DO YOU HEAR THAT? It is a splendid noise, like the first birds of spring, chirping their little hearts out or a gentle breeze of a new season playing the wind chimes that hang by my back door. It is me, doing TWO LESS PEOPLE'S LAUNDRY...of course, they don't really know what has hit them yet...meanwhile, I lie in wait.
Taking a page from Sun Tzu's Art of War, I have waged a silent war in this quiet house in little Canton, Missouri. The war is being fought in the name of all adults who painstakingly perform the task of...laundry. My rage, slightly less seething, has reached its plateau. While I have not so silently threatened the "laundry strike" before, today I am carrying out what countless others have dared to threaten before...I'm finished.
Of course I have threatened before, "Where was that stuffed? That's it, you are doing your own laundry from now on, maybe you will understand why my eyes are yellow and the vein is bulging in my neck!!!" All spoken on deaf ears, with a look of, yeah sure...she's a control freak and will never let it get to that. Well, that day has come my friends...and it has been a long one coming.
Laundry has ALWAYS been my nemesis. At times it has quieted my mind, given me a reason for being or just been another bullet point on my unwritten resume that I can fold a fitted sheet. In a house with four kids, the laundry is something that always has to be done, always collecting and something I'm always trying to get ahead of. It is a love hate relationship, laundry and I. While most women take a secret moment with something they really desire at a clothing store, cut to me at Home Depot where I want to whisper sweet nothings to a shiny new washer and dryer package. I know, I need to get out more.
I found myself, last week "Turning a Cell," so to speak. A tiny bit of fear strikes into the heart of my children when I get that look in my eye, knowing their room really needs cleaned. It's akin to a prison show, where the Warden decides the start "Turning Cells" to find any contraband. So, I decided that I needed to check up on the Talls' room to get some things picked up. It was there, as I was putting away their clothes, found jammed into every corner of their dressers, which I found a few articles that I had ironed. Really? I ironed this, for what? I ironed this, told them that I did, and told them to hang it up so the twenty minutes it took to do it wouldn't be wasted. Wow. That...well, that sucks! What the hell was I doing with my free time besides making sure they didn't look as if they had gotten dressed in a van down by the river? Then, besides a few choice swears that I muttered under my breath, I said three words. I. Am. Done.
So, like Sun Tzu, I have silently waged my war on laundry. What the Talls are blissfully unaware of is that I stopped doing their laundry. Done. Finished. I have done laundry, trust me when I really say it never stops...but not theirs. When I warned last evening about my strike, Oscar eluded to the notion that he thought that was some sort of child abuse, to which I almost spit out my coffee with laughter. This morning, Abe was looking for something in the dryer. I said, you're not going to find it there...He looked at me. After informing him that I no longer did their laundry, he looked at me. I told him that if he didn't want to be wearing his bathing suit to school by Wednesday, he had better collect the laundry and get to it.
The next battle will be the pissing match between the Talls of whose turn it is to launder their unmentionables...but that isn't my fight. My battle, forever ongoing, experienced a small victory today, flushed with the notion of a lesser load of laundry and a mom's most important aspect of warfare...sticking to her word.
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