Health and Fitness : Laugh With Kathy - The Egg Toss

Friday, October 12, 2012: I'm mad. It is four in the morning, and I can't sleep. I'm so tired, and it has been so long since I slept through the night that I want to break something. This is a new feeling for me. I get mad like everyone else, but I remember only one or two times in my life when I wanted to break or kick something. And this is one of them. I look at my cell phone. It looks like a good thing to throw against the wall. But I think better of it. First of all, it would wake Gene up, and that just seems unfair to him. It isn't his fault that I'm mad. Second, I really need my phone to make long-distance calls to my family, so it is going to be inconvenient to be without one. And finally, I can't remember the last time I backed up my phone address book, and it is daunting to think of reentering all that information into a new phone. I need a plan. I want to break something, but I don't want to clean up the mess. I look around the room for something that will break when I throw it. And then it comes to me. I have a large carton of eggs in the refrigerator. I could take them outside and throw them against a tree, and I wouldn't have to clean up the mess! It turns out that it is only thirty-two degrees outside, and I really don't want to get cold, so I delay my hissy fit and let Gene sleep. I decide to wait to throw the eggs until Gene gets home from work. After all, he might be mad too. I have fifteen eggs, and I want to share the fun. So I spend my time drawing images on the eggs to represent all the things I'm mad at: needles, doctors, pathology reports, Band-Aids and Steri-Strips, cancer, my left breast, my right breast. The list could go on and on, but I have only fifteen eggs, and I'm not a very good artist. Gene is a good sport. I greet him at the door with a carton of eggs when he returns home, and I say, "Keep your shoes on. I have an activity planned."� He says, "Okay."� Maybe he thinks I have totally lost it, and he is just playing along until the loony van gets here. I don't care. This is going to be cathartic. We march out to the woodpile, and I open the carton and explain what we are going to do. I ask him if he wants the left breast or the right breast. He chuckles and says, "You go first."� This man is a saint and knows when not to comment. I grab one of the eggs and take aim. I bring back my arm and hurl that egg as hard as I can. It actually hurts my arm . . . and I miss! Are you kidding me? That isn't cathartic. It just ticks me off! Gene's lips are twitching. "Okay, big guy, you take a turn,"� I tell him. He hurls his egg and misses too. We need a bigger tree. This just isn't working out like I imagined it. We find a bigger tree, but we miss a lot. No baseball stars in this family. Somewhere in the woods, there are a dozen painted eggs and a happy raccoon. My husband comes up with a new plan. He tells me that he passed a pumpkin stand on his way home and offers to buy a few pumpkins and let me shoot at them to blow them up. That sounds interesting. Stay tuned to see why our property should be renamed to "Boomtown!"� www.laughwithkathy.com **In recognition of October being Breast Cancer Awareness month, Dean and Val have asked me to share some stories from my book Laugh With Kathy, Finding humor in the journey through breast cancer. Each week day during October, I will post an excerpt from my book on Vinton Today. Our hope it that these articles will give you a glimpse into what it takes to beat breast cancer. Proceeds from books sold in October on Amazon and from my website will benefit the Survivors of Benton County. Please note that I was diagnosed with breast cancer four years ago, had two years of treatment and I am now living cancer free.