Laundry Depression

I meant to post after Leks' birthday. But I just couldn't. It was hard on this old mama. I cried the night before Liana's birthday, but I sobbed and threw myself an all-out pitty party the night before Aleksa's. I guess I felt the grief of both girls' birthdays at the same time. Two in one week is ROUGH. John had to do some extra counseling for the girls - they were pretty wide-eyed watching me have a nervous breakdown in front of them. I told Adam he was my only good kid that week. He thought that was funny.

Anyway, that wasn't the only thing bothering me. My washing machine has been broken until today. It has been dead for almost three weeks. Since we're renting (groaning here), the maintenance fellows can take their times, you see. So, we've been roughin' it here. I've been having the kids wash out their own clothes each night, so theirs hasn't piled up too badly. Mine and John's on the other hand, has been horrible.

Now, I don't know how most people feel about laundry piling up, but I HATE it. I mean, Really. I've seen lots of people do all their washing and throw the clothes in piles for a few days before they get around to folding and putting them away. I can't handle that. As soon as I hear the buzzer of the dryer, I pull out the clothes, smoothe out the wrinkles, fold them up and put them away. I Never (except where someone is terribly sick or there's an emergency), just throw the fresh-out-of-the-dryer clothes in a basket to be dealt with later. I can just "feel" the wrinkles settling into my quickly cooling clothes. Can't stand it. I hafta go take care of them. Maybe it's because I hate ironing? Who knows.

And when there are too many clothes in the dirty clothes basket, it really starts to bother me. It sorta makes me feel like my whole house is out of control if I know I have laundry to do. But on the other hand, you can usually tell the state of my mental health by checking how much laundry I have that I have left to do. You can't tell by what isn't put away, because as I said, it is *always* put away, but if I'm not feeling good emotionally, my dirty laundry tells on me. So, I guess I don't know which comes first. Are my blues caused by the laundry, or is the laundry caused by the blues? Well, in this case it was the blues caused by the laundry. I know. I'm weird. But I also know that all of you all have your own little quirks too, so there! ;O) (But if any of you have a similar tendency, I'd love to hear from you so I can tell others that I'm not alone in the world!)

Anyway, the piles and mountains of laundry around here have been really bothering me. Makin' me grumpy, and out of control like, and it has just plain thrown off my routine. *hmph* I've gotten a better respect for those poor pioneer women who had to go on down by the river with their lye soap and their wash boards. How did they Ever get anything else done!??! The broken washer coupled with all the kids getting way too old on me last week has really thrown me for a loop. The washer is fixed now though, and I'm sooooooooooo looking forward to empty baskets again! And no more kid birthdays until January. Whew.

Been getting more packages for the Ukraine package. I got a package of undies today from someone in ENGLAND. Wow! That makes three countries so far! England, Canada and the US. This has been sooooo fun for us! The kids are getting excited! I could kick myself though - we went "back home" this weekend to visit and I had been stashing some shoes/undies in my dad's basement, and I FORGOT them when we left. GROAN. Not sure exactly what to do about that. We're headed back again on the 26th, so I guess we'll be sending two sets of boxes. Oh well!