Hang the clothes

Ok, I admit it. I have a problem. I hang the clothes out and I hang them out maniacally.That’s right. In my never-ending quest to unburden the power utility of its profits, I’ve developed a rather serious habit of hanging out the laundry.

I cannot tell you how crazy it makes me to see my clothesline empty on a sunny, breezy day. You may as well set fire to money, as far as I’m concerned.

To me, the clothes line is a “free dryer.” When I wake up to a sunny, slightly windy day, it’s like finding a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk, only better because I know that the money does not belong to some poor slob who doesn’t have another cent to his name.

No, that money is coming straight out of the profits of the power utility and going straight into my pocket.

Using the “free dryer” gives me a cheap thrill. And that cheap thrill turns to joy when I saunter over to the power meter to see how slowly the disk is spinning as my clothes flap merrily on the line.

“Well, my precious,” I say to that meter, in my best Wicked-Witch-of-the-West voice. “I’m afraid you’re not going to eat my money today. And if it’s sunny tomorrow, you’ll be going hungry again. He-he-he.”

Those who are close to me will tell you that hanging out the clothes has long ceased to be habit. It’s an addiction. He Who Can’t be Named says it borders on the obsessive and the compulsive.

But since when is checking the five-day weather forecast and then organizing your weekly schedule around good drying days obsessive compulsive behaviour? It just makes sense.

I mean, why would you hand over your hard-earned money to the power utility when you can use the free dryer and keep the money for other things like bourbon, for example?

Between you and me, I think He Who Can’t is just saying these things because he’s recently been caught out using the other dryer, the one I call the kilowatt hour glutton.

Yes, sometimes at night he sneaks around the laundry room putting the wash in the dryer. Then he tries to hide the evidence. But I always know. I can smell it on the clothes.

And don’t go accusing me of having too much time on my hands either. I can assure you that I am as busy as the next laundry-doer. And because of this, other things suffer. When choices have to be made, the clothes line usually wins out.

Take the breakfast dishes for example. Sometimes they don’t get tidied up because I have to hang out the clothes. You can always clean up later, but you can’t manufacture sunshine and light wind.

If the forecast is promising, it isn’t unusual to find me hanging a laundry in the pitch black at 11 pm to get the jump on the morning sunshine. And if the weather is not fine, the laundry will just have to wait.

On some sunny days, I’ve actually contemplated zooming home at lunchtime to take the dry clothes off the line and put another load on. But this creates a conflict with my other unending quest which is depriving the oil companies of their profits. With the price of gas these days, you have to find the balance.

True, there are times when I’m caught out by my mean-spirited attitude towards the power utility. Believe me when I tell you that it hurts to arrive home to a clothes line sagging with drenched clothes.

But such is the risk of the “free dryer.” Most of the time you win, and sometimes you lose. You can always wring the clothes out by hand and hang them in the basement to dry.

And if you’re depriving the power utility of some small modicum of profits, you’re a winner in my books, wet clothes or dry.

The iPod and the refusnik ear

You’ve heard of the square peg that doesn’t fit the round hole. And then there’s the round peg that doesn’t fit the square hole. I’ve often thought of myself as the polygonal peg crashing into square and round holes.

But what about this: the iPod bud that doesn’t fit the ear. Who in Christendom possesses an ear that can’t accommodate the iPod bud? Hint: someone who thinks of herself as polygonal peg. How ill-equipped for modern living is that?

I wouldn’t call myself a Luddite, but I must admit that I wasn’t in a huge rush to join the great army of Pod People who march this earth. My last piece of mobile music technology was the yellow Sony Sport Walkman. Remember that?

Back in the mid eighties, the Sony Sport was the business. I used mine long after it was trendy and would have continued if the cassette tape hadn’t followed the eight-track tape into musical oblivion.

Thus the polygonal peg became a Pod Person. The iPod was a gift from He Who Can’t be Named, a gentle nudge into the twenty first century. Naively, I assumed iPods were just digital Walkmans – a way to listen to music while you walk.

Ha! This iPod is to my Sony Walkman what the space shuttle is to the horse and buggy. Not only does its 80s GBs store a gazillion songs, they also store a gazillion pictures and allow you to watch movies.

I haven’t thoroughly read the user’s manual but I’m pretty sure that if you programmed it the right way, you could get it to do your dishes, laundry, spring cleaning, gardening and tax return.

Anyway, after I got the thing all loaded up with my music and pictures, I decided to take it on a little test walk to try it out. I put the two buds in my ears and set out, feeling terribly hip; cool, even. Not only was I now one of the Pod People, I was the Podmother.

Well, I don’t think I was more than three steps into Podhood, when one of the buds fell out of my ear. I put it back in, took a few more steps, and out popped the other bud.

As I tried to re-jig that one, the first bud popped out again. And so it went. Put bud in, other bud pops out, over and over, like a sick joke.

This was all the more frustrating because none of the Pod People I encountered on the street that day seemed to be having these problems. They all seemed at one with their ear buds.

Do these Pod People know something I don’t know? Is there a secret code? Or is this simply the way Pod People keep the uncool from joining their ranks? Maybe Pod People don’t want Polygonal Pegs with oddly shaped ears in their midst.

I don’t know, but I have come up with a workaround: If you don’t walk, don’t move your head or any part of your body and refrain from breathing, your ear buds will stay put. Trust me.

What is you FAQ

There have been many questions in the years since this column started.

They have come by email from correspondents with names like Yard Ape Mom, Lost in Space, Modern Men for Speedos, Chocomom, Slob-o-phile, Dust Bunny Bunny and the Dalai Lama (I’m pretty sure this is not THE Dalai but you never know.)

They’ve asked about my Things, He Who Can’t be Named, my Dust Bunnies population, and my views on the space-time continuum. Some, bless them, have even asked after my bourbon supply.

Today’s column will be dedicated to these FAQs or frequently asked questions.

1. You’ve said you don’t read parenting books. Are you qualified to be a parent?

No. I did not take the course. I have not read the books. And my babies did not arrive with a User’s Manual or a Help menu. I possess few parental instincts. My knowledge comes through an apprenticeship program which has lasted ten years and will probably run another fifty. This practical approach is not always the easiest way, but I have found bourbon to be an effective learning tool.

2. Do you look like your picture?

No. In real life I look like Angelina Jolie. (I know this because every time I ask He Who Can’t Be Named if I look like Angelina Jolie, he says “Yes, darling.”)

3. Does He Who Can’t Be Named look like Brad Pitt?

Yes, darling.

4. How do you run your household?

I don’t. It runs me. Sometimes it runs over me. Occasionally it runs me into the ground.

5. Do you cook?

No. I burn. I also heat up. I’m not bad a heating up, especially a drop or two of bourbon is involved.

6. You’ve called yourself a slob. Do you not read home décor magazines?

I buy a lot of home décor magazines, actually. I find them useful. You can stack them up on the floor and sit on them like a stool. And they make lovely coasters so you don’t get coffee rings on the piles of newspapers underneath.

7. Where do you stand on the organization Slobs without Borders?

I’m in favour. In fact, not long ago I was contacted by a representative of SWB who advised me to hide my home décor magazines (HDMs). Apparently certain security agencies are confusing HDMs with WMDs and are presently scouring the land for them.

8. Have you redressed your fiscal imbalance?

Yes, I have re-dressed my fiscal imbalance time and time again, and always comes home with food stains on its shirt and mud all over its knees.

9. Do you think that the noun “parent” should be used as the verb “to parent”?

No, I do not, unless you accept the noun bourbon as a verb. I bourbon, you bourbon, he bourboned, we are bourboning…

10. You’ve talked a lot about bourbon. Are you a columnist with a bourbon problem?

No I’m bourbon drinker with a column problem.

11 . Have you changed your position on the male Speedo?

I have no objection to the male Speedo so long as it remains attached to a hanger in a sports store. Anything beyond that and we’re into public decency bylaw territory again.

12. Have you conquered the dust bunny problem?

It’s a standoff. The dust bunnies still exist. I still exist. I am currently writing a treatise called the Dust Bunny Suicides. And as far as I know, dust bunnies don’t type. So ask again next year.

13. Have you located the orphaned socks?

No, and until we break through the space-time continuum once and for all, it is highly unlikely.

14. Do your children appreciate unreservedly everything you’ve done for them over the years?

I’m sure they will some day, but that won’t happen until I’m pushing up the daisies. Isn’t that always the way?

15. Do your beastly felines appreciate unreservedly everything you’ve done for them over the years?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

I clutter, therefore I am

So, I see the de-cluttering Nazis are at it again.

For a while I thought there might be light at the end of the tunnel. I thought we were emerging from the Dark Age of Clean Freakery. The minimalists were on the way out. The slobs were in the ascendancy. Hooray!

And what lead me to this startling conclusion? Well, the articles in the paper, of course. They started popping up at the end of last year, innocent little pieces talking about the importance of keeping some of your personal stuff scattered around the house.

Some of these articles even mentioned the C-word. Clutter. Gasp! Apparently the unclean, sinful, verboten C-word was set to make a comeback. Well, break out bourbon and call the party to order. The Clean Freaks are going down! Tra-la-la.

Yes, it turned out that people – real people – didn’t actually want to live in those sterile, tidy, scrubbed-to-within-an-inch-of-their-life rooms you see on the glossy pages of the home decorating magazines.

You know the type of rooms I mean. Everything is perfectly designed, beautifully styled, obsessively colour co-ordinated and void of personality. Even the “mess” is styled.

You can never win with these magazines. Home dec mags are like beauty mags. You look at the air-brushed faces and bodies and think, I don’t look like that. Similarly, when I look at the “entertainment centres” featured in home dec magazines, I think my rumpus room doesn’t look like that.

So when I saw the C-word, I saw hope. Finally, I thought, the home style dictators were offering an olive branch to the slobs who have the kids, cats, crumbs and clutter to contend with.

Suddenly there was the possibility that I would no longer be on the outside looking in at the pretty, pristine, petite bourgeois world of graceful living! Move over Martha, the slobs are back in town.

It’s lonely being a tasteless slob when the rest of the world seems so obsessed with style, design and window treatments? Forgive the ignorance but it was only recently that I discovered that a windows treatment did not mean opened or closed.

You have no idea how I’ve longed to see my house reflected on the glossy pages of a home dec magazine. Where are the magazines called Slobs and Gardens or Slovenly Living or House and Slob?

And the TV channels. Where is the Homes and Clutter channel? I’d tune in on Thursday nights and watch the latest episode of Slobs on Slobs. And what about a show with two saucy Scots coming into a house each week to criticize the cleanliness, lambaste stylishness and making mincemeat of tasteful makeovers.

We could call the show How Not To Be Stylish or How Not to Have Taste. They could offer tips on messing things up a bit, you know, making the place look like it’s actually inhabited by normal people with kids, cats, crumbs and clutter.

I was getting so excited about the possibilities and then it stopped. No more articles with the C-word. My friends, I fear the nascent Back-to-Clutter Movement has been crushed.

The Clean Freaks and the Taste Titans got to them and snuffed them out. I imagine they’ve burned those articles and destroyed their printing presses. That’s why we don’t see them anymore.

So, when you look at the home dec mags, it’s all neat and tidy and graceful, just like before.

Pity the poor slob.