Katdish.net

(Subtitled: Why my laundry still isn’t finished.)

1. With the full understanding that leaving the house today is on the agenda, you decide to wear something a bit more formal than the fuzzy polka dot pajama pants and the bright green “Whose Your Daddy?” t-shirt.
   

2. Attempts to find a pair of clean jeans prove futile. Instead, you hastily decide on a pair of red cotton capris circa 2001 and a peasant type t-shirt the same color as Oscar the Grouch. A gigantic claw hair clip and black flip flops complete the ensemble. Make a mental note that the laundry fairy has ignored numerous requests. Drastic measures must be taken.
   
3. After “errands”, i.e. – getting your kids out of the house before they drive you to drink, you reluctantly return home and begin tackling the huge piles of laundry.
   
4. Lots of random things happen, you manage to wash and dry 2 loads of whites and 2 loads of jeans. Hang up jeans and begin sorting underwear and socks.
   
5. End up with an inordinately high number of mismatched socks. Suspect the dog has found a “special place” for their sock mates.
   
   
6. Decide to put the socks in a basket on top of the dryer. Hate this idea because how are you supposed to remember which socks are in there? You may throw their sockmate right in the same basket, and that ain’t right.
7. Begin to feel bad for the socks. Serenade the socks with the 3 Dog Night Hit, “One”. “One…..is the loneliest number that you’ll ever know. Two can be as bad as one, it’s the loneliest number since the number one, Ahhhh Ewwww!”
   
   
8. Frustrated that you have no fabulous ideas about how to store the socks until reunited with their drawer mates, your mind begins to wander…
   
9. You notice a metal sign that you bought at Ross on the clearance aisle a couple of months ago. It says “Children are the anchors that hold a mother’s heart.” Which you hate, because it reminds you of that children’s book “The Giving Tree”, which makes you want to leg drop that selfish little kid/man in that book. But, it was 2 bucks, and there’s no law saying you have to keep that dumb saying on there once you own it free and clear, now is there?
   
10. Get the Goo-Off and scraper from your handy dandy tool bag and get to gettin’ on that quote. Oh, yeah. At this point, the wheels are turning in that little ADD mind of yours. You have begun the actual labor portion of the creative process.
    
    
11. While the Goo-Off soaks in a bit, you manage to get the SWSO’s (socks with significant others) and the miscellaneous unmentionables (underwear) safely to their assigned drawers. (HA! Underwear humor.)
    
12. Over the next 2 days, hem and haw over what kind of lettering you want to use on your “sock sign”. Waste an incredible amount of time and energy on this.
    
13. Finally decide on the size and type of lettering. Print out new quote, and put on sign using a stylus and transfer paper. Fill in letters with paint pen. Clear coat.
    
14. Hot glue clothespins to sign.
    
15. Hang sign above dryer, hang sock singles on clothespins.
    
16. Stand back and admire your work. You are pleased, but something is missing.
    

17. More random things happen — New Year’s Eve party, etc.
    
18. Friends come over for dinner. You show them your work. Since they are weird like you, they like the sign very much.
    
19. Moments later, one of your friends gives you an idea that will be the “piece de la resistance” to your sock sign.
    
20. After your friends leave, you immediately begin working on the final piece of your sign. It takes only a few minutes, but you are well pleased.
    
    

    As a matter of fact, you’d go so far as to say that it was…

SOCKTACULAR!

To celebrate the fact that I’m still busy, I thought I would expound upon my post on Tuesday. Because you see, not only were there frigintastic comments about that dumb book “The Giving Tree”, there were also numerous other tangents and rabbit trails within the confines of the comments section. As a matter of fact, that comments section could provide me with blog fodder for the foreseeable future and beyond.

Of course, no one call pull off a tangent with quite the style and grace as my good friend Beth (aka @HerbieGookins). Here’s her comment from my post, The Creative Process: A Step by Step Guide. (Which if you haven’t read yet, you totally should.):

I missed out yesterday…This sign rules in so many ways. If I let other people see my laundry room, I would totally want one.

I have a box of socks.
Call me Dr. Seuss. When the box gets full and no one has clean socks anymore, I recruit my kids and call it the sock matching game. So far they haven’t caught on to the fact that they are helping me do a chore.

Incidentally, my mom came up with a great use for lonely socks. She took them to one of her writing classes and made her students make a puppet out of them and write about it. So someone out there has a sock puppet that used to be my dad’s sock. That’s weird.
I am nothing like my mother….

Thank you, Beth for that uh….Thank you, Beth!

Now, if you don’t know me very well, you may not know that I will employ just about any creative outlet in order to avoid doing laundry. It is my arch nemesis. Well, actually math is my arch nemesis, but laundry is a close second followed by balancing a checkbook. (Okay, not really – I never balance my checkbook. Who the heck writes checks anymore anyway?) But I digress…

When I read Beth’s comment, my creative/avoidance juices really started flowing. Ladies and Gentlemen, for you viewing pleasure I give you

Socks in the Box:

(And no, I can’t make you one. Like I said – I”M BUSY! Besides, the laundry is really starting to pile up…)

(Subtitled: Why my laundry still isn’t finished.)

1. With the full understanding that leaving the house today is on the agenda, you decide to wear something a bit more formal than the fuzzy polka dot pajama pants and the bright green “Whose Your Daddy?” t-shirt.
   
2. Attempts to find a pair of clean jeans prove futile. Instead, you hastily decide on a pair of red cotton capris circa 2001 and a peasant type t-shirt the same color as Oscar the Grouch. A gigantic claw hair clip and black flip flops complete the ensemble. Make a mental note that the laundry fairy has ignored numerous requests. Drastic measures must be taken.
   
3. After “errands”, i.e. – getting your kids out of the house before they drive you to drink, you reluctantly return home and begin tackling the huge piles of laundry.
   
4. Lots of random things happen, you manage to wash and dry 2 loads of whites and 2 loads of jeans. Hang up jeans and begin sorting underwear and socks.
   
5. End up with an inordinately high number of mismatched socks. Suspect the dog has found a “special place” for their sock mates.
   
   
6. Decide to put the socks in a basket on top of the dryer. Hate this idea because how are you supposed to remember which socks are in there? You may throw their sockmate right in the same basket, and that ain’t right.
7. Begin to feel bad for the socks. Serenade the socks with the 3 Dog Night Hit, “One”. “One…..is the loneliest number that you’ll ever know. Two can be as bad as one, it’s the loneliest number since the number one, Ahhhh Ewwww!”
   
   
8. Frustrated that you have no fabulous ideas about how to store the socks until reunited with their drawer mates, your mind begins to wander…
   
9. You notice a metal sign that you bought at Ross on the clearance aisle a couple of months ago. It says “Children are the anchors that hold a mother’s heart.” Which you hate, because it reminds you of that children’s book “The Giving Tree”, which makes you want to leg drop that selfish little kid/man in that book. But, it was 2 bucks, and there’s no law saying you have to keep that dumb saying on there once you own it free and clear, now is there?
   
10. Get the Goo-Off and scraper from your handy dandy tool bag and get to gettin’ on that quote. Oh, yeah. At this point, the wheels are turning in that little ADD mind of yours. You have begun the actual labor portion of the creative process.
    
    
11. While the Goo-Off soaks in a bit, you manage to get the SWSO’s (socks with significant others) and the miscellaneous unmentionables (underwear) safely to their assigned drawers. (HA! Underwear humor.)
    
12. Over the next 2 days, hem and haw over what kind of lettering you want to use on your “sock sign”. Waste an incredible amount of time and energy on this.
    
13. Finally decide on the size and type of lettering. Print out new quote, and put on sign using a stylus and transfer paper. Fill in letters with paint pen. Clear coat.
    
14. Hot glue clothespins to sign.
    
15. Hang sign above dryer, hang sock singles on clothespins.
    
16. Stand back and admire your work. You are pleased, but something is missing.
    
17. More random things happen — New Year’s Eve party, etc.
    
18. Friends come over for dinner. You show them your work. Since they are weird like you, they like the sign very much.
    
19. Moments later, one of your friends gives you an idea that will be the “piece de la resistance” to your sock sign.
    
20. After your friends leave, you immediately begin working on the final piece of your sign. It takes only a few minutes, but you are well pleased.
    
    

    As a matter of fact, you’d go so far as to say that it was…

SOCKTACULAR!