March 16th, 2021

What on earth is this?  It appears to be orange peels  tangled up with kitchen towels,  doesn't it? Well that would only be because that's exactly what it is.  The question is, why are there orange peels in the kitchen towels. The simple answer is that apparently I put them through both the washer and the dryer.  And why would anyone do such a thing?  Obviously, by accident.  I promise you it was as much a surprise to me as it was to anyone.  

Here is how it all went down.  It was a Monday (I always do laundry on Mondays) I was racing around doing multiple housey sort of things when the dryer dinged. So as to keep it all moving smoothly,  I hustled my bustle out to the utility room to do the big laundry transfer (dryer to the kitchen to be folded and wet washer stuff to the dryer to be dried and remaining dirty stuff to washer).  Once I stepped back into the kitchen to fold and put away the towels I was met with..................this.  

My brain is a strange place.  When I am confronted by something I do not expect to see, it just doesn't process.  I cannot seem to figure out what I'm looking at.  I know that what I see before me is not what I expected but I cannot immediately tell what it is either. So I just stand there and stare, baffled and confused.  It's probably micro-seconds of hesitation but it feels like an eternity of me standing, statue-like, starring deeply, almost contemplatively, at a pile of clean towels.

Then all of the marbles fall into the proper holes in my grey matter and I realize that it's orange peels and I started laughing.  Who expects orange peels in their laundry?  Certainly not I.  Well at least not since the kids grew up and headed out on their own.  When they were very young I found all sorts of interesting things in the laundry on a regular basis.  Matchbox cars were a perfectly ordinary thing to emerge, relatively unscathed by the way, also small action figures, marbles, rocks (now all shined up), coins and other very washable odds and ends.  No harm done.

Every once in awhile though, the unexpected thing was the remains of a cookie or a chapstick (no bueno in the dryer!!!) general dirt (as in a pocketful of sand), worms or small insects, sticks and leaves and once, a frog.  The frog was the grossest thing I ever found in the washer. I  hope to never again encounter such a sight. 

Once they were older it was more things like coins, ticket stubs, receipts and occasionally a set of keys. Not such a big deal.   I know, I know, I should have been better about going through pockets right?  But in the way of working mothers everywhere, I was always in a rush.  Trying to bang out chores as quickly as possible while doing a  half dozen other things all at the same time.  Let's just say that sometimes, short cuts were taken and leave it at that.

And then poof, just like that, they were out and on their own and the laundry was just Tim's and mine.  It is very rare for me to leave anything in my pockets. Mostly because girl-pockets are pathetically small.  Too small to be very useful and definitely too small to Not Notice if something is in the pocket (at least usually - more on that later).  Tim's pockets, however, do occasionally  yield a few coins and the odd receipt.  I throw away the now useless and unreadable receipts and  keep the coins. Yeah, I know I'm a horrible person.  

Suffice it to say that it has been a very long time since I've been surprised by our laundry. Until the orange peel incident.  This one definitely caught me off guard.  I suppose the question is:  How did the orange peels end up in the laundry?  Well as best as I can figure out, Tim was eating some of those little Halo oranges and there was no paper towels or paper napkin or even plate  handy to discard the peels neatly, but there was a nearby dishtowel.  So the peels went into the dishtowel very carefully folded in so that they wouldn't spill back out.  Very tidy, very clean.  I like that :)  All of the unbeknownst to me, by the way.

And then in the morning when I zoomed through the house collecting towels for the laundry, I grabbed that orange peel filled towel and - not realizing that the peels were inside waiting to be tossed in the garbage - I stuffed the entire thing in the washer with the rest of the towels and started her up.  And now we are the proud owners of the cleanest orange peels in town!  

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!

Which is still better than the recent wash day when I took my favourite white jeans out of the washer and found that I had stuffed grocery list into the back pocket and never removed it.  Dang.  The list was written on yellow paper. So now I have one white back pocket and one  yellow back pocket.  Dang.  Yeah, that one is on me. 

I can even envision myself doing it!  Standing in the check out line reading over the list one last time to be sure I got everything and then stuffing it into my back pocket quickly because it's my turn to load everything onto the conveyor belt  and everyone is waiting on me!  Pressure!  It's always such a busybusy thing, grocery shopping.  Especially at the end.  By the time I've finished loading everything on the belt and moved down to the part when I insert my card and push all the necessary buttons, I barely have time to put my debit card back in my wallet before the clerk is handing me my receipt.  The groceries are packed up, the cart is full and everyone wants me OUT OF THE WAY because they are already checking the next person through.   So by the time I had unloaded the groceries into the car, returned the cart, driven home, brought in and put away the groceries, I had completely forgotten about the paper in my back pocket.  I'm sure I MEANT to throw the list away on my way out.  But you  know what  Nana said about good intentions, right?

Oh you don't know?  Ah. Well Nana said, "If you take all of the good intentions in the world, line them up, end to end, it still doesn't get the job done".   She wasn't wrong.

So another lesson learned.  Frisk the towels AND pockets before putting them in the washer!   Because even without children in the house, mistakes are made.  Or perhaps Tim and I are going through that second childhood we've read about and this is just one of the indicators.  Or, and this one is the most likely, stuff happens. 

So there you have it, another in a long line of household accidents.  We do seem to be prone to them. Ah well.   Orange Peels and yellow pockets happen.