Laundress

laundress- n. A woman employed to wash and iron clothes or linens.

Yep. Sounds about right except for the part about "employed." I'm not getting paid for it. I cannot believe how much extra laundry I have to do with two kids or how long it now takes. I could easily do a load a day. The other thing I don't get is how I came to be the one tasked with doing the kids' laundry.

BC (before children), Ned did his laundry and I did mine. This still amazes certain people we know; they can't believe we don't do our laundry together. The closest we ever come might be if one of us doesn't have a full load and we'll ask the other if they want to throw in some of their own "bonus whites" or "bonus colors" or whatever the case may be. This system worked for us.

AC (after children), Ned still does his own laundry and I still do mine plus I am responsible for the kids. As fellow mothers can attest, doing children's laundry is NOT like doing adult laundry. First, EVERYTHING has a stain on it so you have to pretreat and inspect pretty much every single item. And all the stains are gross and stubborn; traditional stain removers hardly work. Therefore, on the advice of my mom, I've started using Mean Green to treat stains. It's not a stain remover but I'll tell you what, it works a lot better than Shout.

So anyway, after you Mean Green just about everything, (and this takes a long time because kids' clothes are small), I add detergent, fabric softener, AND a scoop of OxyClean for extra stainfighting power. Wash, Dry, and then comes folding. Torturous folding. This takes FOREVER (again, small clothes). It takes even longer when Samantha insists on "helping" which basically means I have to refold everything she does and pick up the stacks I've already folded when she inevitably knocks them over "by accident."

I did two loads of laundry today.

Ned is still in Florida soaking up the sun and "working" on his training trip. So far, he has visited with the majority of his family, an old high school friend, and a former assistant coach. He chastises me when I don't feel sorry for him.

Speaking of "sorry," get a load of this. My dad came up today to inspect some work he had done on one of our rental properties we rent to VT students. He wanted to take care of this before they got back from their break. Anyway, when he went in the townhome, he noticed the idiots had the heat completely off. Temperatures here are dropping to the single digits or maybe even lower tonight and tomorrow. It's super duper cold. So Dad cuts on the heat so our pipes won't freeze or burst.

Who doesn't know that you can't cut your heat completely off in the middle of winter? Apparently college kids. Because of this, I give Ned a call in Florida to get him to ask the swimmers to whom we rent another townhome whether they also have cut their heat off. It's after 3pm or so. Ned doesn't pick up his cell phone so I leave a message. No phone call back. I leave to pick up the kids from school and we get home and unloaded at around 6pm. After we're inside and getting ready to eat, I notice I have a voice mail message. It's Ned and he left it at 5:49pm. He talked to the swimmers and they DID cut their heat off so I'll need to go out there and cut the heat on.

I'm furious. Why couldn't he pick up his cell phone when I called and get the answer so I could take care of this BEFORE I picked up the kids. When I ask him this, he tells me "he was at practice." [insert your own comment here. What comes to my mind is what if this was a medical emergency with the kids. I guess it better not happen between the hours of 3pm and 6pm]. Anyway, I load my sick baby and hungry 4-year old back into the car and we venture out into the brutally cold night air.

I get to the townhome and they did have the heat on. Place was messy but at least the heat was on.

Ned hasn't called back.

As for my "poor parenting" story of the day. The kids and I are laid back on my bed after baths and the TV is on. Bear and I read a couple of books and, when Friends ends on TBS, some animated show called Family Guy comes on. Bear wants to leave it on and watch. I figure it can't be that bad, it's a cartoon and on TBS. WRONG! Think South Park. Fairly early into the episode (I did insist we cut it off once I got that it was inappropriate for kids), there is this scene where a man (the apparent patriarch), another man, a dog, and a baby who can talk are all sitting around. They all drink ipecac and have a contest to see who will throw up last. I've never seen Bear laugh so hard. She and I laughed so hard and so loud for about ten minutes (long after the scene was over). Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRn5-LQCg2s

I'm ashamed that I laughed so hard because it is basic gutter humor. Apparently, I have no class.

Sorry about the overuse of ALLCAPS. I'm fairly animated tonight.

Love,
Allie