How To: Nearly Kill Your Family

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Check the clock. 11:30 pm. Wonder what you were thinking staying up so late. Again! Pull yourself up off the couch and away from your knitting. Stretch out your fingers. This will probably hurt. You've been knitting since the baby went to bed three hours ago.

Head into the bathroom so you can start your nightly routine. Brush your teeth. Skip the floss. (Yes, that's routine too.) Wash your face somewhat less than thoroughly.  Turn off the lights, climb into bed, pull up the covers, and…STOP! It’s Saturday. Tomorrow is Sunday. And you neglected laundry this week. Roll out of bed. Check the closet. Bad news. You don’t have a clean shirt for church.

Try not to cry as you sort through the "whites" bin and carry your pile of smelly clothes through the house to the laundry room.  You’re mad now. Why did J. make you stay up so late? Why did the neighbor decide to walk the dog at midnight? Why does said neighbor always yell at said dog at midnight? Why did Hallmark air that movie in October that you had to record and had to watch tonight? Why hasn’t someone invented a laundry-bot yet? Ignore that small yet persistent voice of reason in the back of your mind saying you should only be mad at yourself. This isn’t your fault.

Because you’re exhausted, it’s best to move slowly. Carefully transfer the dirty clothes from the floor to the washing machine, one article at a time. Notice black stains in the armpits of the shirt you were hoping to wear tomorrow—your favorite, most expensive Caslon white t-shirt that you were hoping to wear tomorrow. Pretend that something is in your eye. You don’t cry over laundry. Vow to never, never, never wear a black cardi over a white t-shirt again!

Grab your glass bowl and fill it with warm water. Mix in a heaping scoop of that DIY laundry detergent you're so proud of and slosh the shirt around in there. Scrub the stains vigorously for a few minutes. Stop. You’re getting nowhere. Spot the bleach on shelve. Recklessly grab the bottle and dump some in your shirt/detergent/armpit-stain mixture.

Wonder why it’s fizzing. Wonder what that smell is. Dump it all down the drain pronto! Panic as you google the ill-effects of mixing bleach with every single ingredient you put in that laundry detergent. Find little helpful info. Fels-naptha? Borax? Washing Soda? Oxiclean? Oxiclean. Read right on the Oxiclean label, “Do not mix with products containing ammonia, chlorine bleach, or with other household chemicals.” 

Well, s%@&t!¹   

Frantically run around with your shirt up over your face bandit style, eyes squinted, and arms flapping. Open every window. Turn on every fan and vent. Run the tap water down the drain where you poured your poison, just in case. Who knows what chemicals are floating all over your house, waiting for an unsuspecting victim to breath them in so they can wreak havoc all over your insides!?

Check the baby. Check the hubby. Check the dog. Everyone is still breathing. For now.

Spend another thirty minutes googling chlorine gas poisoning, bleach, and Oxiclean. Spend way too much time reading about chlorine gas poisoning and WWI. Pray really hard that you and your family won’t wake up dead. Throughout this whole process you should intermittently zone out, giving yourself time to mentally compose your hate letter to Oxiclean. (Or Clorox? No, Clorox has been around longer. Oxiclean it is.)

Why, Why, Why would anyone make a laundry detergent that cannot be mixed with bleach, a known laundry detergent!  

Decide not to send that letter. But you’ll definitely be switching detergents. Your mom’s been telling you about a great non-toxic, totally natural one for months. And if you’re going to be doing laundry at midnight again, it’s probably safer anyway.

¹ Shoot. What did you think I meant?

I Don't Do Sappy

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Maybe it’s because I recently had a conversation with some friends about how we met our husbands. Or maybe it’s because my hubby has been surprising me with a treat every morning this week and maybe it’s just because it’s February. Whatever the reason, I’ve been feeling particularly sappy.

I don’t normally do sappy. I’m one of those girls who cringe when I see posts on Facebook about how great/hot/sweet/thoughtful someone’s husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend is. First I think, “Oh, brother.”  And then it makes me feel guilty because I’m not sappy.  It’s not that I don’t love my husband. But if I want him to know that, I just tell him. I see no need to announce it to the world. The only person who matters already knows how I feel. Right?

And then there are the questions that somehow always come up when you meet new people. How did you and your husband meet? How did he propose? What are your favorite things about him? I have my standard, one sentence answers for these. “We met at a party. He proposed at Multnomah Falls. Uh….everything?” It’s not that I don’t have answers. I have really good answers, actually! It’s just that...well, they’re my answers! Mine and my husband’s. And really, how do you answer questions about the most important person and event in your life in the course of a simple conversation with someone you barely know anyway?

My answer to that question is: “You don’t!" You don’t share it. But as I’ve mentioned, I’m feeling particularly sappy lately. And I’m becoming sooooo forgetful since having a baby. So I’d like to write about my love story before I forget the details! Maybe one day, I will share it with you. For now, it’s mine.

The Worst Thing About Laundry

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Let’s face it. Everyone hates laundry. Of course that’s a generalization, but sometimes you have to generalize. And I’ve never met anyone who likes doing laundry so I’m taking liberties here. Everyone hates laundry. Sure, people vary on the degree to which they despise laundry day. But who actually gets excited about it? Not me. Not even a little.

And since becoming a mom, my contempt for laundry has multiplied. By like ten million. Maybe it’s because I now have twelve times the amount of laundry to do. That was unexpected. After all, how much extra laundry could one little person produce? Right? The answer is: a lot! Your days of re-wearing clothes between washings are over after you have a baby. Grimy fingers, poopy diapers, spit-up – somehow they all end up all over you. And the baby. And then you both have to change clothes. Or not. Either way, you have extra laundry. And let’s not forget about the amount of spills you’re cleaning up. Which, because of my aversion to paper towels, equates to a ton of extra laundry!

So there’s that. And then there’s the fact that even one load of laundry is so much harder than it should be. When washing clothes for two adults, I didn’t have to do anything but sort, throw them in the washer, and turn it on. But now there is soaking, scrubbing and then washing. And don’t forget which baby items were stained because you don’t want to throw them in the dryer and heat set the stain. No! They need to line dry so you can check to see if the stain was completely removed. Usually it wasn’t and you have to go through the whole process again. And hopefully it worked. Hopefully you caught them all.

But probably you didn’t. So you try not to get angry that the adorable white shirt grandma just bought now has a huge grape juice stain down the middle, but seriously!? He only wore it once! One time, and now it is ruined with no hope of saving it. This happens far, far too often. But that’s not the worst thing.

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The absolute worst thing about doing laundry now is that it forces me to confront something that I prefer to ignore: the fact that my baby is growing up. Way. Too. Fast.  Every time I wash a load of Cord’s clothes, I find more items that don’t fit anymore. Something that fit just yesterday (literally, he wore it yesterday) has to go into storage with the other baby items. And that is incredibly sad.