Lifestyles of the Lees

Have you ever had a day where your spouse comes home and asks "How was your day Honey?" and you simply reply with a statement or list of things that went wrong, never really answering the question with a good or bad?

Yesterday was one of those days.

To preface my story of my bad day, I should tell you that I've washed a lot of things in my life. By this I mean washed by mistake. Ya know, the things that sneak into the washer and you don't find them until you are moving clothes in the the dryer or even after they get dried. I know people frequently wash change, but my list goes way beyond that. I mean, who can say they've washed a roll of electrical tape? (...any Lineman's wife probably) I've washed pens, paper, crayons (a red one, which actually made it into the dryer and ruined all the clothes dried with it), money, rocks (another staple wash item for a Lineman's wife), dirt, and many other interesting things.

But today I just threw all rules out the window and washed something I hope never to wash again.

I'm usually really good about sorting through Boo's clothes before I wash them because I stain treat most of her shirts to get the spots off them. But somehow this nasty little item snuck by me and jumped in the washer.

It was an unusually full load of clothes. I had needed to do laundry for a couple days, but just kept putting off. To this end, I take full responsibility. My confession, I hate laundry. I like clean clothes, I just hate getting them there. It's not so much the washing and drying as it is the folding and putting away. I can wash all day long, but usually those loads I do sit in baskets for a couples days before they are returned, folded, to their rightful home. Bo hates this.

When we lived in the apartment in the valley we lived in for a month we had one of those stackable washer/dryers and that was the greatest! Granted we didn't have a child, so we had less laundry, but they did smaller loads, faster, so I could quickly fold and put away a load of laundry. Those were the days... But it's just not feasible to have a small washer now.

So I filled the washer with clothes, stain treated the shirts that had stains, started the water, added soap and closed the lid, thinking nothing of the future. The wash cycle on our washer takes probably 45 minutes, in that time, I usually find something else to do, and generally forget about the laundry. As I finished up my other projects, I noticed that it's quiet, which signifies that the laundry is washed and ready to be switched into the dryer. I go into the laundry room, and like a robot, start to move clothes handful by handful into the dryer.

Wait. Somethings wrong.

These clothes felt funny. Not thinking to investigate, I keep throwing clothes in. After 3 or 4 handfuls, I pull it out. It!

Never before in my life have I washed a pull-up. Nor a diaper. Mostly not the diapers because I was in charge of making sure they found their way into the garbage. But since I have such a helpful helper, she usually takes care of taking her pull-ups to the garbage, wet or dry.

This is the point where I would usually get mad, and yell, and just be mad until Bo usually calms me down. Crap. He's at work. So, take a deep breath and deal with it, I tell myself. First clean the clothes out of the dryer and all the mess that was on them. Do you know what happens when you wash a pull-up or diaper? It does it's job of sucking up water. Then, it gets too full and moves on to disintegrating. The pull-up for the most part was still intact, but the insides that soak up wetness, turn into a gel-like substance and the break into little jelly pieces. And then! They stick to things.

So now I have an unusually full load of clothes that are covered in gel pieces. Really, I wasn't too mad, because I mean, who was I going to be mad at. I should've seen the pull-up, but Boo put it in the dirty clothes, but I was the only person to take them from the dirty clothes to the washer so really, I'm only to blame. I get all the clothes out of the dryer and shake them off which makes the little jelly pieces go all over my floor, and think "okay, I need to shake these off, it's going to be a huge mess, where do I do it?" I filled a basket with the clothes and stepped outside onto our carport and started the long process.

Until this time, Boo hadn't noticed me. But she has sonar hearing for the sound of the door and came running to investigate. With a confused look on her face she asks "what are you doing out there mom?"
Me: "I'm trying to clean these clothes."
Her: "well,... well,... your feet are going to get cold out there."
Me: "Yeah, I know. Thanks."
Her: "Mom, you should really shut the door, it's cold out there. I'm cold. Burr."
Me: "Well, go inside to the living room and stay warm."
Her: "Okay."

She visited me a couple more times while I took each piece of her clothes out and shook them off. I told her what I was shaking off and that she needed to be more careful, and be sure to put her pull-ups in the trash and not in her dirty clothes. To which, she agreed.

I had a lot of time to think while shaking. After about 15 minutes, it occurred to me, I didn't know if the pull-up was dry or wet when it went into the dirty clothes basket. So I was going to now have to wash the clothes again. Crap. Then, it occurred to me, I now have to clean out both the washer and dryer before I can do anything. I finished the clothes, which left my back and legs sore and went inside to see the damage left in the washer. For one pull-up, there was a lot of mess. I took wipes to it, to try and get as much of the mess out, and then tried to rinse the washer as best I could.

I have a handy husband. He gets it from his dad. He can fix just about anything. I love that about him. But, because of this fact, if I break something, he's less likely to want to fix it. And when it's something as big and expensive as the washer, he's even more mad. Sometimes, I think I broke something, when really I didn't and it's easy to fix, I worry he'll be mad, and he just laughs at my ignorance and fixes it. So, I can never tell if it's going to be a mad fix, or a laughing fix.

I didn't want to leave any gel pieces in the washer because I didn't know the damage they would do. So I searched the washer from top to bottom looking for stray pieces. The real problem was that the little gel pieces were clear and very hard to see. When I was convinced I'd gotten them all I re-rinsed the washer and then started the batch of clothes again. As I was just about to add the clothes, Boo runs in and says "Mom, I had an accident." Are you serious. Crap.
Me: "Where?!"
Her: "On the bathroom floor."
Me: "Why didn't you just go in the toilet!"
Her: "Cause I had an accident."

Of course, makes perfect sense.

Then she says she wants to help me put clothes in the washer. Are you kidding! No. "You are going to go clean up your accident." And who do you think ended up cleaning it up? It wasn't her, that's for sure!

Have you seen Blue Collar Comedy Tour? There's a part in it where Bill Engvall is talking about the difference between a newlywed couple and a couple that has been married for 20 years (in our case, just 6). Click here to watch it (Skip ahead to 3:45). Anyway, he says that when a newlywed husband comes home from work, his wife greets him with dinner and says "how was your day honey? Tell me all about it." and rubs his feet. But in a couple that's been married longer, the guy comes home from work and says "Phew! What a day at work!" to which the wife replies "YOU WANNA HEAR WHAT WENT ON AT THIS HOUSE TODAY!!... WHILE YOU WERE AT YOUR 'JOB'!!!" ...I have those days often.

Then to top it all off, Boo threw up at the table at dinner. And there goes my appetite.

So when Bo got home and asked "So, how was your day?" It was answered by "I washed a pull-up in the washer and your daughter peed on the floor. How was yours?".