Tag Archives: laundry

Happy Valentine’s Day from the clogged lint screen

My wife thinks I’m not as romantic as I used to be.

To this, I agree.

Also, our 15-year-old clothes dryer doesn’t dry clothes as fast as it used to.

Maybe we are both clogged with lint. Or maybe our heating elements are burning out.

After 19 Valentine’s Days, 19 of her birthdays, 19 Christmases, 16 wedding anniversaries, and 15 Mothers’ Days, it can become challenging to come up with fresh bursts of romance. 

Lately, it has taken lots of time and effort to keep that old dryer limping along. It’s had its triumphs and failures. It makes more noise now than it should. So do I.

We both wore out our belts.

Cards have sure changed since my youthful days of flaming romance.

I prepared to buy a new dryer, but my wife said no. She said these new computerized dryers have too many sophisticated parts that could break down and be expensive to fix.

Sure, they look flashy and seem full of promises, but they would most likely be unreliable.

She would rather stick with the dryer she understands—the one she knows where to kick when it acts up.

The one I can keep running, imperfectly, but consistently.

She gets annoyed at the old dryer’s many flaws, but she knows eventually the clothes will come out warm and dry, and comfortable.

We both get annoyed, but we are the only two who know all the old jokes, and understand why they are still funny. We couldn’t laugh so hard at anything else.

Even after all these years of hit or miss holidays, my wife is still a very attractive woman. I have little doubt she could have much more than a new dryer if she wished.

But I have even less doubt that she cherishes warm and comfortable things that she knows exactly where to kick.

I may have slowed down, but I never moved the target.

There must be something romantic in that.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all the young lovers, young and old alike.

Daddy’s just a big faker

Daddies aren’t supposed to get sick. That must be a rule among little kids because they never believe that Daddy feels like crap and needs to be left alone for a while.

It’s funny how little respect my five-year-old has for my illnesses considering how much attention he demands on his own sick days. When he’s sick, the house is his palace and the other people who live there are his servants. Before the sundry whims which may require action from Mommy and Daddy, there are certain base-line needs that should be met without him having to ask. He needs the entire couch commandeered for his reclining wants, and the TV tuned to cartoons for the duration of his infirmity. Beyond this, he needs a ready attendant to keep the blanket covering his feet should it slip when he changes position. And juice. There must always be juice at hand.

Dangerously exposed feet of an ailing boy

“Um, does somebody want to get on this?”

When I am sick, I mostly need the people in my house to leave me alone. I can get my own juice and fluff my own pillows; I just don’t want people climbing all over me or demanding that I supply juice to maintain them in the pink of health. I want to be left to myself. Apparently, this is a burdensome request.

If I am home from work when my son gets home from school, it likely means I’m ill. To him, it means play time starts early. He greets me with his favorite question, “Daddy, what can we play?” When I tell him I’m too sick to play, it’s a disappointment to him. But he’s a resilient lad, and he sloughs off the disappointment with everything else I’ve told him, so that within five minutes, he sees the world fresh and asks with renewed enthusiasm, “Daddy, what can we play?”

He is not the only one who easily forgets why I am at home at this unusual time. My wife does not think I make a very good patient either. She says I don’t complain enough when I’m sick; therefore I appear to be little more than a slacker playing hooky from work. If I moaned and groaned a bit more, she would perhaps be reminded that I do not need to be whipped up out my laziness with a steady course of housework.

Keep your snot at home

Besides, your family has chores for you to do. (Image: Ontario Medical Association)

There is always laundry to be done, and since I am neither comatose nor moaning, as a truly ill person would be, I might as well use this down time to lend a hand to operational needs of the household. She has this look she gives when the dryer finishes its cycle that says, “If you didn’t want to work today, you should have gone into the office.”

Stay home, do laundry

“Are you guys home sick from work too?”

I was taught to suffer quietly, so I can only blame my parents. If they had raised a squeakier wheel, maybe that wheel could get a sufficient break from playing games and folding towels to get a little rest when it was sick.