Daily Evil: R is for Ridiculous

This is Donkey Oatie and Sancho Panda. Helen Burling Ottaway did a series for a book or a show or something in the early 1990s. I do not know if it was ever published. There is no date on this. This is colored pencil and the drawing is 9 by 12 inches. I think she did larger watercolors as the final project.

Is being ridiculous evil? I read that today is National Humorous Day. We need humor to let go of stress and blow off steam and to go from the fight or flight sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic relaxed one. Humor is a really good way to go. So watch those silly cat videos and laugh. Ok, not when you are at work. But even at work, my office manager and I needed to blow off steam and laugh. One day she was playing whale songs. I heard her say very seriously into the phone, “Oh, those are whale songs. Dr. Ottaway insists on whale songs.” I howled, because she had picked them. For revenge I made whale noises at her between patients all day. Anybody walking into clinic might have thought we were loons. I can do loon songs very well, better than whale songs.

I know a slightly different tune for The Dummy Line, a variation. There seem to be a bunch!

R is for ridiculous

Ridiculous. Silly. I can’t do S for silly because another of the 7 sins starts with S.

My sister and I could be so silly together. I bought the ridiculous Dr. Suess Christmas hat one year. On Christmas morning my sister wore it and then played with a Sesame Street style puppet. A monster puppet, where you could put different arms and eyebrows and eyes on for different moods. She and the puppet had a discussion about which arms the puppet would wear! And then she put all the velcro monster parts on her cashmere sweater! Ridiculous!

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malene's photo chris and silly hat chris - Copy (2)

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The last photograph is my sister with her daughter, being goofy and ridiculous. My sister died in 2012 of cancer…. I hope she gets to continue to be goofy sometimes on the next plane of existence and I miss being ridiculous with her!