Photo courtesy of Simona Balint

Right now, I’m in need of a good laugh.

Just like the weather, I can feel sunny one minute and cloudy the next. A thought can grab me and twist my mind until I get so stressed that I’m ready to fight, flee, or freeze.

I know the thought is there because I can feel it in my stomach, like a lead weight, like a burning fire. So, I take a minute to breath and be aware of what’s really going on with me. What is the truth of the matter?

The truth? I’m just a woman, sitting in a chair, in front of a computer. Breathing. Living. Thinking stressful thoughts.

Here’s what I know. Right now, in this moment, without leaving my chair, I can choose a more positive thought about my circumstance.  I can choose to feel gratitude for all that I have and all that I am and all that I am becoming. And when I release those damn painful thoughts, I can laugh.

And laughing is going to give me some serious medicine. I read today in Fitness Magazine that, “A case of the giggles causes blood vessels to relax, boosting blood flow to your skin for up to an hour, according to a study from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.”

Laughter is my best medicine.

Me: At the keyboard, hands curved, ready to strike a key.

Doug: Electric guitar hanging from his strap, flipping through music.

Doug: “You want to play some Stevie?”

Me (Thinking): Oh, Stevie Ray Vaughn. Famous blues guitarist. Died in a helicopter crash. From Austin, Texas. 36 years old.

Me: “Yeah, yeah. Let’s play that song you like. You know the one. The one about Mexican shopping.”

Doug: Big-eyed: “The what?”

Me: “You know,” and then I hummed a little part of the chorus. “Mexico Shopping?”

“Mexico shopping,” I sang. “Yeah, it’s a drag.”

Doug could barely contain himself from falling on the floor with his guitar. He was laughing so hard I could hardly hear him choke out the words.

“Mexico Shopping?” he howled. “You mean, ‘Cold  Shot’?”

He then sang the same chorus back to me: “It’s a cold shot babe, yeah, it’s a drag. It’s a cold shot babe. We let our love go bad.”

And then I knew.

I knew, without a doubt, that for over ten years, I had been singing a song with an entirely different meaning than what the author intended. I had always thought it was strange that Stevie Ray Vaughn would sing about shopping, and shopping in Mexico at that. But then again, James Taylor wrote a song about Mexico … “Oh, oh, oh, down in Mexico. Guess I gotta go.” And Stevie was from Texas, and they probably went shopping all the time in Mexico. Too bad it was a drag … I used to think. He must have got some bad drugs in Mexico. So bad that he really had to write a song about it. And then, a woman was in Mexico with him too, and they let their love go bad down there. Huh. Well, that’s the blues!

Sorry, Stevie. Guess I had you wrong. If you can hear me from the blues heaven, I’m the one still singing, “Mexico shopping,” to your YouTube video. Good thing it has subtitles!

Rapper Darryl “DMC” McDaniels’ (of Run DMC fame) made it through a deep depression by listening to his “Angel” for four years.

I don’t want to ruin the surprise for you, so I’ll just share what I learned (or re-learned) from listening to him on The Moth (one of my favorite free podcasts):

• No circumstance, good or bad, can make you happy.
• Only you can make you happy.
• Asking yourself, “Why are you here today?” is a good place to start.

Listen to Darryl’s story (only 15 minutes long) by clicking on the link below (it’ll take you to a separate window):

01 Darryl _DMC_ McDaniels_ Angel

A good follow-up to his story is Darryl’s music video of Harry Chapin’s “Cat in the Cradle”:

Doug and I geek out to science television whenever there’s a.) nothing good on the sports channels, and b.) nothing worth laughing at on the tube. We heart Nova.

The other night we learned about the amazing brains of cephalopods: Octopi, squid, and cuttlefish. They problem solve (which is more than I can say for a few humans I have observed). I’d love to see us learn more from our successes and failures like the octopus does. Really!

On this video you can see an octopus perform a Houdini-like trick to get a shrimp out of a closed plastic jar (he has to unscrew the lid). But, what’s really amazing? I mean REALLY amazing? They can use their brain-power to change the color of their bodies to match any surface that they are near, so they can hide themselves from predators.

Wouldn’t that be cool if we had that kind of brain power? Like, if I could blend into the Cheerios aisle at the grocery store next time someone approached me with small talk on his brain?

In 7 tenths of a second, a cephalopod could! If I did that, I would be magic. Turns out, cephalopods already are magic.

What’s beautiful about this is the concept of parsimony – the idea that nature works out an extremely simple solution for  overwhelmingly complex tasks. A cuttlefish, for instance, can simplify the way it camouflages itself by identifying which of three pattern types are on the surface of its hiding spot and then replicating the pattern.

Simple, right? And amazing.

Parsimony is my word of the week.

Watch the full episode. See more NOVA scienceNOW.

Winter. Not my favorite season.

I told this story to my yoga instructor on Monday night and she laughed. Laughed! It was 4 degrees outside and a blizzard had settled over our town and she couldn’t have been happier. She said she giggled all day skiing the slopes.

And … here’s the kicker. She had recently relocated from Texas — you know, a warm state.

“How can you not love winter and live here?” she asked, genuinely astonished. “It’s so in your face.”

Indeed.

Now, at this point, my friends in other northern tier states (particularly the eastern ones) are already spouting off reasons why we don’t have it so bad. I mean, buildings aren’t collapsing in Montana, and it’s a dry cold, not a wet cold, and ya da ya da.

I hear ya. I feel your pain. Now, back to mine.

I know there’s no place that’s perfect. A good friend of mine recently told me a story about living in Costa Rica that had me wondering whether I would really want to live somewhere (even in the winter) where you have to keep bull snakes in the rafters to kill the rats running around on the floor.

But anyway … the whole point of this post is not a rant about winter. Just the opposite. My conversation with the yoga instructor taught me that I’m ready to say goodbye to my old stories about winter. I don’t need them anymore. Even if I never move south for the winter, I am learning to let go of the struggle, and make peace with my present. This has been my most positive, healthy winter yet, and I know it’s because I no longer think that somewhere warmer will make me happy.

I can be happy right now, in this present moment, looking out at the snow on the roof. I can be happy reading a book in bed with a hot cup of tea. I can be happy walking with Doug down to the river, watching the ducks and geese swim in the open water like they never felt anything better. I can be happy in a Montana winter. You know why?

I love what is.