Monday, December 24, 2012

Good Clean Fun

I don’t know when I reduced my standards of excellence where the laundry is concerned, but I can no longer seem to get a load of laundry washed AND folded.  I can get it washed and put into a basket to be folded at a later, unspecified time.

If someone is looking for a specific article of clothing and can find it in the basket…clean but unfolded…I consider that a success. Don’t judge.

If you take issue with my system, I won’t even begin to tell you about my disdain for ironing and how I will hang an item in need of ironing in front of Mr. Always Random’s clothes until he irons it for me. I don’t even have to ask. He’s so thorough and conscientious that he’ll iron the whole shirt even if I tell him that all that will show is the collar and the shirt cuffs. If I was ironing it (insert laugh here), that’s all I would iron.
I’m glad he takes more pride in my appearance than I do.

I usually just purchase “wash and wear” items. If something needs to be ironed and is in my wardrobe, it probably snuck in on the back of something else, or was such a great price that I completely neglected to check the tag for care instructions prior to making my purchase.

Sometimes a bargain blindsides me.

Because I can’t seem to get the laundry past the living room, my husband….also known as Mr. Always Random and Usually Shallow…wonderful man that he is…folds most of the laundry. He’s fabulous like that.

I like to think of it as team-work at its finest. We go with where our strengths lie. Actually, I won’t let him run the washer unless I’m standing right there when he starts it. He used to think he knew how to do laundry until he married me at which point I informed him that he actually did not know how to do laundry. I don’t think he was sad about that.

The one curious thing about him folding the laundry is that the 11yo and I are getting closer to being the same size (I have actually snagged a couple sweatshirts from his closet…and funny thing about that: once he’s seen his mother in his sweatshirt, he has no desire to have it back. I have been careful to not take ones for which he has a special affinity but I do have my eye on a couple I’m planning to lift when he outgrows them.), so my husband is sometimes uncertain whose clothes are whose. I appreciate that he views me as smaller than I am, but my 11yo and I have each ended up with one another’s clothes in our individual stacks. It’s not as embarrassing for me, but my son is always slightly mortified when it happens.

If you know him, please never speak of this to him.

My husband is a wonderful man and is helpful around the house in many ways. And it’s not his love of folding laundry that motivates him; frankly, I think he simply gets tired of seeing a basket of laundry in the living room. It’s CLEAN laundry but still somewhat unseemly, especially as the skivvies are spilling out of the basket, out onto the floor.

We’re high-class over here. Just tell us before you drop by, so we can throw the basket of laundry in another room and shut the door.

True confessions time: I have to…correction: I CHOOSE to praise Mr. Always Random and Usually Shallow up and down for many reasons, but mostly because he bought the new flooring I have been asking for for years and is going to install it (I’ll help, of course…especially with the ripping out of the old carpet. I am seriously looking forward to that.) for me…I mean for US…once the Christmas decorations have all been packed up for the season.

The stacks of flooring have been in our guest bedroom/office for a few weeks now and if he’d said he was ready to get started on the floors, I would have sacrificed the family’s enjoyment of the decorations and packed them up days ago.

But he didn’t say that. Rats.

Anyway, as an early Christmas gift to me, my dear husband…best.husband.ever…folded yet another pile of laundry which had taken up residence in the middle of the living room. Don’t judge…it was in a basket…not on the floor or anything. We only do that when there are more than a couple loads in the folding queue and they don’t all fit in the basket.

When he was finished, he stacked up the clothes, one pile for each member of the household. Shortly after, the 9yo came in the room.

Husband: “Buddy, this stack’s for you.”

9yo: “These are all my clothes?”

Me: “No, it’s not.”

They both looked at me.

Me: “That’s not all your clothes.”

They looked at the stack and then at me.  The stack only had a couple shirts, a pair of jammies and a pair of jeans. They all belonged to the 9yo.

Me: “No, that’s not all your clothes. You have a lot of other clothes which are in your room.”

Blank looks.

Me: “All these are yours but they are not all of your clothes.”

Eye rolls.

Me: “That’s a misplaced modifier. See? Grammar is fun!”

Eye rolls again.

My humor and wit are grossly under-appreciated in this house.

Eye rolls again.

My humor and wit is grossly underappreciated in this house

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