Adventures on the Laundry mountain

Well, this morning after I woke up, made the kid's lunches and got them dressed for school, I went in search of some clothes for me to wear. Namely, 1 pair of clean underwear and a shirt and some shorts that did not smell like feet.

After much digging, I finally found some shorts and a shirt (albeit it 2 sizes too large) that would suffice and I thus began the dig in the "unmentionables" drawer for some clean drawers. After rifiling through there I DID find:2 sports bras (that post-breastfeeding are undoubtably way too small), a small dinosaur toy, 3 quarters, a paperclip, and (drumroll please) 2 pairs of distinctly different underwear: Choice #1: a lovely pair of granny panties that I wore when pregnant with each of my children, thoroughly stretched out and large enough to effectively serve as a baby sling in a pinch or Choice #2: a slinky, stringly thong that Steve got me for Christmas last year (note the irony when I say he got it for *me*...come on girls, we all know who THAT gift was for). I think I could dig out some scraps from the sewing basket that would have more coverage than that overly priced piece of pink floss that some psycho male exec at Victoria's Secret deemed "women's underwear". Considering my attire and the fact that I have yet to have showered, I went with Choice #1. It fits my mood better today anyway.
Dropped the boys at preschool and hustled home to load up the laundry. Turns out there were 7 (SEVEN) baskets to be done. And that's not even counting sheets and other bedding.
Now...to my defense, here's how this got so out of hand: When we moved to this house in early March we discovered that our dryer was gas and of course, this house is electric. Trying to save us some money (single income+family of four+teacher's salary=you do the math), I ingenously put up a clothes line in the back yard. It was spring time, there was a pleasant breeze, the laundry smelled glorius, and I was pretty dang proud of my carpentry skills. So...6 months later, we still have no dryer. Steve thinks we have better things to spend $400 on right now..namely, food for our children, so we're trying to hold off on buying one until it gets too cold for line drying. Now...with an average load of clothes taking several hours to dry on the line, and currently 7 HEAPING baskets of laundry needing to be done, it would take me approximately...oh....4 DAYS to do all the laundry. The whole clothesline thing has lost much of it's novelty by this point in time (hanging clothes in a pleasant spring-time breeze is quite different from doing the same in the blistering 90 degree sun) and I'm ready to just join a nudist colony so I don't have to worry about this whole "clothing" thing anymore. All morning I've been thinking of Shari's friend Vanessa (who's blog I eagerly anticipate every day) and thought that if she ever read my blog that maybe she would be encouraged this week - hey, at least they have a DRYER. :) lol
ANYWAY....so I load up all seven baskets and make my way to the laundromat to get it all done before I pick up the boys at 1:00. I've got 2.5 hours to wash, dry, fold and get to the school in time so I hit the laundromat floor running. I have 3 jumbo washers going, and 2 small ones, plus one load in the dryer already that I had washed at home. If you've ever frequented a laundromat, you're aware of the massive amount of laundry I'm dealing with. And if you're from the south, you're aware of how much perspiration I had acquired at this point from carrying in 7 laundry baskets into the laundromat when it's already 93 degrees outside. >


I'm making change, washing, drying, and folding like a madwoman (I've got a deadline, remember) when a handsome man with a cocky demeaner plops himself down in the chair next to my folding table and asks me if it was ok if he sat next to me. I look around at the 26 other open chairs around the room and wonder why he chose the one right NEXT to me, but shrug and say it's fine (as I nudge the basket with all my clean underwear out of his sight with my foot--you never know what kind of weirdos are out there). Anyway...to make a long story short, nothing makes a girl in granny panties, sweating it out in the laundromat feel special like being hit on by a trucker. Nice as he was, I grew a little weary hearing of how on his days off from trucking he spent his time "work'n out....work'n out all day long, that's all I do" and telling me how he's dropped 30 pounds in the last few months and actually rolling up his sleeve to show me his muscles. I wasn't sure if I would gag first from the lack of oxygen in the room (his head had swollen so big it was sucking it all out) or from his nauseating pride. He asked for my number. I told him I didn't think my husband was really into three-somes. He left to go check on his laundry and never came back. heehee.

Loaded the clean laundry back into the van, and picked up Josh Groban, who crooned sweet operatic love ballads (in Italian) to me all the way back home. I have no idea what he was saying, but it was relaxing and energized me for the rest of the morning. Oh...did I say I picked up Josh Groban? I meant I picked his cd from the cd holder in the visor.

Dropped the laundry at home with a note on it for Steve for later that read: "Clean clothes - Put away or Face My Wrath" and ran back out to the car to pick up the kids. Get to school, see pictures and paintings, ooh and ahh over playdoh creations and load 'em up, bring 'em home. Write blog. End blog. Take Shower. :) The End.