Editor's note: Due to technical issues, the last lines of Liz Pinkey's first column were cut off in Saturday's edition. Here is the complete column.

"To laugh often and to love much …"These are the opening words to a famous quote about success, frequently attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, but more likely to have come from the pen of Bessie Anderson Stanley. A copy of this poem has been on my refrigerator door since the first time I read it.I am not a person who remembers many quotes, and in this day of Internet memes, I read 100 a day that make me chuckle and then I quickly forget them. This poem, however, has lodged itself in my brain and become my "to-do bucket list.""My life can be summed up in one sentence … It did not go as planned."This one makes the rounds regularly as a "famous last words" or someone's tombstone inscription, and I'm not sure that one person can be attributed as the source, but the absolute chaos that seems to pervade most of my life as a mom, a wife, a career woman, a journalist and a coach has taught me that the best-laid plans are absolutely meant to be blown out of the water.This frequently enables me to "laugh often," and if it weren't for the "loving much," I could very easily become an angry, frustrated woman.I'm now a few paragraphs into my first writing assignment and all I've done is talk about other people's words.I do believe that if something is worth being said, it's probably been said before. However, this is my chance to share my perspective with you. My life is probably not much different from yours.I get up every morning, hoping for the best, and I go to bed every night, grateful that I survived another day and hoping that there is enough milk in the fridge for breakfast tomorrow morning. My family is just as crazy as yours, is and I spend most days alternating between being ready to throttle every last one of them and wishing that I could just hang on to one of their precious hugs just a little bit longer.Full disclosure: My family is made up of one crazy mother and wife, who, through extraordinary organizational and time management skills (anyone who knows me is laughing already), has made a lifestyle of cramming the proverbial 10 pounds of poop into the 5-pound bag and an extremely patient husband and father who makes his second home in a tree stand and spends his spare time figuring out how to help contain the extra 5 pounds of poop that really can't fit in the bag no matter how hard his wife tries.We are the proud parents of three children, who are individually much smarter than both their parents combined, and when they stop fighting with each other long enough to cooperate, can be quite the force with which to be reckoned.Let's just say that we have a feeling that our parents wished children "exactly like us" on us … multiple times over.We share our home with one extremely tolerant cat, Tubbs, who is probably spending his days plotting how to off all of us and make it look like an accident.As a writer, texting may be one of my favorite forms of communication. I tend to shy away from the "ur" and the "y?" and the "brb," however, I do confess to using LOL quite a bit.I have funny friends, and they can always make me LAUGH OUT LOUD, however, it can also mean LOTS OF LOVE. I definitely have lots of love for people who can make me laugh out loud.Many days, I have to laugh about how my best-laid plans have gone astray or I will cry.Some days, I laugh until I cry. Other days, I cry until I laugh.Many days, I just laugh because I'm completely out of other options. Laughing always makes me feel better, and if I can find something to laugh about in my darkest moments, that means I am on my way back to the light.So, I hope that my adventures can bring some laughter to your days, whether it's because you've shared the same experiences as me and you are laughing with me, or because you think I'm flat-out crazy and you're laughing at me. I'm not picky.A good laugh is a good laugh!Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column will appear weekly in our Saturday feature section.