This week, I’m doing a blog post a day on the things that I love. So far on my list I have Vintage and Snarkiness. Today’s topic was a little harder for me to put into the right words.

I love to laugh. Some days (like today) I find everything incredibly, uncontrollably funny. Even the most mundane events can cause laughter to just bubble out of me. When I’m in this kind of mood,  I end up laughing loud and laughing often.
Most of the things I laugh at are entirely in my head. I am almost always the first to laugh first at my own jokes, and sometimes I find things side-splittingly funny when no one else can even figure out what I’m laughing at.
The problem is I’m also normally laughing by myself, which can tend to make me look a little insane.

See, I have inside jokes with myself.

There are small things that I keep with me to remind me to laugh. To most  people, they aren’t as outrageously funny as I think they are, but without fail I’ll find myself chuckling when I see them.

Keeping a little Pig on my desk at work.

This little carved stone pig was a gift from my GFabulous Grandmother, who has literally a battalion of these little creatures in cat, horse, monkey, etc. When you visit her, you will almost assuredly leave with a little guy. Part of why this thing is so awesome to me is because it is by far the ugliest pig of her collection. No one else wanted it, and with this sour look on his face, I can’t blame them. The other reason this is funny to me is because I keep it on my desk at work, which is pretty corporate-bland otherwise. When I’m not flooded with work, I write little thought or speech bubbles on post-its near his head, with phrases like “Don’t Eat Bacon” or “Baa Ram Ewe”. I like to think the guy who comes around to take out my trash every night gets a kick out of it.

Finding Nemo House Key and Giraffe Key Chain

Keys are something you always carry with you, and I have always thought that they should be more fun, less purely functional than they are. This little stuffed, hand-crocheted key chain makes me happy because a) it’s a giraffe wearing a red top hat with a bird on its back, and b) I originally bought this with the intention of giving it to a 3 year old for her birthday, but then decided I couldn’t part with it. A 3 year old and I have very similar interests, it turns out. The Finding Nemo key on my ring is the house key I insisted on making when I moved back home, even though apparently everyone just “uses the garage” now. I could have bought a normal key, but I decided once again that I have the habits and interests of a 3 year old and wanted something a little more fun. Now every time I bring out my keys I laugh a little (and get some strange looks). When I open my front door with Nemo, it is always accompanied with me triumphantly saying “LUCKY FIN!” to myself.

Goofy Picture of Kyle in my Wallet

This is a more recent addition to the things that I love. It’s a goofy picture of my boyfriend that I have fit into my wallet where my ID should go. This picture is hilarious to me because he’s currently student teaching  at a highs school (to become an English teacher) and had to get his picture taken for a school ID badge. With the badge came the full deluxe set of school pictures- the kind all of us had k-12. He now has a ton of pictures of himself against a blue background, shoulders slightly pivoted, including 8×10″ and sticker versions. I’ve started signing them on the back, “<3 your bff” and giving them out to his friends. What else can he really do with them? So every time I go to pay for something now, I break out into honest-to-goodness gut laughter, having forgotten that I put his face next to my money.

[Sidenote: I’ve now realized that if he does become a teacher for the rest of his life, he could potentially have a picture like this of himself every year of his life. I kind of want to collect them all together and make a flip-book of him aging, but he said that was a little too morbid.]

These are the little things that keep my life light lately. I’m not sure what the significance of these items are exactly, but I know they make me happy and give me a reason to smile, especially on these long nights when the rain is pouring down outside.