Laundry, Laundry Everywhere, Yet Not a Sock to Wear!

I.

Love.

Laundry.

Puppy Lovie Preparing for Her Bath

Okay, that's only half true. I love warm, clean laundry that's organized, folded/ironed and hung, and put away. I guess at that point it's not really laundry anymore.  The truth is, that I don't mind laundry when it's warm, clean, and still unfolded, unsorted, un-ironed, and not put away. Even though I know better, I insist on "laundry day" instead of "laundry every day."  I inevitably always end up in a cycle of scrambling to get sixteen loads done so that anyone in the family has even one pair of matching, clean socks to wear, followed by a week of consistent and gradual laundry care, followed by yet another week of paralysis and a mountain of laundry more intimidating than Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Repeat.

Mountain Ranges of Sorted Laundry at my Lovely "Laundry Desk" in the Garage

Besides this funny laundry pattern I can't seem to break, I've got other, deep running, terribly quirky, nonsensical laundry-isms, particularly that I don't really like other people doing the wash for me.  Yes, this includes my husband. Double yes, I know this is insane.  If you love following care tags, if you adore your line-dry rod (except when it inevitably comes crashing down onto the dusty garage floor), if you do not like your underthings to ever, ever, ever end up in the same load with your jeans, you may think twice about entrusting your laundering to a man, unless he is an anomaly and has a very keen laundry eye. This is not (at all!) to say that men are incapable of doing laundry. Obviously, that is not true. My very precise, detail-oriented husband laundered clothes for many, many years of his life prior to our matrimonial bliss. He's probably kept fewer stray red/blue socks from dying entire loads of whites than I have in my time.  Greg flies commercial jets for a living, and you will all be thankful to know that the washer and dryer do not phase him. If I'd allow him, more laundry would get done at our house. Simply, the compulsive side of my brain says that if one person is in charge of the laundry, there are fewer mis-sorting opportunities, and I don't expect a man to know from personal experience that a delicate bra and panty set shouldn't be dried in the machine. I didn't say it was rational, just that these are the thoughts that I think. Ain't he sweet for putting up with me?

Every month or so, my Dear Sweet will have tripped over the laundry mountain in the garage four or five too many times in a given weekend, bucks Mama's rules, and starts in on it while I'm at the grocery store.  This usually "works." Imagining all of my hand washables being machine washed gives me the willies, and Greg, knowing my particularities, won't put my laundry away for me. Remember what I said about loving laundry? I love it when it's put away. So I'm forced to get back into the laundry program. Drat! The Great Motivator, I'll call him.

Here's a fun laundry fact for the day: The number of linens that a tiny baby can soil in five hours is phenomenal.  It truly has to be experienced to be believed.  Between meal times, play times, bibs, socks, bath towels, sweaters, grocery cart covers, car seat covers, high chair covers, swimming lesson towels, blankets, crib sheets, crib mattress pads, changing table covers, hats, mittens, washcloths, and jammies, our girl can make a heap fast! What happens when they grow up and wear bigger clothes? What happens when you add more to your brood? My brain is liquefying just thinking about it. Let me say right now that I admire all mommies who have the wherewithal to manage the cloth diaper laundering scene.  We all have individual maternal strengths, and I'm not too proud to say that I have no business pretending like this is one that I could even barely manage. Thank God for disposables. One day, I'm sure I will have a landfill named after me, but this will be better than the alternative amount of crazy that I will avoid putting my family through.

Another tricky thing is that Piercy isn't the only one having outfit changes every day/few hours.  Being a mommy is proving to be a dirty business, and most days I end up covered in at least one of Piercy's meals.  Then there are workout clothes, around-the-house clothes suitable for cleaning or ...er... doing laundry, and decent clothes that I feel comfortable wearing in public (I'm done being caught on a regular basis totally slobbed out at the grocery store/library/bank/dry cleaners/post office/fabric store/Home Depot/etc. in this town where I've spent all of my 26 years). So there's that.

Folding, Folding, Folding

I know I'm not alone in my struggle against the evils of dirty, smelly clothes.  I can count on two hands the number of mommy friends I know who resolved to "stay on top of the laundry" for the New Year. Another girlfriend from college posted to Facebook last week that she'd just finished her fifth load of laundry for the day. Pop a top, raise your glass, and say it again, gals: You. Are. Not. Alone.

I'm completely sure that the more we share in the realities of life, the more honest we are about even these kinds of daily minutiae, the less we kick ourselves for falling short of living up to a completely unrealistic expectation for life.  The other day, Greg came home and told me that he was so proud of the way I'd kept up with the laundry lately.  I let him know that he just hadn't found my new hiding place for the dirties.

And speaking of great finds, I'll leave you with a parting thought brought to you by Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle:

Sweet Board Book from Auntie Seana

"I am a laundress." Well, You're Hired, Mrs. T-W!

Happy Laudering, my fellow Laundresses!

My Whole Heart

'Grant that she and I may find mercy and that we may grow old together.' And they both said, 'Amen, Amen.' 

The Book of Tobit, Chapter 8

You know when you realize how much you love someone?


And then you realize how much they love you?


I've noticed in a few short years that marriage offers many occasions for us to know and re-learn the beauty of love over and over and over and over again.  It also allows us the freedom to sometimes be reckless with our emotions, reactions, feelings, and words. Even when we're not at our best, I'm thankful that our commitment is bigger than the either part of the whole, especially when I'm feeling especially like the smaller piece who's dug herself into a hole.

My heart swells, feeling like it may burst, with love for my amazing husband and this incredible beauty we've created.  I am eternally grateful for the twisted roads we took to find each other, the grace I'm regularly shown, and the love my husband gives our daughter by loving her mother so completely.

Not every day is easy.  Many are hard. We hurt each other sometimes. A lot of times, though, we have days like last Friday that are wondrous, truly heavenly.

Sissies

Zilker Park Baby

Rapunzel

Daddy's twin

...ohm...

Guns and Roses

Every Girl Needs a Strawberry Bonnet, Even if it Doesn't Match

Life is good, friends.

Casa Browne Recorder Festival

Once upon a time I was in the third grade.

Third grade is enchanting.  I'm not sure what's changed these days, but back in my heyday, third grade was for cursive, multiplication tables, spending the night at Sea World San Antonio in the penguin house, and learning how to play an instrument.  For many of my classmates, this opportunity was their first at creating music with a formal instrument other than their voice, and for a little girl who had a love/hate relationship with playing the piano and piano lessons, this was my first opportunity to learn to play a woodwind instrument, a certainly thrilling moment for the ever-curious student I was.

There are a few beautiful things about the recorder. I think we all brought three dollars to school and came back with an instrument. I love the accessibility of an instrument that costs relatively little and provides a child with the opportunity to learn to read, play, and appreciate music. It also weighs hardly anything at all, which is a bonus when you're eight or nine years old and your trek to the bus stop is a grueling quarter of a mile (Go ahead, Mom, it was probably less than half of that).  Most kids had black and white school issued recorders. In typical (maybe?) overachieving-middle-child-syndrome fashion, I, on the other hand, owned an all-white recorder that I didn't know how to play, but was gifted after much pleading for an occasion I cannot remember, probably around the same time that my older brother was just cutting his teeth on his school issued recorder.

Poor Paddy.  My brother Paddy, two years my senior, put up with a lot from me as a kid. I very truly realized for the very first time only when I was in college and nannying for a family with similar birth order dynamics, that a four year old girl cannot expect to have the same skill set as a six year old boy in kindergarten. FYI: said four year old asked her parents to give her spelling tests anyway, and yes, they obliged.  This complete misinterpretation of my own abilities led to a long list of mostly funny examples of me trying to keep up with someone who was more advanced intellectually and physically than most kids his own age, never mind his pesky kid sister.

Now, there are certainly a few things that are, well, not so beautiful about the recorder. Namely, its shrill squeakiness amplified by an inexperienced musician's ability to read music. Multiply that by twenty kids in a class, and let's just all say a prayer right now for sweet Mrs. Erck, who had to listen to classes upon classes of recorder squealing kids every day.

Once each year there was (and, according to a little Google search, still is!) a district-wide "Recorder Festival" held at a big basketball gym in South Austin where students from all over the city got together to play a few songs they'd been polishing.  I don't think you were allowed to participate until fourth grade, but I remember showing up in my purple Hill Elementary School t-shirt with my hair curled (yes!) scanning the vast gym floor covered in folding chairs for a glimpse at my cousin Seana, who was in attendance, but from a different school.  I think we met for a hug, and then sat in our respective school sections.  We were so excited to play all of these songs we'd been perfecting at home with our families, who even loved us enough to sit through an hour of hundreds of school children squawking and squeaking the night away.

Seana and I still laugh at what transpired next.  Our conductor, a man whose stature in the music community I have no recollection (his regard was clearly esteemed if he was able to have landed this gig), spent the full hour leading us through a gut wrenching "may-sure"-by-"may-sure" rehearsal.  We were all  a little pretty disappointed that we hadn't been able to really show off our skillz to our poor parents.  It was comical, memorable, and a little sad.

All of this to tell you that we had our first recorder recital at the house today.  A present that Santa brought, and I sort of laughed at for seeming far too advanced for our little P.  Wrong again, Mom.

What a beautiful sound! Now I know why my parents didn't mind.