Spinning Round

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! The balance has shifted in the load of towels, bedsheets, and denim, and the machine wobbles slightly under the strain. It's hardly a reassuring sound, but I've learned to ignore it as long as the knocking doesn't reach a fever pitch. The sound gradually decrescendos to a comfortable, even whirr.

In less than a week I'll be heading out on the road (or, perhaps more aptly, on the plane), and tonight is the last night I'll have to completely to myself before that trip. What better way to spend it than doing laundry? In go crimson sheets and towels to restock the guest room for my family's arrival tomorrow, and I make sure to include the brand new pair of black jeans I've bought for my travels. With any luck, this will be the last load of laundry I'll do before I leave. But who am I kidding? I can already see another one, this time a pile of dingy whites, forming in my near future.

The time comes to move on to the second step in laundry care: the dryer. Pulling out sodden balls of terrycloth and dripping cotton, I'm a little wary. Isn't the washer supposed to wring out the excess water? An armful of only a couple of towels feels crushingly heavy, but I transfer them to the dryer anyway. I have the Rick Steves' DVD cued up for Granada and Morocco, not to mention a mug of hot tea calling my name.

But when the final scenes of Tangier fade from the screen, I find the laundry room suspiciously silent. Our dryer is not all powerful, and stubbornly refuses to put any more effort into the Herculean task of drying such a soppy mess. Back in the washer they go, while I utilize all my brainpower to trying to determine where precisely to set the washer dial to achieve maximum spin with minimal time and no more water. After an initial rush of water comes streaming in (I said spin, not rinse!), I realize that five minutes is all it takes to wring out the excess, and the dryer now hums happily with a more manageable load.

It makes me wonder, how many times do we cut corners only to find ourselves right back where we started, losing any time we thought we'd saved and more? How long does it take to learn such a simple lesson? Frankly, I'm too tired for such thoughts at the moment. Any life lessons found in a load of laundry will have to wait until tomorrow morning, along with the freshly cleaned sheets.

Closet Thanks

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and now we are already looking towards Christmas. But go back a few days to the Thanksgiving holiday itself, and you will find Michael and I surrounded by Rubbermaid tubs, stacks of paper, and an assortment of odds and ends in the living room. For us, Thanksgiving turned into a day to organize. More specifically, we were organizing a lifetime of Michael's memorabilia.

The project began last weekend when, upon realizing I had an entire Saturday free up until 6pm or so, I decided to ignore my first instinct ("I should make plans with friends!") and follow my second ("I should use this windfall of time to get things done around the house!"). I pulled out drawers and bins, compiling socks without mates (there were more of those than the ones with mates, I fear), thinning out the rag collection, which was growing to Blob-like proportions, and filling the recycling bin with the empty cardboard boxes I have inexplicably held on to for more than nine years ("But they were nice boxes!"). A large portion of what remained to be sorted were bin after bin of Michael's stuff - the stuff that parents like to hoard and then pass on to you when they see that you finally have a house of your own. Then, instead of taking up precious space in their home, it can eat up room in yours.

I had this same experience with my childhood remnants, and last year managed to pare them down to one small filing box of mementos to save, one smaller box of items to pass on if I ever have a daughter, and one not-so-small dollhouse that my father made me for Christmas as a child. It's not easy, but I can honestly say that I do not miss a single thing I threw out. In fact, I can't remember what it was that I threw out. Well, with the exception of the German beer coasters from college. And I have to admit a small part of me does kind of miss those.

But with this experienceunder my belt, I girded myself to help Michael through this arduous process on Thanksgiving day. And in the end, Michael had to admit it felt pretty good. He, too, has pared down to a small filing box, along with one smallish Rubbermaid tub for items that won't fit in a file box. Our living room is back to normal, and not only that, but several of our closets are noticeably neater and emptier. Our bedroom is the cleanest it has been in years.

And for that, I give thanks.

Company's Comin'!

Life is full of surprises. Wednesday night I was surprised by a call from one of my cousins who lives in Oregon (no, that part's not surprising - almost all of my 22 cousins live in Oregon, and yes, you heard that right, I did say 22). It turns out he was in the area for work related reasons and hoping to stay over one night since an he found out that day he had an unexpected appointment in Oak Harbor the next morning.

Of course, we said he was welcome to come over. That's what a guest bedroom's for, right?

I do like having house guests.

Soon we will have a more permanent kind of house guest in residence. Amy V is moving in - tomorrow! While we did have two brothers living with us for the first two and a half years in our house, Amy is the first renter since then who will be staying for more than a couple of months. Overall, I would say I'm pretty excited. This, too, is one of the reasons for the flurry of housecleaning this past month; we had to get the place organized and clean out the downstairs bedroom, bathroom, and hall closet.

There are still a few tasks to be done, such as washing the window of the Amy's future bedroom to remove the lovely muddy dog prints Lucy left behind when we kept her in the back yard. I don't think Amy would appreciate Lucy's artistic vision in this case, which is OK - I think Lucy's take on Dog Prints on Glass is probably ahead of its time. But Lucy loves a new housemate, so I think she'll forgive Amy's lack of a critical eye.

Monsters Among Us

A monster lives in our closet. For most of the week he sleeps silently, but when he wakes no one in the house can escape his roar. Far from hiding his presence, he glides through the house trumpeting his arrival, his long snout constantly sniffing the floor.

This, no doubt, is how our dog views the vacuum cleaner, or Vacuumonster, a name she would doubtless find fitting. When Lucy was first introduced to the Vacuumonster it was, to say the least, a traumatic experience. We quickly learned, after her initial shock resulted in wetting the carpet, that Lucy needed some time to adjust to the Vacuumonster's presence, so for many months she stayed in the yard whenever he came out to play.

Thankfully Lucy has learned that the Vacuumonster is mostly harmless. Only mostly, though, as she would rather not be within ten feet of the thing. Lately I've had the idea that if we could ween her of her fear completely, we might be able to encourage a symbiotic relationship between our two resident beasts. The Vacuumonster could use his brush attachment to remove Lucy's loose fur, keeping Lucy clean and Vacuumonster gainfully employed. The way it is he already spends most of his time sucking Lucy's loose fur off the floor, anyway. This would just cut out the middle man. I realize this may sound weird, but I had an organ teacher in high school who vacuumed his cats, and they seemed completely unfazed.

Today I decided to try to introduce Lucy to this idea, albeit gently. With the Vacuumonster turned off, I called her to the front landing and, holding onto the scruff of her neck with one hand, softly moved the brush over her back. To her credit, Lucy did not run away in terror, although I did recognize a look of frozen fear in her eyes. "IT'S TOUCHING ME," the look look said. "OK, don't panic, but - OHNONONOIT'STOUCHINGME. Must. Slink. Away. Now!"

I tried to reassure her that the Vacuumonster was friendly by pretending to vacuum my own leg. Lucy cast one glance behind her as she slunk down the stairs, a look that clearly implied that her mistress was INSANE, and she should therefore get to the safety of her sofa as soon as possible.

I suppose I should just be thankful that we don't have to banish Lucy from the house every time we vacuum now. This is, after all, the dog who cowered in abject terror under a chair the first time she encountered the oscillating ceiling fan. The world of the modern house dog is apparently full of dangers we humans blissfully ignore. I'm sure Lucy is just waiting for that time when the Vacuumonster will give in to its true nature and actually suck one of us up along with the dog hair and dust mites.

"See?" Lucy will say with her eyes. "I KNEW it couldn't be trusted! You should have let me lick the floors clean instead."

Summer in Seattle

It's days like these that make it feel good to be alive. After a summer of weather ups and downs, September is really outdoing itself around here. The weather today is perfectly sunny with amazingly blue skies. I took Lucy on one of my favorite weekend walks around the neighborhood. It's a favorite because of the gorgeous views of Lake Washington when we turn to head down 145th Street, followed by a walk along a quiet road with big leaf maples towering overhead. The sun was so brilliant today that I had to stop and stare at Lake Washington as it sparkled in the sun, and again to look up at the sun dappled maple leaves overhead.

And then what did I do? I cleaned house. Hopelessly boring, I know, but the thing is I only ever have the motivation to do that sort of thing when I have free days at home with nothing planned. In the evenings I may cook dinner and clean up the dishes afterwards, but I never have the desire to do laundry or sort through unorganized closets or wipe down the bathrooms.

Today, I am most proud of my accomplishment of organizing the medicine cabinet. This is actually the first time this has ever been done, so it's really nothing short of astounding. I actually know where to find all the cough drops and don't have to pry loose pill packets from sticky mystery goo to get to anything. Amazing!

I must also mourn the loss of all the beer coasters I had collected in Germany during my semester abroad in college. It was finally time to admit that they really don't do anything other than sit forgotten in a box, but now they have the opportunity to make themselves useful and be recycled, possibly into new beer coasters for some other college student to collect. Ah, memories! I don't mean to sacrifice nostalgia for the sake of an orderly home, but my memories will always be with me (until I'm old and senile, that is), with or without the coasters. The house, meanwhile, I have to live in every day, so a clean(er) home wins this time.