Sunday, June 23, 2013

A Classic Adventure Tale

If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the laundry room. That's my motto.

Genius returned from his ten-day vacation--I mean volunteer technology work--at Missouri Boys State last night. Funny how he went straight to bed and slept for 14.5 hours. That sleeping must have been hard work, because later in the afternoon he had to take a two-hour nap. Thank goodness I was able to nag him into revealing his dirty laundry between snoozefests.

Normally, I do laundry in the morning. Like between 6:30 a.m. and noon. Especially on days like these when the temperature climbs into the nineties. Had he only cracked open that festering suitcase last night, to release the King-Tut's-tomb-like miasma, I would have been able to tackle Mount Short T-Shirt Sock Brief in the cool hours of dawn. But no.

It's not that I am so altruistic that I wish to save the earth from harm, and refuse to add to the drain on power sources during peak hours. It's not even that I am too cheap to launder during peak hours. No. I have my reasons. And they all point to maximum comfort for Val.

My laundry room is off the kitchen, on the main floor. A wooden louvered door separates the rooms. The ceiling of the laundry room is lacking insulation. That's because there's a flap of ceiling that houses a pull-down ladder for attic access. You  know. In case we need to get up there and set mousetraps so mice don't poop in our bathroom ceiling light/exhaust fan.

That little lack of insulation makes my laundry room the 10th Circle of Not-Heaven.

I could not begin my ascent of Mount Short T-Shirt Sock Brief until 11:00. No danger of frostbite on this peak. No sherpas, either. I was on the verge of losing consciousness upon disturbing the ragtag pile of supplies that needed transfer from the cloth cairn against the north wall to their cleansing bath on the south wall. Like a factory worker in a horseradish processing plant, I needed a gas mask. It did not help that two damp towels had been entwined in the moldy milieu, marinating, for 24 hours. Or that our power went out at 5:02 last evening, and the temperature rivaled that of an equatorial rain forest.

The goal was to complete three-fourths of the journey before a snowstorm blew in to obscure the peak. Or at least before a thunderstorm blew in to cut off the 3:00-a.m.-restored flow of electricity. I must declare the first leg of the climb a success. By 2:30, Mount Short Sock Brief had been conquered, and base camp was established. The uppermost peak, El T-Shirt-a-tan, will have my flag driven into it tomorrow.

I might even write a book about my adventure: Into Foul Air. 

3 comments:

  1. Your name should be "intrepid" for tackling this unpleasant mountain.

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  2. Val--Thankfully, when Genius woke up, his suitcase was emptied of dirty laundry and his clothes were--magically--cleaned.

    You are like one of those television maids/housekeepers. They did the work but we never saw them DO any work.

    If you WERE a TV maid/housekeeper, which one would you be, and why?

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  3. Stephen,
    I have enough aliases already. But I appreciate the sentiment.

    ******
    Sioux,
    He actually emptied the suitcase himself in the two hours that he was lucid. But he DID wake up from his Rip-Van-Winkle slumber and inquire, "You got all that done already?"

    I suppose I would be Rosie, the Jetson's maid, because I'm cold and hard. My dream persona would be Mr. French, because what's better than being a gentleman's gentleman, playing with Mrs. Beasley all day, herding a lisping red-headed little boy and his twin blond sister out of trouble, and telling a teenager her hair looks good in a ponytail on the side of her head?

    I could NOT be Alice. Too many darn kids. Too much finagling for the best cuts of meat with Sam the butcher. And I would not want to make pork chops and applesauce.

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