The Basket of Laundry

This is the story of folding one basket of laundry. Almost.

It's four o'clock on a typical weekday. Homework is done, naps have been taken and snacks have been eaten. I have forty-five minutes before I need to start dinner. A time frame within which I am determined to fold some laundry since every morning this week I have had to make a mad dash to the laundry room to find, socks, underwear, a favorite shirt, you name it. Whatever article of clothing my husband or children need it is in the pile of clean laundry that looks like it's being vomited up by the dryer and I am tired of having to paw my way through fully half of our wardrobe to find matching socks cursing like a longshoreman as I do so. In order to buy myself the peace I need to accomplish such a small task I need to plan like Eisenhower on D-Day. I have pulled out all of our Polly Pocket gear - the cars, the cruise ship, the jet (Polly is quite the nomad) - and set up a wonderland of imaginative play for my girls in their room so that I can fold and put away a single basket of laundry. A simple task, no? No. Read on.

After I cram as much laundry as I can into the basket, creating a festival of wrinkledness, I carry it up from the basement. I drag the Exersaucer into the living room, plop the baby in it, strategically placing his favorite chew toys around him, sit next to him on the floor and get to work. I have not folded two T-shirts when my youngest comes into the room, "Can you put on Ariel's dress?" Again, these damn rubber clothes! I put on the dress, she toddles off, and I'm back to work. Now my oldest comes out? "Can I have a drink of water?" Sure. I get up, get a cup out of the cabinet and am immediately met with a request for a different cup which is, of course, dirty and in the dishwasher. After negotiating for five minutes my daughter is hydrated and I am back on the floor folding.

Then I hear the dog whining. Try as I might to ignore it, it becomes louder and more insistent in its tone. This means he has to pee. I get up to let him out and in the process kick over his water bowl. I clean that up and return to the living room floor. Two pairs of boxers later I hear shrieks emanating from the girls' room. "It's MINE!" "I had it first!" Aaah. Sweet, sweet music. I walk into the room and immediately confiscate the offending toy, as is our policy when the girls can not resolve a dispute on their own. Bill Cosby put it best, "I am not interested in justice, I just want quiet." I redirect them to one of the other ten billion Polly's they have and leave.

At this point, I have used up all of my good karma with the baby and he begins to fuss. He has ejected all of his toys on to the floor and is no longer loving sucking on his hand. I realize, guiltily, that he has not spent much time on his stomach today and fearing that he will never roll over and, therefore, not go to college, I put him on his tummy under his play gym to gaze at his gummy little mug in the attached mirror. At this point the dog is barking to be let back in so I return to the kitchen to oblige. Upon my return, the baby is no longer happy being beached on his giant belly, limbs akimbo, and begins to scream. Despite my best efforts at redirecting his attention to the mirror and various other toys, I flip him onto his back further contributing to the odds that he'll wind up with a flat head and need a corrective helmet. Recommence with the folding.

The girls are now no longer playing Polly Pockets. I can tell by the bossy calls of my oldest, "It's YOUR turn! SPIN!", to her less-than-focused younger sister, that she has conned my middle one into playing a board game of some sort - not her strongest suit*. She tends to forget she is playing and leaves my oldest to play both sides herself. "Moooom! She won't PLAY!" requires me to go in to the room, and try to reengage my younger daughter at least long enough to finish one game of the never-ending morality play Chutes and Ladders. Who created this game with its sick set of ethics? Personally, I don't think the girl who eats all the cookies should go down a chute (let's create food issues as soon as we can!) and the kid who helps the cat in the tree? It got itself up there it can get itself down. Let's learn early that cats are the devil, shall we? Anyway, the game ends and I return to the laundry as they decide to play Legos.

As I hear the giant bin of Legos being dumped on to the bedroom floor, the baby begins to fuss because he is hungry and the dog is in the kitchen whining for water in his now-empty bowl. I glance at the clock. 4:43. What has all of this gotten me? Exactly two under-shirts, three pairs of boxers and five towels folded on the living room floor and a bedroom floor covered in minute toy pieces. As I go down the hall to tell the girls to clean up their toys in preparation for dinner they run past me into the living room and trying to "help" knock over my small pile of victory. I can only sigh and gather up my wasted efforts and vow to try again tomorrow, for after all, tomorrow is another day.

* Post- publish note: After reading my sister's comment below I was reminded of my own childhood experiences playing board games with a younger sister. The incident she obliquely refers to is a game of Scrabble where I was blatantly kicking her ass and her means of retaliating was to literally eat the score card. I then hit her with the board leaving what is, I'm sure, the world's first Scrabble related battle scar.