Laughter

I loved Elder Wirthlin's talk yesterday on laughter. I particularly liked the story of his daughter getting in the wrong car. It was a great reminder of how laughter can make everything better.

On Friday my mom, sister Karisa, and I went into high canning gear. We had two water baths going, and we went from about 11:00 (after collecting jars from Grandma's house and waiting for the dishwasher to cleanse them of years worth of grime) until about 6:30. We took shifts during lunch, and the process never stopped.
We were highly efficient, which means the stove got quite hot. We had to keep the counter top watered down because it was starting to melt. I reached into the drawer beneath the stove to grab a knife at one point. I had to throw it in the sink of water because I was afraid the metal tang would burn my hand. When my dad joined the process at the eleventh hour and grabbed his own knife from the drawer, he realized how hot it was. As he pulled the drawer out we saw melted plastic. The cover for my mom's microplane was warped and deformed, and the metal blades on the apple corer had melted out of the handles.
We had been smelling warm plastic, but none of us had thought to investigate. As soon as we saw the contents of the drawer, we all lost it in hearty laughter. I couldn't breath. We all had tears streaming down our cheeks. I was doubled over in painful laughter. It was just what we needed after a long day of canning. The memory of the warped plastic is a memory that will bring a smile to my face for a long while. It was a sort of trophy for 53 quarts and 27 pints of peaches and pears, in addition to the fruit itself.

Picture taken from Karisa's blog account of the events. I'm just grateful she didn't include any of the canning crew. We looked like we'd been canning all day.