Under There
Last night while cleaning out the car for our weekend trip, I carried a load of clothes and sporting equipment up the stairs to the front door only to realize that I didn't have a set of keys. I yelled out to Simon to throw the keys up, but he didn't hear me because he was in the back of the car talking on the phone. I yelled louder, but he still didn't hear me, so what did I do instead of walking down the ten steps and getting the keys for myself? I pulled out my phone and called him on his other line.
Me = laziest person in the history of the world.
On occassion, however, I get bit by the proactive bug and manage to accomplish without drama great feats like changing the sheets that have been on the bed since January. (But they're just going to get dirty again, I say to myself, so why bother changing them at all? Eight hundred miles across the desert, my father replies, "Then why wipe your ass?" but eight feet away Simon is saying, "Yeah, I guess you've got a point there...") Nevertheless, we spent yesterday evening gathering laundry from throughout the house and sorting it into no less than five color-coded piles. Since that task basically amounted to cleaning the bedroom, we followed up with the aforementioned ceremonial quarterly changing of the sheets, and then I did the dishes while Simon scrubbed the bathroom and vaccumed the entire house. Call it inertia.
On the whole, though, as far as physics are concerned, Newton's first rule of motion is enough for me, thanks. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest is just another way of saying leave well enough alone; and status quo is Latin for I Can't Be Bothered, Now Please Pass the Cake. I'm the type of person who sees cat barf on the floor and makes the split-second decision to just step over it and keep on going, often rationalizing my actions as letting it "settle" and "mellow" for a few hours, or perhaps waiting until it hardens enough to be used as an ottoman. I'm not even kidding.
Perhaps this is why I have underwear from the Clinton administration. Well, not from the Clinton administration, but from that (golden-hued, bygone) era. I know this because one pair of panties has a black paint stain on the rear from the night my mom painted my costume for my dance company's season finale number, Cats, in 1997. Yes, I save clothes because I'm too lazy to throw them out, yet somehow the fact that it's decade-old underwear is a bigger deal than the hot pink shorts I wore to bed last night, which were vintage 1991. (And does anyone even remember who was president before Clinton? Oh, yeah, him.)
Anyway, the point is that I have some really old underwear in my collection, and this weekend we're devoting an entire day to washing that underwear in the presence of--no less in the home of--Simon's mom, which means her chance of catching a glimpse of the rags I wear 'neath my otherwise generally respectable garments is somewhere between guaranteed and you-can-bet-your-firstborn-on-it. Best-case scenario is that she suspects us of having robbed a hobo somewhere along I-5.
I have this vision of my future, and it involves having a matching set of silverware, a shoe rack, and furniture not made of particle board with mismatched veneer. Part of that future should also include drawers full of underthings that, when I pull them on, don't (a) remind me of first junior high dance or (b) disintegrate. The trick is that because we only do laundry every four to five weeks or so, I'd need to have about sixty pair of good underwear to be on the safe side. Either that or a washing machine. Or a hobo with a hobobag full of new panties strategically camped out along I-5.
I think I actually own about 50 or 60 pairs of underwear, most of which I purchased in college at Cross Dress for Less for $2/pair over the four years that I had to wait weeks to do laundry because I'd just haul it all home when I visited. Since then it's been coin-op city all the way, and since laundry is the chore that both the Hulk and I hate most, and because until we move into our new place next week we have to haul laundry down to the basement to fight over 2 sets of machines with the 25+ other people in our building, we regularly go at least a month to six weeks in between doing laundry. And I don't go commando or do the inside-out trick, so I've gotta have about 50 pairs on hand.
Unfortunately, underwear purchased sometime in the mid-to-late 90s for $2 from Cross Dress For Less (read: factory seconds etc.) doesn't last forever, so I've actually thrown out about 10 pairs of holey underpants in the last year. And promptly replaced them at TJMaxx. For $2.50/pair. Prices have gone up in the last 10 years.
I realized about two weeks ago that I'm still wearing a pair of around-the-house/sleep-in shorts that I bought at the Esprit outlet near my great aunt's house in 1990. The fabric is actually starting to disintegrate. Maybe I should get some new ones.
i probably own twice that. i know that i can go for months without doing laundry before i run out of socks and undies. i have a strict policy of "see undies or socks and purchase."
I think we must be sisters or something. I am the same way about things like cat barf. See, in our house, the rule is the first person who spots the mess (doggie pee, cat barf, or garbage strewn about from my mother-in-law's mangey dog who got into the can) is responsible for cleaning it. I have many times walked around a mess and not cleaned it, in the hopes that I would be gone by the time Steve got home and maybe HE would think he saw the mess first and clean it up. Aren't I a stellar wife? :)
I have a solid three weeks worth of underwear plus some backup old ones in case the washing machine breaks.
I am the EXACT same way with both cat/dog barf and underwear. Whenever one of the animals was sick in the house, I'd just walk around it hoping that no one would notice that I saw it first. And seriously...why do we keep underwear around for that long? I'll never get it. ;O)
I've got to admit, I was going to put off on the commenting because I totally scammed your link from Shirley's blog and thought that well... I should at least read you for a couple of weeks before saying anything, but this is making me laugh to the extent that I have to say something, even if it is utter drivel.
Leave the crotchless leather panties with studs at home. Simon's mom really doesn't need to see that. And they don't launder well anyway.
Other than that, thank you for outranking me on the raggedy drawers scale. I've waited a long time to hand someone the crown.
Nope. Can't relate. I love buying underwear.
"Then why wipe your ass?" = Haaaaaahahaha.
You have totally made me feel better about the frequency with which I wash my bedsheets. Once a quarter is actually acceptable. If someone asks, I'm gonna say, "that's what Leah does." Thanks!
I relate to this post entirley. There's a reason they're called "unmentionables", and it has nothing to do with being demure :)
Great post and I can totally relate (unfortunately) too. Except I don't even have the excuse that I have to haul everything out to wash as we have a very practical washer and dryer right down in our basement...no quarters required.
By the way...Replay was one of my favorite books out of the million or so I've read and I'm not even a futury/sci fi fan. It's the only book I've ever been able to convince my husband to open and actually read!
I still have a shirt I wear that I got my senior year in high school.
As for underwear, something so personal should probably be updated now and again. At least you have the freedom – even if unexercises – to buy your own. I went from my mom buying my underwear to wearing really old underwear while I was on my own and single to having my wife buy my underwear. One of these days I'm going to just go out and buy it myself.
Dads are a universal constant.
My father was good for statements like that and I'm making a note to be ready to use that one on the two little animals that live down the hall from me.