John and I laugh often in our home. His sense of humor is one of the things I love most about him. And I do think a bit rubbed off on me as I find that I can come up with some good one liners that I don’t know if I would had I not been married to John all these years.

John is usually up before me every morning. But it’s usually not long afterwards, that I shuffle in my slippers into the kitchen to find John making a pot of coffee. Such was the case this past Saturday.

John said quite seriously, “I’m concerned about the chicken.”

I had taken out a whole, frozen chicken out of the freezer the evening before around 8pm and put it in a large bowl of cold water.

At first I was a bit annoyed that John was questioning my “thawing” skills. I really thought it would be okay.

But John said the chicken was warm to the touch.

And I was then more upset with myself for having just wasted a whole, organic chicken that was supposed to be for dinner. Though I did still question if it would be okay to eat. But it wasn’t worth taking the risk.

But then I giggled thinking back to the seriousness of John’s tone when he stated he was concerned about the chicken.

I said that it sounded like we were talking about a live chicken. So I decided to name the chicken Chuck.

John said, “Should I pick up another chicken at Miesfeld’s?” (a local butcher shop in our area).

“Fine,” I said. “But it’s your turn to take Chuck to work.  He has not been behaving around here lately and I don’t think I can take another day of his antics.”

And so the rest of the day we had an imaginary chicken named Chuck who became our muse for the day. The muse that diffused what could have been a heated discussion of me feeling inadequate and John, really, just trying to help.

I thought back to our earlier years of marriage and how I would have taken this so personally and the whole day would have been ruined.

But one thing (among many!) I’ve gained from this marriage with John is to not take things so seriously. That laughter really is good medicine, good for the soul, and good for a marriage.

And yes, I know, Chuck is really a male name which would make him a rooster…but remember this is all imaginary!  🙂

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