Every now and then I have to count my blessings and appreciate that I am living a charmed life. I've been married to my wife Laurie for 18 1/2 years. We have three healthy, handsome, and relatively normal sons aged 16, 14, and 7.
We've lived in the same house for 15 years. It's a little crowded, we've run out of quality storage space, but I think we might just make it with this house. Our original furnace still keeps us warm in the winter, and our original air conditioner and compressor still keeps us cool in the summer. One of the cars we drive has logged 209,000 all-Galucki miles over the course of 11 years.
Now that I've completely jinxed all these essential elements of my life, I'll point out a recent development that made me realize just how charmed my life has become. Somehow, in some miraculous way, I have managed to avoid running a load of laundry since I was a bachelor...sometime during the original George H.W. Bush years, I believe. Put it this way, the Berlin wall was still standing the last time I poured detergent in a washing machine. Our faithful GE washer has been churning out clean laundry for 17 years now, and I've had absolutely nothing to do with it. I've heard of husbands who do laundry, but I try to stay away from them for fear of catching whatever dreadful bug they've got. I don't remember how I pulled this off, but my wife and I must have an unspoken agreement when it comes to laundry...she does it all, and I don't do any of it. I realize this makes me sound like a sleazy 1950s throwback kind of husband, but I can argue my case. I may be a slacker when it comes to laundry, but I'll dust and clean all day and all night if I have to. And I'll put my vacuuming record against any dad in town...one of my pure joys in life is making vacuum marks in our carpet. I also handle the outside chores without complaint.
Last week I came home from work in a mood. I'll admit it. Laurie was on the couch watching TV. The kids were playing video games in their rooms. And in my bedroom I saw the same pile of unwashed whites sitting on the floor near the dirty laundry hamper that had been there all week. And I knew I was desperately low on clean white socks. So I picked up the whites, brought them to our laundry closet, and opened the folding door to our laundry closet as loudly as I could. Laurie has keen hearing when it comes to her laundry area. Red flags raise instantly the second somebody opens the laundry doors other than herself. I opened the washing machine lid, and of course, found the machine full of damp, mildewy clothes. This didn't help my mood. I just doubled my workload. So now I hastily opened the dryer, and of course, found that machine full of dry, clean clothes. Great, in the span of a few scant seconds I just tripled my workload! I went back in my bedroom to find a basket, and of course, all baskets were full of clean clothes...some folded, others unfolded. Way too much work for me, so I returned to the dryer and tossed all the clean clothes out of the dryer and onto the floor where I knew Laurie would eventually step over them...I was now in full "making a statement" mode. I grabbed all the damp clothes from the washer and threw them into the dryer...again, as loudly as I could. Laurie at this point is most assuredly sitting upright on the couch rolling her big brown eyes...waiting for me to get this out of my system. Having finally emptied the washer, I tossed my little pile of white clothes into the washer. I studied the knobs on the top of the machine for a few seconds. So many options..."Delicate", "Deep Cleaning", "Extra Rinse", "Cold", "Cool", "Warm", "Hot", "Casual", "Bulky", "Normal". What I really needed was a setting called "Dumb Dad Setting", but our machine didn't have that. So I yelled out to Laurie, "Do you use hot or cold for whites?"...she answered. Then I yelled, "detergent or bleach?"...she answered again. I twisted the knob to whatever setting would start filling the machine with water. I closed the lid, closed the closet door, and felt really good about myself. 15 minutes later, I heard Laurie walk to the laundry area and let out a shriek, followed by an expletive. I came out to see her standing in a puddle of water that is seeping quickly into our kitchen and dining room. To her credit, she didn't say "What the ____ did you do???", because I sure would have said something like that. We quickly tried to troubleshoot the problem. She turned the machine off and opened the lid. I turned all water off going into the machine, I unplugged the machines. To no avail, water was still pouring out from under the machine. We desperately drained the inside of the washer using small buckets, while water continued to pour out from underneath.
To summarize, our GE washing machine waited 17 years for me to finally do a load of wash before springing a leak and ending its functional life. To put that in perspective, conservative estimates would say our household probably averages 1 load of wash every day. Over the course of 17 years, that means that machine churned out approximately 6200 loads of laundry with Laurie at the controls. I did one load of wash and the machine died.
Five days later our new washer arrived from Home Depot, just in time to rescue our house from the largest piles of dirty laundry ever heaped upon a single family dwelling. Five days without a washing machine is like the worst work stoppage in the history of organized labor. I've never seen anything like it. Baskets and baskets of laundry everywhere.
But while waiting for the new machine to arrive, Laurie stayed busy. First she attempted some hand-washing in the sink. That didn't last very long, and Laurie quickly admitted she would have never made it on "Little House on the Prairie". So instead Laurie prepped, cleaned and painted her laundry room...she even put up some Norman Rockwell-like border, with Americana images of clean laundry on clotheslines, dancing in the wind. I don't even know where she found this border, or how long she's been dreaming of putting it up. So when her new toy arrived, she was as giddy as a dad with a brand new 60 inch HDTV. She started churning out clean laundry like a factory...folding it with passion...smiles all day long.
And do you think she's gonna let me even attempt to do another load of laundry anytime soon? Like I said, I'm living a charmed life!
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