resolutions

  Spring

  13. Meet Walter

  14. Clutter Management 101

  15. Say Good-bye to Good Intentions

  16. Crash Diet at Freeway Speeds

  17. Battle Strategies for Lovers

  18. Read My Lips

  19. Who Loves Ya, Baby?

  20. Dahling, You Look Marvelous!

  21. Wanna Enrich Your Life? Swap Insights with Your Friends

  22. Never Underestimate the Power of an Imperfect Woman

  23. The Sunday Morning Comics (and Other Indispensable Gardening Tools)

  24. Easy Does It

  Summer

  25. In the Company of Critters

  26. Motherhood’s Unsolved Mysteries

  27. It’s the Heart That Counts

  28. We’re Definitely Getting Older . . . But Are We Getting Wiser?

  29. C’mon In, the Water’s Fine

  30. Dogs, Teenagers, and Other Noncompliant Life-Forms

  31. Sometimes You Just Gotta Go

  32. Freebie, Schmeebie

  33. Takin’ It to the Street

  34. Open Mouth, Insert Foot?

  35. Chocolate Lovers, Unite!

  36. Recycling Mom

  37. Don’t Believe Everything You Hear

  Autumn

  38. Help Is on the Way

  39. Things I’ve Learned from My Kids

  40. Tandem Belching, Anyone?

  41. Holiday Traditions Worth Remembering

  42. How to Survive Cold and Flu Season

  43. Creepy Crawlers

  44. Clean Sweep

  45. Crazy for Cocoa Puffs

  46. Spin Doctors

  47. Quack, Quack

  48. Lose the Loose Ends

  49. Boy Crazy

  50. Good Gifts

  About the Author

  Other books by Karen Linamen

  Introduction

  Welcome to the Funny Farm

  About eighteen months ago, I met up with Chris Buri at New Life Clinic, founders of Women of Faith. He told me the organization was launching a web site and asked if I would be interested in writing a weekly humor column.

  Thus began “The Funny Farm.”

  This book contains many of the columns that originally appeared at women-of-faith.com. It also contains some new ones.

  More than anything, it contains stories of wild and wacky moments from my life, many of which will be strangely familiar to you because they are probably very much like the wild and wacky moments that occur in YOUR life (if this is indeed true, then you have my condolences).

  You’ll find stories about the dehydrated gecko my kids make me keep in a jar on top of the refrigerator. Stories about defrosting turkeys with blow-dryers. Stories about AWOL pet tarantulas, wayward waistlines, and how to get sympathy from your dog when there’s no one else around to listen to you whine.

  You’ll also find, sprinkled throughout these tales like the chocolate chips in Toll House cookies, some truths about life, and if you don’t think there’s a truth about life lurking somewhere in a story about a dehydrated gecko, then read on, dear friend, because you’re about to make a discovery.

  And the discovery is this: God cares about every aspect of our crazy lives.

  Some folks think there’s a difference between the secular and the sacred. But the truth is that God is so big that nothing that happens in our lives is outside the circle of who he is or beyond the realm of his great love for us.

  It’s ALL sacred. Which may seem like an odd way to begin a book that includes the phrase “tandem burping,” but when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

  So when you feel like your life is going crazy . . .

  . . . when you need a good laugh to keep from bawling . . .

  . . . when you suspect you’ve got one foot in the Funny Farm and the other foot on a banana peel . . .

  . . . take heart. I’m there. I’m with you. In the words of one infamous former president, “I feel your pain.”

  And here’s the best part. God’s there. He’s there when you find your dog standing on the dining room table sampling the Thanksgiving turkey or when your best friend moves away or when you discover your second chin.

  He’s there when your kids surprise you with breakfast in bed and you open your mouth for that first bite and glance down at the festive red sprinkles adorning your deviled egg and realize that the aroma filling your nostrils is the scent of cinnamon.

  In short, whenever you laugh or cry or sigh or wonder why, God’s there, and he’s got something good for you: some nugget of insight, chunk of grace, gem of wisdom, or even a chocolate chip of comfort.

  So, welcome to the Funny Farm. I hope you have as much fun reading these columns as I had writing them, and may you tap into some inner joy and encouraging insights in the process.

  Oh, by the way, next time you feel like you’re going crazy, you should give me a call.

  I know the way by heart.

  1

  No Woman Is an Island

  THERE’S A CERTAIN CAMARADERIE AMONG WOMEN.

  Whether we’re talking about the attitudes of our kids, the contents of our refrigerators, or the girth of our waistlines, we members of the sisterhood of women just seem to have a lot in common.

  Maybe it’s because we battle so many of the same problems.

  Last week I was visiting my folks in Colorado. My mom and I were puttering around together in the kitchen when she said, “Wanna know the best piece of advice I ever got from you?”<
br />
  Now, I don’t normally go around giving advice to my mom—she’s a lot wiser than I am—so I was interested to hear what she was about to say. Maybe she had been impressed with some profound insight she’d picked up from something I’d written or while she and I were having an intimate conversation on some deeply spiritual topic.

  She said, “It was when you told me to soak crusty pans overnight in automatic dishwashing soap. I haven’t scrubbed a pot since.”

  It’s true. If you have a pot or pan with baked-on goo from supper, just fill it with water and toss in some Cascade. The pan wipes clean in the morning.

  See? That’s what I’m talking about. We all face so many of the same challenges. Whether we’re single gals or empty nesters, newlyweds or midlife moms, we all know what it’s like to try to scrape the remains of last night’s lasagna off our favorite Corningware.

  I love it when another woman shares some little tidbit from her own life—an experience or insight—and it’s something I’ve experienced or thought, but figured I was the only one.

  I loved it, for example, when a reader wrote to me and confessed that she sometimes cleans her house and then realizes that lurking in the back of her mind is the motivating thought, barely acknowledged, that once her house is clean someone— she doesn’t really know who—will arrive at her home and rescue her from all of her troubles. And my eyes blinked wide as I read, and I laughed out loud in amazement.

  I thought I was the only one who had experienced that sensation.

  I love it when I go to my friend Beth’s house. We’ve been friends for four years now. Not just friends. Close friends. Bosom buddies. And in all our many hours together, I’ve never once visited her home and used the bathroom frequented by her kids and found the roll of toilet paper ON THE DISPENSER. Not a single time. And I love it because I can relate. In my bathrooms, entire generations of toilet paper rolls will come and go without ever having been introduced to the dispenser next to the toilet. It’s as if the dispenser has been relegated to the role of some antiquated appliance that once served a purpose, but has fallen into disuse, like the twenty-pound waffle makers we all used to own or the toaster oven or the rotary dial phone.

  But somehow knowing that the dispenser has fallen into disuse at Beth’s house too makes me feel a little better. Less guilty. I may still get the Bad Mother of the Year Award for letting my kids manually unwind their toilet paper, but at least I won’t be making my acceptance speech all alone. Beth’ll be right beside me, sharing the podium.

  I think one of the scariest feelings in the world is wondering if you’re all alone. Of course, I realize that mothers of preschoolers may take issue with this statement because the thing they crave even more than chocolate is isolation. This is because these women have not experienced a private moment—not even to go to the bathroom—since the birth of their first child. But I’m not talking about THAT kind of alone. I’m talking about the alone we feel when we’re afraid everyone else is living Martha Stewart/Ruth Graham lives while our lives resemble something more akin to Lucy Ricardo meets Roseanne Conner. At Peyton Place, no less.

  But that’s the nice thing about having friends with whom to share the intimate details of our lives. It helps us realize that we’re ALL living Lucy/Roseanne/Peyton Place lives.

  King Solomon had it figured out. He wasn’t even a woman and he had it figured out (of course, he WAS married to seven hundred of them, so maybe that helped him get a clue). I say he had it figured out because he’s credited with writing, in the book of Ecclesiastes, the observation that “there is nothing new under the sun.”

  And there isn’t.

  So the next time you’re feeling like no one could possibly understand the things you’re going through, think again.

  I don’t know about you, but I think this is comforting, not because “misery loves company,” but because “there’s strength in numbers.”

  And not just strength. There’s hope, too. Because if other women have experienced the same struggles and emerged victorious to tell the story, then you and I can do it, too. Although I have to admit, I’m more than a little curious how Solomon’s wives made do with baked-on lasagna.

  2

  No Batteries Required

  MY COMPUTER IS WHEEZING.

  Would someone please explain this to me?

  I realize this is allergy season in some parts of the country, like Texas, where winter doesn’t arrive until January and then lasts about as long as an episode of Barney (which, believe me, can FEEL like an eternity, but in reality only lasts for four hours, three if you don’t count the commercials).

  But I still don’t think that explains the rhythmic wheeze coming from my hard drive.

  Then again, what do I know? I am technologically impaired. I not only cannot program the VCR, but I’m still figuring out the remote, and I’ve just recently gotten the hang of programming the microwave.

  There should be government aid programs for people like me because, clearly, we are seriously disadvantaged in a culture as hooked on technology as ours is.

  Remember when the only digits we had to memorize were the ones in our addresses and phone numbers? To simplify matters even more, phone numbers had a mere five digits because they all started with a word. Mine growing up was Topaz 86957.

  Now, the numbers I’m forced to memorize include my home number, fax number, cell phone number, the pin number to my ATM, the access code to my e-mail, the password for my cell phone voice mail, the phone number and passcode to retrieve my answering machine messages . . .

  And that’s just to keep in touch with myself. If I want to actually communicate with another human being, there’s an even longer list of home, work, fax, cell phone, and beeper numbers I’ve got to keep track of.

  Maybe my brain’s on technology overload. Yeah, that’s it. My brain is on overload and, as a result, I have developed a subconscious hostility toward anything that requires a modem, electrical outlet, or battery pack. This would certainly explain why I have such a scary history with things like laptops and cell phones.

  Oh. You hadn’t heard about the laptop?

  Let me begin by saying that any time a woman tells you that she backed over her husband’s brand-new laptop computer with her car, you can rest assured there is a perfectly reasonable explanation somewhere.

  I’ll let you know when I find one.

  Until then, let me just say that my husband was going on a trip, and we were loading his bags into the trunk, and the phone rang, and I ran back into the house, and by the time I jumped back in the car and revved the engine it had sort of slipped my mind that the laptop was still sitting on the driveway behind the left rear tire, and, well . . .

  I’ll let you imagine the rest of the story. Actually, you’ll have to use your imagination because this is a family-friendly column, and I’ve been asked to keep the profanity and bloodshed at a minimum.

  I’m kidding. Actually my husband was amazingly gracious. Which is precisely why, three weeks later when I ran over my cell phone with the van, I felt perfectly comfortable e-mailing him the news and then leaving town for a week. If I’d thought he was going to overreact, I would have stayed away much longer.

  Our world is so different than it was just a decade or two ago. Between cell phones, faxes, Federal Express, beepers, laptops, e-mail, e-commerce, and the World Wide Web, the way we talk and shop and think and do business is hardwired to the fast lane.

  Which actually is okay. In fact, on a good day—meaning a day when I’m not explaining to a Sprint customer service person why the display on my cell phone looks like a lava lamp—I’ll be the first to admit that all this technology can be pretty cool.

  Still, I’m glad that some things stay the same. Intimate and old-fashioned, even.

  Like talking to Jesus.

  What a relief! I don’t have to plug in, log on, or boot up. I don’t need passwords or access codes, and I never have to wait for someone to return my page. I didn’t even have t
o worry about Y2K, because there’s no computer chip linking me to him.

  Just a weathered, bloodstained cross.

  No modem, outlet, or batteries required.

  It doesn’t get any simpler than this.

  We need an ever-increasing array of gizmos to stay in touch with our world.

  Staying in touch with our God is another story.

  Maybe I need to take a moment and unplug. Maybe I’m overdue for an old-fashioned heart-to-heart with the Creator of my soul. My e-mails, cell phone, faxes, and modem aren’t going anywhere. They’ll still be waiting for me, blinking and beeping for my attention, when I’m through.

  And speaking of e-mails, send me one, okay? I always love hearing from readers.

  Particularly if they know how to get tire tread marks off a mouse.

  3

  Common Treasures

  YESTERDAY MY FIVE-YEAR-OLD CAME RUNNING in the front door, her face beaming.

  “Mom!” Kacie shouted. “I found a treasure!”

  She stuck out her fist and, practically bursting at the seams with excitement, began to uncurl her fingers. I expected to see something shiny or uncommon or valuable.

  It was the cap of a pen.

  Some of Kacie’s other treasures include a jar of plastic spiders and a dehydrated gecko she makes me keep in a Ziploc bag on top of the refrigerator.

  They say one woman’s junk is another woman’s treasure. This is particularly true when the second woman is a preschooler.

  Of course, I guess I’m not all that different. I love to hunt for treasure, and it doesn’t matter if that treasure is someone else’s discard or not. Some of my best “treasures” have been unearthed at garage sales, where, for mere pocket change, I’ve rescued invaluable artifacts from a destiny of dust and neglect or—even worse—a trip to the dump.

  One of my more prized garage sale finds is a gold-leafed armadillo. Not to mention the set of porcelain mugs designed to look like pig snouts when raised to the lips of unsuspecting guests.