kpduty

No, this isn't an entry on race relations.

This is an entry about me shoving my nose into the crotch of my own panties.

The Husband and I have been together seven years, many of those years spent occupying the same living space. You'd think that by now we'd have some sort of system down for doing the laundry. Alas, our strategy seems revolve around the laundry lying around the house like warrens of rabbits left to breed unchecked, to the point where one or both of us becomes annoyed into action, or we run out of clothes to wear.

It's usually The Husband annoyed and unclothed fifteen minutes before we have to leave for work that a plan of action takes shape.

Last night was one of those moments. Not only were we desperately in need of clean clothes, but a few nights earlier Tess the One-Eyed Pirate Cat had awoken me from my beauty sleep by hawking up a few hair balls on the comforter. The dirty bedclothes had been hastily cleaned and then unceremoniously dumped on the floor at the foot of the bed. The Husband was pretty pissed about having to walk around the mess on the way to and from his side of the bed, so a decision was made: the laundry was getting done.

First, before he and I are able to actually physically engage in the act of washing the laundry, we have to put away the old clean laundry that we did the last time we did laundry.

See, this is another hurtle we face in our quest for unsoiled apparel. Rarely--if ever--do we wash the clothes and then put away the clothes.

My thinking is it's sort of like Newton's Third Law: if you don't do laundry and it multiplies, then if you do do laundry, then the clean laundry will also multiply.

Or maybe if you don't do laundry it will do itself. Equal and opposite, equal and opposite.

Please bear in mind, I was an English major. I got a C both times I took Calculus.

So here's the crux of the problem: whenever we finally decide to do laundry, all the baskets in which we would transport the dirty laundry to the laundry room, or conversely remove the clean laundry from the laundry room, are either filled with dirty laundry waiting to go downstairs or clean laundry waiting to go upstairs.

And often we go so long between frenzied laundry-doing that we forget what's clean and what's dirty.

And here we come full circle to the beginning of my story: me, home from work following a trip to the grocery, with my nose buried in the crotch of my panties trying to figure out if they were cleaned last night or brought downstairs this morning.

And you know what? Damned if I could tell.

I threw them on the floor, put the stuff in the dryer in the basket, put the stuff in the wash in the dryer, and washed those goddamned panties again.

They'd better come out smelling like fucking roses.

On second thought, maybe they should just come out smelling like Tide and be done with it.

I'm off to clean the litter boxes.

And no, don't get me started on the litter boxes.

I'm sure as hell not putting my nose in there.