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2002-02-03 - 6:48 a.m.

THE LAUNDRY FERRET

Periodically, I place folded laundry on each girl�s bed and on Mr. Philately�s side of our bed. �The Laundry Ferret�s been here!� someone will call out. I believe I was the Laundry Fairy at one time but with every folded load over the years I�ve become more beastly. Where I once was a laundry beauty, I�m now a laundry beast.

Of course, the truth is that I�m more akin to the Wicked Witch of the West than I am to Glinda the Good. Only the rose-colored glasses through which little girls view their mommies kept my daughters from figuring it out before but, in recent years, those rose lenses have been stripped from their eyes. Even without the rose lenses, they seem incapable of seeing a stain before it goes through the wash and is permanently set into the clothing but, hey, who knows what other distortions in their vision are responsible for that lack. At least we�re past the time when the Laundry Ferret is likely to spend time getting magenta crayon out of the dryer.

Once in a while, the Laundry Ferret gets an assist from Super-Husband. Super-Husband is my kind of super hero. Forget the leaping-tall-buildings-in-a-single-bound stuff. Lois Lane can have the super hero who does that. She�ll tire of him and come looking for Super-Husband soon enough. Super-Husband is remarkable for what he doesn�t leap. He doesn�t leap tall piles of laundry in any bound. He washes them. He dries them. And, wonderful creature that he is, he folds them.

I keep hoping that one of my daughters will discover her inner laundress. I thought for a time that Day-Hay had. After a house fire possibly started by a dryer or lint killed an entire family from our synagogue, she was driven to learn to do wash. She couldn�t even reach into the top of the washer then so I got her a stool. I painted the dials of the washer and the dryer with red nail polish marks at the settings I prefer if one is uncertain. She washed, she dried, and she occasionally folded. Then she became good at it and lost interest. I still call on her skills once in a while but I just don�t see the old enthusiasm.

As for Kat, well, she uses laundry requests as an opportunity to practice creative incompetence. Any child who can handle the academic challenges she handles ought to be able to remember that, if in doubt, she should use the settings with the nail polish dots. What nail polish? Where? Am I sure? Do I want all the laundry done? Am I sure? I�ve warned her that this summer she will master the laundry room but that�s this summer and I suspect she thinks she�ll be able to find a new scheme for denying her inner laundress by then. For now, she simply claims she lacks an inner laundress but I didn�t know I had one either at her age.

Well, alone or with Super-Husband by her side, the Laundry Ferret is visiting tonight�and woe be to the first child to dump the pile on her floor. That child will really see the beast come out.

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