October 7, 2008 | Mama Smith

maintaining a healthy level of insanity

Maybe it’s because I spent the whole day on the couch fighting a stomach bug while the boys destroyed the house, crawled all over my aching body, smashed goldfish crackers into the freshly vacuumed rug, made a game of throwing half-eaten apples at each other and watched multiple episodes of Blues Clue causing their sanity level and mine to come dangerously close to exploding. But by 8pm, I thought I had just survived 12 years, not simply 12 hours. And as I was reading this email forward (which I typically HATE) from my mom, I could totally relate.

How To Maintain a Healthy Level of Insanity ( my own side note : I don’t think mother’s need additional tactics, managing kids works better than any of these)

1. At lunch time, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a hair dryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.

2. Page yourself over the intercom. Don’t disguise your voice.

3. Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they want fries with that.

4. Put decaf in the coffee maker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.

5. In the memo field of all your checks, write ‘For Marijuana’.

6. Finish all your sentences with ‘In Accordance With The Prophecy’.

7. Skip down the hall rather than walk and see how many looks you get.

8. Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.

9. When leaving the zoo, start running towards the parking lot yelling, ‘Run for your lives! They’re loose!’

10. Sing along at the opera.

11. Put mosquito netting around your work area and play tropical sounds all day.

12. Five days in advance, tell your friends you can’t attend their party because you have a headache.

13. When the money comes out the ATM scream, ‘I won!! I won!!”

14. Specify that your drive-through order is ‘to go’.

15. Tell your children over dinner, ‘Due to the economy, we are going to have to let one of you go’.