Do Your Own Effin Laundry

Today is one of those days when I'm glad no one knows where this blog is.

The 'Stoph, with his injured little self, is starting to milk it. For the last few days I've been running around like a house Negro, picking up this, fetching that, preparing this, filling that, lifting, arranging and double-checking. He has a torn ligament and I know that can't feel nice; besides, I have had a sprained knee before and that was bad enough.

Men whine. Oh Christ do they whine. I've always heard that men are wimps when it comes to pain, but I've never had to deal with it first hand. My father was a Catholic comedian, in that whenever he'd get a scratch he'd clutch the mauled extremity and howl to the ceiling, "Offer it up! Offer it up!" That was fine and good for him but sometimes as a kid I'd hurt myself and my pops would be like "Offer it up, Shorty! Offer it up to the Lord!" and he wasn't kidding. Uh.

Anyhow, a couple of days ago the 'Stoph had exploratory surgery and afterward had to walk around with a straw inserted about five inches into his knee and a Nalgene bottle filled with his own plasma, blood and stringy gunk attached to the straw. Instead of taking my advice and popping the pain pills the doctor gave him as soon as he got home, he decided to ride out the effects of the hospital-administered anaesthesia. Five hours later he's moaning and grunting and nearly crying... I told you so. After it got a bit melodramatic I asked him if he weren't whining a bit harder than was absolutely necessary and he replied that he supposed he wasn't in mortal pain but that getting comfortable was kind of difficult. I arranged him on the bed and he finally shut up. Now he's got the tube out and is mobile again, with a lot less pain.

Today I am having my "woman" pain. For the uninitiated, that means I am bleeding like a halal cow. Sorry to upchuck your lunch for you. I got up bright and early this morning to take a 40-minute walk around the neighborhood, schedule a laundry time for the 'Stoph as requested, then came home to waste time on various websites (Ian knows which ones I'm talking about). As I was enjoying a particularly catty internet fight, the 'Stoph asks me if I'm working. No, I say, I'm just fucking around, what do you want? And he asks me to do his laundry.

I. hate. laundry.

I invent all sorts of excuses and priorities and previous engagements in order to put off doing laundry. I will spray a musty sweater with perfume and take a wet towel to a stained pair of pants before doing laundry. I will wash my socks and underwear by hand before gathering up everything and taking it to the laundry room. I don't know what it is, but something about the whole ritual of spending a couple of hours attending to the various stages of cleaning a batch of clothing, then fighting it into some sort of orderly shape a.k.a. "folding" repulses me. I don't like anything that needs three hours of my undivided attention. This is why I don't have children.

I looked at him in disbelief. "Why did you schedule a laundry time--that is, have me schedule you a laundry time, if you don't have time to do the laundry?

"Um." drools

"The reason my face looks like this is because I hate doing my own laundry. What makes you think I want to do yours?"

In a childish wheedling whine: "Well, but I have to do blah and blah and then so-and-so wants this-and-that bleh bleh bleh."

"You knew all that from the start. If you don't have time to do laundry then it has to wait."

"Please?"

Oh, GODDDDDDDDDDD. More out of a WWJD sort of feeling than any kind of sympathy or consideration I agreed to do his fucking laundry. Jesus would have agreed to wash his dirty drawers without a complaint, then separated the whites from the colors before being tacked up to the cross. As I walked along the stone path, nearly doubled over in abdominal pain, I resolved to myself to "offer it up".

Thanks, dad.