Two weeks with no laundry

...well not really. I did wash the family's clothes last weekend, and this weekend, too, but have been too down to discuss. This weekend I can see a target date ahead, the perimenopausal rollercoaster will stop in a few days and let me off for some cotton candy. Blech -- maybe I'd rather have one of those really lucky days at the shooting gallery where you walk away with a big yellow smiley face pillow. Anyway -- So, yesterday, 3 loads, today 3 loads, including the post-Sunday afternoon sheets -- somethings can still surprise me in this mood. No, not the sheets, the towels. It won't do to have the post-glow confusing one type of linen with another. No lying.

The other blog, Tangled Swans, got its first comment two weeks ago, too; I had been trolling for poet/moms and found a few/posted a bit/was commented upon. I think that scared me off for a while. Glad I've got the laundry going here in the background where nobody knows the trouble I've seen. Just us little ol' housewives here hiding behind the hot sudsy tubs. Also, class has started, and that takes up my extra writing time:

SPEAK LOW Kurt Weill / Ogden Nash

Speak low when you speak, love
Our summer day withers away too soon, too soon
Speak low when you speak, love
Our moment is swift, like ships adrift, we're swept apart, too soon
Speak low, darling, speak low
Love is a spark, lost in the dark too soon, too soon
I feel wherever I go that tomorrow is near, tomorrow is here and always too soon
Time is so old and love so brief
Love is pure gold and time a thief
We're late, darling, we're late
The curtain descends, ev'rything ends too soon, too soon
I wait, darling, I wait
Will you speak low to me, speak love to me and soon

Nash was the lyricist for the Broadway musical One Touch of Venus, collaborating with librettist S. J. Perelman and composer Kurt Weill. The show included the notable song "Speak Low (When You Speak Love)." Performed by Kenny Baker/Martin, Billie Holiday and Andy Bey (on whose record, American Song, I first heard this one).

Three Day Weekend Blahs

It was a great day Saturday, a great day Sunday, and today was the pittso. All told I think I put 7 loads behind me this weekend. Tshirts still hanging in a colorful cluster from hangers in the bathroom, and Stella's red bra and Jackson's socks on the rack in the dining room. Upstairs I trimmed and watered all the orchids, philodendrons, cactus, messy messy and not really laundry, but neglected.

And my socks are lined up on their own rack, looking out the window, down into the back yard, where the squirrel ran along the phone lines and the sun set behind expensive hills. Stella's homework took all day. I raked the leaves finally. It's a boring life, when it's all about laundry and houseplants. We wrote 5 poems for her homework -- she wrote hers and I wrote mine. I want to talk about the books I'm reading, but I think that belongs on the other site and I'm tired. Why are my kids yelling downstairs? I don't have a photo of Stella's red bra, but somewhere I have one of her in her red pajamas.

Three Day Weekend

I wonder who did Martin Luther King's laundry? The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. does not sound like the name of a guy who did his own.

Sick and Laundry

Home sick from work today -- that headache you're sure will fill your whole body -- and after much sleeping, tea drinking, reading with my eyes shut, some music, a tiny walk in the blistering wind, very cold in Cupertino today, I did one load of laundry. Towels. Sky blue, taupe, white and fluffy, washcloths that have circled our faces and lain on the floor, and the raggedy green pot holder from the last post. Hot water. Only one load. It's a headache, I didn't work, but I'm not dying.

I did not hang any laundry out today and nowhere in my yard is there such a nice tree for a line, but this is a very good photo.

January is a dry dirty month

January is not my favorite. Even though yesterday, at a garden party in Belvedere (not our usual stomping ground, but as they say, don't buy drugs but always accept them) I saw my first acacia and tulip magnolia of the season, blooming earlier on the mild bay than in contemptuous Cupertino, it's still a dreary smudgy dusty not-enough-sky in your eye month.

This weekend saw the stains (wine? chocolate? it was a birthday party, for Pete's sake) come out of the red tablecloth at long last. Hot water and Oxyclean. A very yucko load of towels covered in wine stains, garage floor debris , leaves and broken glass (that was a spectacular feature fim, "Wine Bottle Meets Cement Floor"). The regular cold colored (2), hot socks and tshirts (2), cold pale (I can't really call it white, cream, beige, gray, yellowed, peach, undie colored). Stella's sheets are still in a pile on the garage floor, red, purple, gold, orange. There is one green pot holder on the top of that pile. That redeems it all somehow -- a bad weekend, in spite of the champagne in Belvedere, my sister/brother in laws, a successful Patriot's football game, and sleeping in Sunday morning.

January blows cold, clear, and dusty. Too soon for green and blossoms, never too soon for a bad day at the office and itchy hair. I'm not convincing myself. Are you? Begin descent, watch. Watch.

Clean in January

Laundry in the New Year started on Monday, New Year's Day, when Stella came with her new birthday shirt and stated she needed it clean to wear on the first day back to school. The tyranny of the new. So, at 5 pm, I started. 1 load cold colors (the Santa toilet set cover, poinsettia place mats, other Xmas linen). 1 load hot towels plus bleach. I don't use chlorine bleach except for towels, sheets (sometimes, the dreaded peri-menopausal sheets), Jackson's socks, monthly undies. I guess that's a lot of bleach. Ah. Well. 1 more load cold light, including the important new shirt. Thanks Patti for the new shirt for Stella, the beautiful new shirt. 1 more load hot whites, and into the dryer and into bed.

Today, January 2nd, the white load into the dryer. Mom did two of her own loads while I was at work. They bring their dirty laundry from their hotel in a rolling carry-on suitcase, carrying dirty clothes this time, not the computer and books and small zipper cases of pills and jewelry. Clothes that I never saw, as they were clean, dry, folded and tight back into their little suitcase by the time I got home from work. I did 1 more load warm colors, that would be Jackson's boxers, all the tie-dye tshirts and my old worn worn soft as silk jeans. So, grand total for the weekend that was really a Monday and Tuesday, to begin the New Year in the laundry of life, 5 loads. Not too bad. No sheets. Plus Mom's 2 makes 7. I'm taking credit.

Tomorrow Mom will make a cake.