Free Welcome to the Funny Farm by Karen Scalf Linamen

imperfect people because the bumpy road of loving and being loved leaves us richer as a result.
    Margery Williams gets credited with coming up with the Velveteen Rabbit Principle. And yet our heavenly Father has had a handle on this principle for eons. He knows that in the process of loving and being loved, we’re going to get bumped and bruised now and then. We’re going to fray at the edges and get dropped in the mud and even spend some nights forgotten and abandoned in the cold. We may even end up sporting a few scars, because sometimes love hurts.
    But when it’s all said and done, relationships—even chaotic relationships with imperfect people—leave us richer than before. They shape our souls. They make us real.
    They may even make us better looking.
    I’d explain more but I don’t have time. I’ve got to grab my purse and hurry out the door.
    Supercuts closes in half an hour.

21

    Wanna Enrich Your Life? Swap Insights with Your Friends
    I’ M ALWAYS TRYING TO TALK MY FRIENDS INTO THINGS.
    Take this week for example. I’ve tried to talk a half dozen women into taking this class with me. It’s an eight-week class and it’s very reasonably priced and we’d be having fun and getting great exercise as well. What more could you ask for?
    I just don’t understand why I’m not getting any takers. I thought EVERYBODY harbored a secret wish to take bellydancing lessons. I just don’t get the reticence.
    Maybe it’s the Armenian blood in me. Either that or I spent too many hours as a kid watching I Dream of Jeannie.
    No, wait, I bet I know what influenced me. No doubt it was that awesome photo of Liz Curtis Higgs in a veil and two pounds of eyeliner on the cover of her excellent book Bad Girls of the Bible. (There’s no way you can convince me there’s not a navel ring hiding beneath all those layers of silk!)
    Be that as it may, so far my friends don’t share my enthusiasm about the lessons. But I’ll be sure to keep you informed.
    The point is, my friends and I are always swapping ideas on how to make our lives more interesting or productive or healthy. Okay, so I’ll admit the bellydancing brainstorm might have been a little over the top. Normally our ideas are much more mainstream.
    Like the way we’re always swapping diet strategies and newsflashes. Last week, for example, I got a phone call from a friend of mine. She sounded positively manic as she squealed, “You’ll never guess what happened last night!”
    I wondered if she had won the lottery. I was getting ready to ask her to pay for my bellydancing lessons when she said, “I got into my blue jeans!”
    She hasn’t worn blue jeans in a year. But after dieting and exercising for several weeks, she got those denims zipped.
    I understand the significance of her news. I’ve fought the battle of the bulge myself. The truth is, winning the lottery pales in comparison to getting back into a favorite pair of jeans after a cellulite-induced exile.
    We also encourage each other when it comes to beauty secrets.
    And, boy, do we need those beauty secrets. Can anyone explain to me why, as we get older, our eyebrows, lips, hair and bones get thinner while our waistlines continue to thicken? It hardly seems fair.
    Not to mention what happens to our eyelids. Last week my friend Beth lamented, “It’s getting harder to put on eyeliner. My eyelids are too wrinkly.”
    I know what she’s talking about. It’s not easy getting liner up and down both sides of all those tiny wrinkles.
    Half the time my eyelids sport a dotted line.
    I have good news on the hair removal front, though. Several chapters ago I confessed that I had an appointment for electrolysis to remove a dozen stubborn chin hairs. I’ve had more than one reader write and ask me how it went. Here’s the report: I love the results! You’ll be glad to know that my chin stubble days