In this final stretch of mandatory school for The Kid Who Refused to Go to School, I’m doing my best to make it fun. This is really my life’s mission: If something isn’t fun, I try to make it fun. Why not?

Some years ago I was having a terrible day – I’m pretty sure everyone I lived with was conspiring to make me go insane, and they seemed to be closing in on success – so I decided to leave for a bit and head into San Francisco. It was a weekend afternoon so traffic was a nightmare and I’m pretty sure there was some huge event going on, so I couldn’t even park. Instead I just drove into the city, around it for a bit, and then headed home. My emotions were boiling over and I was struggling to enjoy anything at that moment. Then I spied two guys in a Mini Cooper driving over the Golden Gate Bridge with that convertible top down. I thought to myself, “If I had a convertible, I would be happy right now.” Of course that’s absurd. Exterior input like the fresh air blowing your hair to smithereens can’t compensate for the internal struggle we all face sometimes, but it certainly looked appealing.

So what I try to do is turn the mundane or the sad or the frustrating into something entertaining. I started making up songs when I was changing diapers 17 1/2 years ago. They were terrible songs sung terribly, but one of those poop-related songs inspired Maddie’s very first laugh, so I put that sucker on repeat. I goof around so much that at one point my kids told me I needed new material. Too many fart jokes, I believe. Once when I was driving the kids somewhere, I noticed the thermometer on the car indicated it was 80 degrees outside. “Eighty-degrees!” I declared. “That’s my favorite temperature!”

“No it’s not,” insisted both the kids. They thought I was joking. I insisted I was serious, but they wouldn’t believe me. And you know why? Because about 80% of what comes out of my mouth is a joke, or at least an attempt at one.

If I’m not cracking a joke, I’m doing the “waffle dance”—you know, because waffles—or the “I hate doing the dishes” dance or doing the worst fake-going-down-the-stairs thing of all time.

So last week when Maddie set her mind to finishing some year-end assessments in reading and math, I put on my silly hat (it’s always available) and we got started. Eventually we got to a problem that required some scratch paper. We were in my sort-of cleaned up room, so I as I scanned the scene for a handy piece of scratch paper, I could only find one thing: a small shopping bag from a local boutique. I grabbed it and said, “We’ll have to use this. It’s bag math.”

And so for the rest of the session, we did “bag math.” Was it funny? Eh, not really, But it lightened the mood and gave us something silly to say as we trudged our way through stuff I don’t remember, stuff she never learned, and a fair amount of straight up guessing. “Bag math” saved the day.

Sometimes when I’m cleaning the kitchen or folding yet another mountain of laundry, I jokingly announce how much fun it is. I hate the drudgery, but it helps to make light of it. Yesterday I accidentally cracked myself up when I noticed that, while absent-mindedly folding a pile of fresh clothes, I had grabbed the bottom of the SHIRT I WAS WEARING and begin to fold IT. Haha! I had a good laugh at myself and finished the job.

Last fall, years after my epiphany about the convertible and how it might have changed my outlook that day, I got one. “Life is more fun with the top down!” is my motto. And I was right: Life IS more fun with the top down, and math is more fun when you do it on a bag.