Okay folks, I’m back.

I know I haven’t updated this blog in a while, but I haven’t written here for the same reason I haven’t been working on book four of the Rainie Series. For a time, it seems I lost my sense of humor.

For some reason, if I don’t have a sense of humor, Rainie doesn’t seem to, either. I’m not quite sure why that is...

Now, most people consider having just the five major senses enough, and I admit, I do like having a sense of smell, taste, touch, hearing and sight. Like most people, I have had periods of time when I have lost some or all of those; like when I have a bad cold, and I can’t smell or taste anything, and my ears get infected and sound is muffled. I’ve even suffered a reduced sense of sight when I can’t locate my glasses, and carpel tunnel syndrome (from too many hours at the keyboard) has periodically numbed my hands and stolen my sense of touch.

I can handle all of that. It’s temporary, and with the help of my immune system, a bit of therapy and my optometrist, all of those senses come back.

But the sense of humor...ah, folks, that one is a bit trickier. It is a delicate sense, dependent on far more that a couple of taste buds or a few finicky nerve endings. The sense of humor is rooted much deeper, and it takes more than a few arm stretches or a cold tablet to bring it back.

I suspected for a time that someone had somehow stolen it. I took out ads in the local paper:

                                “Lost, one sense of humor.

                                  Well used, but slightly

                                   neglected. Family misses it.

                                  Needs medication.

                                  If found, please return,

                                  NO questions asked!”

Well, that didn’t work, so I decided that either whoever had it liked it too much to give it back, or I had just misplaced it. So, I started searching diligently for it.

I looked high and low, in closets and under my pillow and between the couch cushions, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. So I looked in a couple of local bars and shopping malls and even along the bike path in Niles. Nope, not there either.

So I slogged along in a humorless world for a while, hiding my loss behind faked claims of “LOL” and “Ha ha,” wondering what in the world everyone else was laughing about. But yesterday morning I woke up at four in the morning, as I usually do, stumbled to the coffee pot and poured a nice, hot, steaming mug, and I realized I was smiling.

Now, coffee isn’t particularly funny, unless, of course, you inhale wrong while drinking it and snort some out your nose. That can be funny; gross, as well, but still, kind of funny. But I hadn’t snorted any coffee, so why was I smiling?

Then it came to me. I was smiling because the world itself is pretty funny. It’s full of unplanned and silly incidents, ironic twists, random acts of Karma and a million other things that one simply must laugh at or go mad.

“Ah ha!” I said to myself – I had to say it to myself, because of course no one else in their right mind is up at four in the morning – “There it is! My sense of humor!”

I don’t know where it had been. Maybe it was stuck in the bottom of my coffee mug (which I tend to just give a quick rinse to most mornings, rather than a thorough washing) and the hot, splashing coffee dislodged it. Or maybe I had never lost it at all, but was simply failing to heed it. You know, like when you listen to music playing in the background but you aren’t really listening, until a particular bit of lyric or thread of melody catches your attention and you focus on the song for a moment.

So, I’m paying attention to my sense of humor now, and I vow to never neglect it again! I promise to laugh at stupid jokes and politicians (which are often the same thing) and the craziness in the world that I can’t fix. I swear I will always giggle when I hear a child giggle, and especially laugh at my own mistakes, which let me tell you, are often hilarious!

So, now that I think the world is funny again, it seems that Rainie is pretty amused about being chased by vicious dogs and getting slammed into a wall by a large, hairy naked man.

All is right with the world again.