Laughing at myself

I haven't laughed so hard in a long, long time. And I've honestly never laughed so hard at my own stupidity. Here's the story...

My mom is having a milestone birthday next week, and she's such a fantastic person that my sisters and I just couldn't imagine it going unmarked. So we made a simple little plan, but we didn't say anything about the plan to Mom because she hates being fussed over. And somehow, in our minds, it became a... shhhhhh... SURPRISE. But how could anything we do surprise her, when she knows we love her and want to do something special for her?

My folks and sisters have been away for the last little while, but last night we connected via Skype. It was great to spend time with them all, as we haven't been together since July 15th, and we're used to being together a lot. They were watching our team, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, who unfortunately lost to Calgary, and we were kind of hanging out via Skype. I could see my mom and sisters on my screen, sitting on a motel bed, them giving me game updates, we girls shooting the breeze about various things and Dad probably wishing we'd be quiet so he could hear the game better.

Unfortunately, we got to talking about mosquitoes.

My friend Charleen is in a wheelchair and unable to defend herself from the nasty little critters who are outdoing themselves in regard to nastiness this year (we're all pretty indefensible, they're so persistent!). She's also Mom's friend, and I really want her to be able to join us to celebrate Mom, so all week I've been saying to my daughters, "we have to pray for hot sunny weather to kill off the mosquitoes so Charleen can come to the party."

The problem is that last night, it came out before I could think: "We have to pray for hot sunny weather to kill off the mosquitoes so Charleen can come to the par--"

I stopped, the word unfinished, my mouth hanging open, my brain wildly searching for a way out, but there was none, so I turned to the side and fell off my chair onto the kitchen floor, convulsing with laughter. I BLEW IT! I could hear my sisters just killing themselves. "AHHH HAHAHAHA...." "The look on your face was priceless!" While my dad, on the other side of the room (unable to see the Skype screen) was saying, "What's going on? What happened?!" "Maria BLEW IT! She BLEW IT! Mom knows about the PAR--!"

I was crying, I was laughing so hard. I'm almost at that state again as I type this. We must have laughed for a good ten minutes while my dad muttered things like, "I was hoping you guys would get off of Skype before somebody let the cat out of the bag!" Mom, God bless her, said, "I guess we'd better keep praying for hot sunny weather," which made us all laugh for another five minutes.

So, the moral of the story? Belly laughing, even at yourself, is good for body and soul. AND it's pretty much impossible to surprise the people you love with a big mouth like mine, but does that really matter? I suspect that a high percentage of surprisees end up pretending that they're surprised by their surprisers. Of course, it's the thought that counts -- and Mom still has no real idea of what we've planned for her! We love you, Mom!