Laun - dro-mat, a very warm place

A week ago .... or maybe it was two or three or nine weeks ago....I discovered my awesome washing machine unresponsive, running but stuck. My super-size washer has never let me down. It does give me sheets wound into sopping ropes and tied into big drippy knots, but nevertheless, it tells me at any given moment, how much longer until it finishes. I do NOT however like that it locks, and I can't lift the top to see it washing. As is my custom, I sent a minion-child down to see "how many more minutes until it's time to put the clothes in the dryer." the answer was 31 minutes... later, still 31 minutes, later still 31 minutes. Since I assumed (wrongly) that my Young Son was NOT ACTUALLY CHECKING, I went to see...to find it stuck sloshing at 31 minutes and locked. After much ado, we did get it unlocked ...as a tech guru, I unplugged it and re-start it. Since I often do laundry overnight, I went to bed. The next morning, about 16 hours and 12 minutes after we started round 2, it still had 46 minutes left. Chugging along, locked at 46 minutes. I DON'T HAVE TIME to deal with the Maytag man, in two weeks maybe, but not this week. So....183 loads of laundry, broken washing machine. Is there a question here? The laudromat - where once I did a solid 19 loads of laundry in 3 hours? And that's quick! when you have about 183!

Pretty Pretty Princess was willing to go. Yea, PPP! Young Son loaded the car as a show of support.

The bedding plants I bought 3 weeks ago... not yet bedded. Can they just put themselves to bed?

That smell is intoxicating - all clean and warm, with undernotes of chlorine. . My loads are sloshing and sudsing and bubbling. I put my stuff on top of the washers, so I would know where my clothes are. That's MY Downy, MY laundry plastic thing and MY cup with green dots, on top of MY laundry.
Suds pretty much look the same. Though wait...is that a red...wet thing? Is it ours or is my stuff on top of random laundry?
The laundromat guy brought me orange stickies -because he noticed that I had "stuff kinda all over the place' - Indeed, that would be 12 of those mamas all over the place. I was the ONLY ONE in the place with orange stickers. All of them sloshing at the SAME TIME! It's a miracle - and fast too. On to the dryers...Rows and rows of dryers - and they are all full of our stuff - at the same time! And yes, those are our hampers....in a little line, staking out more dryers. I am doing HOURS ....nay, DAYS worth of laundry at the same time. This is a good thing. When we leave here, we'll be done.
She's not looking quite as pleased as I feel. I have a place deep down inside that LOVES the smell of laundry. It's a scar, albeit a good scar.....deep down inside. Other scars from laundry are from the searing hot clothes as they come out of these big boys.

We used 11 dryers ....don't worry about it.

Do we OWN anything that color? PPP says yes, probably one of her 27,196 tee shirts. That allows her to go 7 weeks without doing laundry and still wearing clean clothes. She claims. You had me at 'Sorry' . . .Don't worry, we'll still BE HERE in thirty days. Wait! No! They kicked us out! I had only one more load, the one that had been used ...accidentally, I feel sure...as some sort of stand-in litter box affair by the kittens, and possibly the dog on a rainy day. He's stubborn like that. Guys...they relieve themselves wherever is convenient. But, back to laundry....AHA, progress!

Never mind that the clothes are blistering her hands, PPP appears to be folding that ....thing of ours...as it comes out of the dryer.
Voila! ....or Bravo! or Ole! or "Who would have thought all of our clothes would fold up into neat little piles?" And we had some quarters left. My cup with the dots....so cute, yea, daughters, great Mother's Day! Meanwhile, back at home .....dusk deepens,

Oh....my bedding plants...still not bedded. Somehow I thought that would happen while I was gone.
All together, that first round took us two trips, about 20 loads in their washers (which translates to about 56 in my humble home-style machine) - and we used every dryer we could get our hands on. Though there was a lady there who raced me to a dryer - but that's a whole different story. We spent a lot of quarters - say maybe $32 or 4 pounds worth of quarters. And my Young Son wants me to count the cost of my time - so, that would be another $210,000 or $1.19, depending on how you count it.
Just saying.

seasons change

The season is changing. The balmy spring days of lacrosse are over and they have weighed-in for football (does the phrase 'rocks in your pocket' mean anything?). The Pretty Pretty Princess is anticipating all things 'senior year'. While it's liberating to be done with practices and the games and the games and the make up games and the games, is it really time to put this behind?
It's a fast paced game, lots of running!

OK! A little time for chatting, But the men's game! lots of running!It's fast paced, and really compelling to watch!

It moves so fast, you just can't turn away.It's critical to keep up with the score, the stats, the numbers, because if you miss even a second... you could miss.....something really compelling.It's really hard to take your eyes off the game, even for the second it takes to send a text. Or read a text. And at the end of the game, the guys are just so, so, so.....Sweaty. They are just so, so sweaty. But we have this to look forward to...Also fast paced, compelling action. Only hotter. Because it will be August.

Thursday night TV

I have a real weakness for Thursday night TV. Sorry, it cannot be helped. It started back in the days of "Must See TV:" Friends and ER! On the same night! And the night that was the de facto end of the week.

In homeschooling days, we did our best to finish up by Thursday. That left Fridays for finishing up what we hadn't finished up on Thursday, the official day to finish. That's what you get to do with homeschool - you get to CHOOSE when to do the schoolwork. We chose not to do it on Friday.

First, the ritual food purchase - In the grocery store we picked out 'dinner in a box' (not to be confused with frozen dinners, reserved for nights other than Thursday.) Dinner in a box was something like "Chicken with biscuits" or "Cheesy ham and potato bake" - dehydrated ingredients in a cardboard box, with sauce mix in a dry packet, and meat in a can. Mix the whole mess of faux food together with boiling water, bake it and voila - dinner. . . from a box. IN the grocery store, the young ones stood and looked at the boxes, imagining a steaming golden delicious looking saucy DINNER, just like on the front of that box. The fantasy of that perfect meal lured them in....to eating chicken from a little can drowned in sauce made from powder.


So, we unboxed our dinner and huddled together on the couch, watching Ross and Rachel muddle through parenthood, with "That Girl" and the original "Trapper John McIntyre" as Emma's grandparents. The young ones took a bath in between, then straight to high anxiety time in the ER, where once a guy's arm got cut off by a helicopter on the roof of the hospital, and he had no other injuries. (Consider that, seriously, smacked by the rotors of a helicopter on the windy and probably snowy roof of a hospital, and then chatting about it - albeit a little churned up - but still. OLD Thursdays....box dinners, impossibly adorable people being in love and not knowing it followed by gory tragedy and some more people being in the dark about how much in love they were with each other...all in the ER on ER. And sleeping late the next day, when everyone else was getting up and going to school.


Which sounds a lot like the NEW Thursdays. I am delighted to report that we are now impossibly sophisticated, thus no longer eat boxed dinners. The Office and Grey's Anatomy are the cornerstones of our new Thursday night, where we find some seemingly humble yet adorable people, my BFFs Pam and Jim, in love with each other, and didn't know it for a long time while over on Grey's, we find some more stunningly attractive people who are... desparately in love with each other but can't seem to let each other in on that key secret, amidst gory tragedy and miraculous cures. (No helicopter accidents here yet, but there have been people who carried on a day's worth of conversation impaled on a pole) The fact that Meredith and Derek are stealing passionate glances at the same time that Jim and Pam are sneaking flirtatious looks at each other is easily solved by Tivo. And we watch Top Chef again, because we like to layer our TV flavors. And as a sort of penance for all the years we ate the box dinners.

It appears that the main difference between the old Thursday night and the new is that we DO have to get up and go to school on Friday. So committing to Thursday night TV passion and medical miracles means homework time lost.

Last night, feeling particulary needy because the girls were watching Grey's somewhere else (traitors), I whined to my young son "Please watch The Office with me, please, please, please! I hate to watch it by myself...." So he did just that - he watched with me. And he never let his secret slip - until this morning. Stayed up really late to study for FOUR BIG TESTS and a quiz today! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty, I am indeed GUILTY of selfish mothering.

But still.... sometimes I really hate to watch by myself. And we didn't have FOUR BIG TESTS when we homeschooled. Just saying.
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Boys just want to have fun

For the boys, it's not an adventure to get from this...









. . . to this









But, for the ladies -

'getting ready' is an event unto itself. Two girls looking in a mirror is way more interesting than just one. More make-up, more hair things, more .... more....more fun!

For the boys, the phrase 'getting ready' doesn't have the same ring
Cufflinks can be challenging

But, eventually they end up looking like this.

With a little time for this kind of posing-

Wait, wasn't he wearing a vest?

Apparently, a need to practice?

At last, women!

Cumberbunds, no vests. That's enough picture taking, we're going to eat. Sushi, then maybe the dance.

Pretty Pretty Princess & the Prom

Prom night! Check out that tan line. Will the tanning spray handle it? Will she have prom hair?

Is that blue eye shadow? Did we have to clean the sink at the last minute before get-ready time?

A knock at the door? Still in cami and curlers!

OMG.....who could it be?

He looks like a date. He knocks like a date. He has flowers like a date.....

It appears to be BFF BOB! What to do?

PPP actually came to the door and gave him a big hug.....curlers and all, then rushed back to the boudoir for the rest of her 'get ready'

Brushes her teeth....

"Mom, are you still at the store? Bring an eyelash curler. My eyelashes evidently look like they've been straigtened with a flat iron"

"Yep, my braces are gone."

Meanwhile, the boys were practicing. Practicing dancing, it appears. With imaginary dates?

Ahhh....here we go. Straighten that tie!

That's better, Bob.

That blurry look? So you can know what it feels like to be the Mom on prom night.