Tag: chores

Settings

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One of my least favorite chores is buying groceries. I don’t really know why it’s my least favorite, other than it takes time out of my schedule; I have to physically touch every object I buy multiple times (way too many, in my book); and it’s EXPENSIVE (and getting even more so by the second). Nowadays, I tend to get groceries on my way home from work, which delays my arrival home AND our family dinner.

When my children were younger, we all went to the grocery store together much more often than we do now. Occasionally, when I had only a few items and I was feeling particularly adventurous, we would use the “self-scan” registers. One time, when C was about 10 or 11, he ran ahead of me into the self-scan lane, and hit the button on the screen indicating that we wanted our checkout experience to be in Spanish. Um… what?

First of all, it is important to understand that throughout junior high, high school and college, I took French. Back then, we didn’t have exposure to foreign languages before we hit 7th grade, and at that point, we had to choose our career language—the language we would take through high school. Nobody ever switched. Thus, I know English and French (and a little bit of Greek from a two-month exchange trip back in the dark ages). No Spanish. None.

I stared at the screen with no idea what to do. How do you fix the language setting when you can’t understand the language in which the machine is prompting you? Ugh! Out of frustration, I moved to another register and let that one time out and reset itself. And I made a mental note not to let C beat me to the self-scan registers anymore.

Yesterday, a new laptop arrived in the mail for C. He was in the living room running through the set up procedures, and I could hear him reading the options aloud. “Set language….” And BAM! Just like that, I was transported back to that day in the supermarket. I could see the sly smile he gave me that day, just like it happened yesterday.

“Set it to Spanish, C!” I called to the living room. “Just like you used to do to me in the grocery store!”

He snickered. “Yeah. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Yes, I thought, my own sly smile brightening my face. It would be kinda fun, wouldn’t it?

Warped

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It started at the dinner table, our discussion of warped things. W looked out the window into the settling dusk of evening. “And… it’s started raining again!”

“It’s raining?” I questioned, glancing out the window. It had been raining for two days, but the rain had stopped earlier in the afternoon, and I thought it was done. According to the weather forecaster, it was done, at any rate. Then again, the weather forecaster doesn’t have a great track record.

“Or tiny morsels of something are hitting our window,” W continued. “I can hear it.”

“Oh, that’s not rain,” I informed him. I’d been sitting at the kitchen table all day, and I had heard the noise he was referring to. “I washed the window last week, and for some reason, the sun-catcher is now tapping against the window.” I leaned in toward the window to study the sun-catcher. “I must not have put it back in exactly the perfect spot. Or may it’s warped….” The discussion wandered to how a window might be warped, until I brought it back to the sun-catcher.

I stood up to put some dishes in the sink. I looked at W. “I have a son who’s warped….” He turned to look at me, startled for half a second before the mischief smiled on his face.

“You do have a warped son, don’t you?” He glanced at C who was getting up to bring his plate to the sink. C was also smirking.

“Yes, you do,” he agreed, as he moved out of the kitchen for his next activity.

“You can totally say that, Mom,” W commented, “Because we’ll both think it’s the other one.” He watched C walk out the door, and he leaned toward me, speaking just a little quieter. “But I’d be right!”

I smiled in response, and W started the dishes.

A few minutes later, the warm water had begun to lull the crazy day out of him. He looked up from the suds that he had been spreading around a pan. “You know Mom, I’m not warped. I’m just bent.”

Yes, my friend, we’re all a little bent. That’s what keeps us from breaking.

Tips

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Over many years, and through many mistakes, I have learned to check pockets before I throw clothing in the washing machine. It all started years ago, when my children would tuck crayons, tissues, toys, and trinkets into their pockets for safe keeping. The first crayon that went through the laundry was purple. A pair of boys’ tan cargo pants received the brunt of the damage. But since the crayon was in with a load of light clothes, it wasn’t difficult to spot streaky purple scars on shirts, underwear, socks, and even a pillowcase.

From then on, I tried to be much better about checking pockets. But all it takes is one day of dead-tired chores for me to slip up. And slip up, I did. This time, it was an orange crayon. Orange seems to be a grittier, stay-in-place kind of color. The orange crayon ruined one pair of (again) tan cargo pants when it disintegrated and stuck in the pocket like glue. Oh, and it bled through, so there really was no chance of wearing the pants again.

The next time I checked pockets too quickly, a few years later, I missed a lip balm. Lip balm melts very nicely down to nearly nothing in the heat of the dryer. There was just enough left to permanently leave an oily mark on everything it touched. Several more items were ruined.

Since these incidents, I have gotten much better at checking pockets. Often, I find spare change that I have dubbed “laundry tips.” Usually, I find a penny or a dime or a quarter here and there. Sometimes I might retrieve a dollar or two folded up into a tiny square, or to my disappointment, a baggie full of cracker crumbs (these I don’t eat…).

The stakes are higher nowadays, with flash drives and cell phones stored in pockets and sometimes forgotten. One of these items left in a pocket and run through the washer could cause some serious data loss, and as I mentioned, occasionally I am dead tired. So I have added an incentive for my offspring to check their own pockets: Anything I find while doing the laundry is mine to keep if I choose. While laundry tipping is often an involuntary activity, it always results from the voluntary refusal to check one’s own pockets before throwing clothing in the hamper.

Of course, sometimes they catch their mistakes before I can benefit. The other day, I was working in the kitchen when W walked in and started up the stairs. “I should probably go remove the ‘tip’ from my laundry,” he said as he passed. He had thrown his pants in the hamper with a pocket full of Christmas money. To my estimates, it would have been my best “tip” to date!

My loss, but clearly, the message is starting to sink in.