July 10, 2005
Laundry
Dave doesn't like it when I do laundry, but on nights like tonight—when he's otherwise indisposed and there are clothes in the washer—he's been known to grudgingly let me do it.
But he won't ask.
He stands in the dining room and sighs. "I wish I could do X, but there are clohtes in the washer..."
And I say, "I'll do it."
And he laughs the laugh that means, As if.
And I say, "No, really. I'll do it."
And he takes a long, calculating look at both the washer and the front door and says, "Okay, but I'm going to set the timer and when it goes off, you have to move the clothes from the washer from the dryer and fold the stuff in the dryer."
And I roll my eyes and say, "Duh. I know how to do laundry."
And again he laughs the laugh that means, As if.
And I always thought he was right, because my laundry always comes out wrinkled and I end up at work with a fabric softener sheet poking out of my sock. But tonight I realized that the root cause of my laundry-doing strife is that there is a fundamental difference between Dave and my laundry-doing goals.
His goal is to get clean, unwrinkled clothes into our closets.
My goal is to touch each laundry item for as short a time period as is temporally possible. Nine seconds is about my limit. After nine seconds I start to get a feeling like I'm chewing on a wool sock and I get a twitch on the left corner of my mouth. I've been known to throw a perfectly-clean-but-unfolded item of clothing back into the dirtry hamper so that someone else can clean, dry and fold it and I don't have to touch it anymore.
Not that I did that tonight.