Stick a Sock In It

I am listening to the soothing sounds of a washing machine running its cycle in triumph. I have installed the washer myself after my brother helped me to purchase the washer and dryer for the apartment. It’s a wondrous thing to not have to drag clothes to the laundromat. I am thankful for the luxury of being able to do laundry from within my home. But I am reminded of another day when I was doing laundry.

It was in NJ, in the basement of that house, and my mother was visiting. I was doing laundry, and she started a fight with me because I did not sort out the socks and underwear to wash them separately from each other.

I do laundry by colors, and because I have enough of them between the kids and me to make a load of their own, I only wash pants, towels, and sheets separately. I have had phases where I got really anal about the sorting and was breaking it down to garment type, but then I had kids, and all that garbage went out the window.

As if the fuss about the socks and undies wasn’t enough, her other beef was that I was washing body towels with the floor towels (you know the ones that hang on the side of the bathtub at hotels for standing on when one gets out of the bath). Apparently, that was also a trigger.

I don’t know what her malfunction was (or is, because this “sorting” issue remains to this day), but she literally said to me that I was a disappointment because I refused to cave into her demands that I wash the floor towels in a separate load by themselves, and not wash the socks in the same load as underwear. Seriously??

This is a classic example of why I don’t understand my mother and why I don’t tend to care two bits for the advice or opinions she chooses to dispense to me. I could think of several reasons why she could choose to be disappointed in me for real.

If I had the following vices, she would have reason to be disappointed:

1. chain-smoked cigarettes
2. drank to excess/alcoholic
3. did drugs
4. cooked drugs
5. neglected my children

Since I do none of those things, in my opinion, she doesn’t have much to be disappointed in me about.

Choosing to have a fit about how I chose to sort my laundry doesn’t seem like the argument from someone who has all the bats in her belfry. Some could argue that she should be glad I am doing laundry, I could be NOT doing laundry (that is a legitimate alternative).

So what the hell is the problem? It’s moments like this that I am glad I chose to move to the big state of Texas. In the end, my laundry is done, and this time without having to hear complaints about how I am getting it done. Just the swish-swish of the water and the tumble of the dryer.