Laughter is the best medicine.

Meet Shelly. She makes me laugh.

Notice that the paddle is also through her bikini top -- the girl's got skills.

The thing is . . . life is hard, annoying, disappointing, scary, messy and, don't forget, irritating (there's a lot of that). There's also a lot of joy. Here's a tale of joy; the kind that makes me glad I've had four C-sections and can still bust my gut laughing until I'm literally in tears.

Shelly and I often paddle board and somehow find ourselves in bizarre and painful situations. Possibly due to a potent cocktail of self-confidence and I fancy myself as having a good sense of direction. Once, Shelly, Amanda and I decided to go down the river. Upon seeing the river, Amanda immediately put her board back in her car and announced that she was out -- the water level was too low. Shelly and I looked at each other with the same thought in mind: "eff this river! I came here to have a good time and I'll be damned if I'm leaving before it's been had."

Off we went. We had good times. Insanity and hilarity ensued because, of course, the water level was too low. This may or may not have caused Shelly to fly off her board at about 10 mph, face first, into two inches water (the river bed is mostly gravel and rock -- ouch!). I may or may not have laughed so hard that I fell off my board at this point. Who can remember? But if I did, keep in mind that compassion isn't my strong suit. I was raised with five brothers after all.

We continued down the river laughing and having a darned good time, which brings us to the above photo. Notice the large and tiny rocks and general lack of foot wear? This point in the river is called pullout four.

Jamie: "Whelp, fun's over. We're here. Time to get out." ("Let's pull over to the side furthest from the exit and walk across an extra mile of rocks just for fun.") The part in parenthesis may not have been actually spoken out loud, but the truthfulness of it is certain.

Shelly, "K"

We walked across about 100 yards of rock shards, which, literally, to this day, IS THE MOST PAINFUL thing I've ever experienced! And I ain't no princess. Don't forget we were both carrying our paddles and heavy 12-foot boards. Take a moment and get the mental picture. We are hobbling, carrying a heavy weight, and mentally cursing every painful step of the way -- at least I was, and I'm pretty sure Shell was too. But we were also dying of laughter, like the kind where snot involuntarily blows out your nose (sorry for the mental image).

After about 25 minutes of this we reached the parking lot. Victory! But we were at the wrong pullout. Oh! My car was parked miles away at the Phon pullout, which meant we had to retread the ground we'd just covered to get back into the water to paddle the extra five miles to get the right location. Shelly may or may not have cursed at me. Who can remember? Maybe it was just the noise of me loudly cursing myself in my head.

Jamie: "Well, $#*! we're at the wrong place! We've got to go back and go further down the river. Let's go."  This is a summary, the actual statement included a lot of dumbfounded frustration and gut busting laughter.

Shelly: "Wait!" She kept hobbling back to the parking lot expecting my car to appear. Or maybe she was referencing the map again -- not trusting herself to my navigation skills ever again -- I can't be certain.

Eventually, we summoned the courage to go back down the hill over those forsaken rocks to get back on our way. Three fourths of the way to river I called to strangers to help carry our boards the rest of the way. They ran over to grab them from us and Shelly hobbled on, struggling to finish what she had started. Though exhausted she still managed to tell them, "ignore her, don't help her." Thankfully, they ignored her and I made it to the cool water's edge, unburdened.

Shelly followed closely behind me eager for the coolness of the river and in the process deftly dropped her board squarely on her left foot.  I somehow found this to be hilarious and dropped to the earth in hysterics. She did the same. Her foot was jacked up for weeks, which still makes me giggle every time I think about it. Every. Single. Time.