Laundry Day Musings

There are days that it really irritates me that I gave up smoking. Today is one of those days, though I don’t really know why. It’s not like anything is really wrong, or even changed that much since I packed up my life last July. I get up, I turn on my stereo, fix a cup of coffee and go about my daily duties as the resident maid. Today’s task was laundry. That’s always interesting, mostly because there is nothing like seeing a pair of the elephant butt jeans flapping in the sunshine to make you feel chipper dipper happy sappy dappy about yourself. This is of course on the tails of the worst swimsuit buying season EVER. I swear, it’s like the cosmos are conspiring to make an already humiliating task ten times as hard as it has to be. This year, besides size problems working against me, I also have a time limit, and distance malfunctions blocking the way, also, has anyone else noticed that... every swimsuit this season has a skirt and looks like something my Grandmother [bless her heart and rest her soul] would have worn?

I mean maybe I’m just testy about trying to look my actual age rather than a school teacher since someone asked my mother if I was her sister. I know that my mother does not look like she’s pushing 55, but she also does not look like she’s is anywhere near 22 either. I love her, with my whole heart, she is the reason I am living and breathing, but I cannot think of a single 22 year old daughter who wants someone thinking their 53 year old mother is their sister. No one wants that, also, I don’t know many 22 year olds that want their signature “look” to remind people of school teachers, unless they happen to be, you know, a school teacher.

To top it all off, Fred the Fat Roll [which is named such because I needed something to yell at while trying on pants one day] is adding to all this drama because he refuses to cooperate with the suit styles I like. I mean When I wear it I’m going to be around either my cute skinny friends with metabolisms like meth heads, or lounging by the pool while on vacation with my mother, her best friend, and two preteen boys [I will kill myself by the way the first time anyone asks if Con or Forester are mine]. I want to look as cute as humanly possible if I’m not going to get to be with my peers partying hardy and killing brain cells left and right, and it will be absolutely impossible to look cute in aforementioned Granny suits- with billowy ruffles and skirts that somehow make my thighs look bigger. Explain that one to me Style Divas.

Anyway, today I was bemoaning and huffing about all of this [the latest reject-o suit came last night priority mail] as I was hanging out the laundry [there is nothing quite like a freshly sun dried towel to make you think Spring is around the corner]. As I was standing there, with my elephant butt [which my mother later laughingly informed me was too flat to REALLY be called elephant butt] jeans, when it hit me how nice it would be if we had lifestyle washing machines. A big people sized machine you could just slip into anytime you started feeling the stains of life setting in on you. It would wash, dry, fluff, and fold you back into your true self when you lost sight of it. The only alteration needed to the cycle would be the discontinuance of sorting by color, as we should let our shared stains bleed together. It would also always be set on delicate, just because life is rough enough without going into overdrive on the spin cycle. And after all of that you’d come out fresh and pinky clean with a new outlook on life.

Some people argue getting your hair done and blowing money on a pair of shoes you don’t need can do the same thing for you. Generally I would agree but paying for school out of pocket has somehow managed to leave me afflicted with a terrible case of buyers remorse, laced with a side of practicality. Somehow buying a pair of sixty dollar pumps I will never really actually wear because they kill my feet, legs, and back just isn’t as satisfying as it used to be. If I had the Lifestyle washer I bet that would be one of the first stains it lifted.