Laundry

Today was a big laundry day. I despise doing laundry with every cell in my body. My husband isn't much better. His laundry method is to throw all the clothes in the washer, switch them to the dryer, and then set them on the couch for days on end, or until the wrinkles become permanent fixtures in the fabric - whichever comes first.

I had, I kid you not, about nine daunting loads to do today. Greg took Gwen to daycare so I could accomplish this task without the constant 'help' of little hands overturning neatly folded baskets of freshly laundered clothes, leaving me home with just Garrison. And his colic hasn't improved much.

Still, he naps a lot, and in the first couple hours of the day I cleaned a bathroom, changed the sheets in two rooms, finished four of the laundry loads and reorganized my linen closet. After these amazing accomplishments, Garrison decided to start the day, and from then on it was quick 30 minute bursts of activity followed by soothing, nursing, changing and rocking while listening to a cacophony of ear-piercing shrieks (I like to pretend we're in a constant state of Opposite Day and they're really enthusiastic THANK YOU!!!!s. Usually this doesn't work at all to improve my mood)

So by the time hubby came home, I had done all of the above PLUS learned how to effectively fold fitted sheets (thanks Grandma!) completed 3 more loads (including putting away all the clothes I had folded) and only had a load and a half left. But, Garrison had reached critical mass, my grandparents had shown up for dinner, and I had to leave the last bits of clothes on the bed to be folded later on that evening.

Later on, I had just finished bathing Garrison, put him down to bed, and was grabbing a quick drink of water before tackling our daughter's bedtime ritual when Mr. Immagetyoufurious goes upstairs.

"What did you think of the linen closet?" I called up to him happily, expecting a few nice compliments.

"Ehhh. What's with all the towels on the floor?"

"Huh? Oh, I'm bringing those downstairs - they're the kitchen towels"

"Oh...." *moving on to other important things*

Not quite the response I was looking for...but whatever. I had the last load drying and was getting ready to bring it upstairs.

Greg went to his energy meter (It's a monitor of how many kilowatts we're using at any given moment - another post for another time) and looks at our current energy load.

"Leave it to you!" He exclaims "Hottest day of the year and you're running the AC AND the dryer. Have you SEEN how much energy we're consuming right now?!"

I'm fairly certain Greg meant this as a casual point of conversation. I also think he was genuinely interested in how much energy we were using and didn't quite mean it to sound the way it did. However, he followed it up with a fatal:

"So...I was really hoping to go to bed soon. Should we start putting those clothes away?" With a clear "You did nothing you said you'd do today and I view you as a complete failure in life" tone of voice.

There are moments (admittedly a lot more lately than there used to be) when that whole 'Loving Wife' plan goes completely to pieces. It's about the same time that I turn into a scary, fire-breathing dragon and am capable of roasting people to crisp marshmallows with a torrent of well-placed verbiage.

The good news is that I can really channel that energy and fold clothes at like, quadruple time, AND clean the kitchen AND move the towels AND write a blog.

...If I were angry a lot more I imagine that my house would be a lot cleaner...

The bad news is I eventually have to apologize for the epic ass-chewing.

Blogging about it was a bit easier at the moment.