The Tale of the Furious Woman

Facing a Monday morning, after a semi-sleepless night in a way too hot house, a lady mentally went through her day. She knew, before even thinking about it, that she had a lot to do.

The anxious wife/mother wanted to get the laundry to the laundry room, so that while the first load or so was in the washer, she could sort the rest of the laundry, and fold the load of white laundry left over from last week. The plan was to then continue with the laundry throughout the day, while making meatballs with the meat that will need to go into the freezer if it is not used in the next day or so, and spaghetti sauce. In the midst of all this, the lovely lady also wanted to straighten up a few rooms in the house.

Alas, plans don’t always go how we want them to. First of all the house was very warm, through NO ONE'S FAULT, and the woman and her son anxiously await the arrival of the “rescue team” to wave their magic wand. (The air conditioning isn't working right.) The woman’s husband, who also happens to be left in charge of his work place this week because of the boss’s vacation, placed the call to the “rescue team” and relayed the information to the woman.

The lovely lady arose this morning, while thinking about all of these things, got ready for the day, and took the sheets and pillowcases off of the bed to wash them.

Off to the laundry room we went… * sniff * sniff * sniff * The lady curled her nose as she entered the laundry room. “Oh my,” she thought to herself, “could the litter box need cleaning out?” A quick glance inside the box confirmed her suspicions. With the sheets still in her hand, she opened the washer to put them inside, and saw her eldest son’s jeans in there. After a quick sigh, she opened the dryer to move the dungarees to their next step. Alas, there was a slight complication, as the dryer was already full with more of the eldest son’s clothing. In the meantime, the lovely lady was still holding the sheets with one hand and had scraped her leg against the ragged end of the full clothes basket that someone had placed on the floor in front of the dryer, that just happened to be holding MORE of the eldest child’s clothes.

A normal mother would be thinking, “how sweet of him to be doing his own laundry and saving me all that work” but the lady’s mind hadn’t exactly gotten to that point yet. Since the clothes in the basket were clean, she moved the clothes from the dryer into the basket and the load from the washer into the dryer, and then FINALLY the sheets went into the washer. WHEW!

At this point, the lady was more than a little exasperated, so she went into the kitchen to get a drink of water, and noticed crumbly stuff all over the counter. Another quick glance around the kitchen exposed dirty dishes that had not found themselves into the dishwasher, and dried egg dribbles and salt along with other unknown substances on the cooktop. A look over to the table led to yet another annoying sigh, when she noticed Saturday’s newspaper and boxes of snacks scattered about.

The lady shook her head and escaped to the den of her home, where she entered the cyber world for a little while in an attempt to ward off the level of fury that was quickly rising in her. When the dryer and the washer both dinged, indicating that they were finished with their cycles, she returned to the laundry room.

Again the stench met her and she wondered why no one else had bothered to clean out the litter box. She knows that she did it three times last week and was wondering if everyone else’s thoughts were to just “let mom do it” and that made her a little angry. After putting the sheets into the dryer, the lady wanted to begin folding all the other loads (four to be exact) that needed folded. Ahhhhh….the countertop on which she lovingly folds her family’s things had dried food and stains on it. She knew that she has told her older son repeatedly that he can eat in there (because he NEEDS to watch TV while eating and there is a small TV in there), but he must clean up after himself. Of course, he ALWAYS claims that he doesn’t eat in there anymore and when he does, he ALWAYS cleans up when he’s finished. Getting a few paper towels and the spray cleaner put another delay in the folding process. When she finally sat down to fold, she noticed that NO ONE in her family had bothered to take their individual baskets to their rooms and put away their clean and folded laundry from the week before. IN FACT, the three males of the household had even gone so far as to get items of clothing out of their baskets, but had never bothered to put their things away and return their empty baskets. Oh gee…that really infuriated the lovely lady.

As she folded the loads of laundry, she haphazardly tossed the clean and folded things into the appropriate basket, taking no special care to keep anything neat and tidy. With each toss of a pair of socks or underwear she became angrier and angrier, vowing to quit doing anyone else’s laundry until they learned how to do their part. She had worked hard to create a system and it was working as long as everyone else DID THEIR PART, which really wasn’t much. The madder she got, the hotter she got, and the sicker to her stomach she got from the litter box smell. Poor kitties…it’s not their fault that they have no clean place to go potty. At this point, the younger son enters the laundry room and announces that he will take care of the litter box. And he also asks for his basket of clean clothes. He realizes quickly that his mother is about to quickly go off the deep end.

The woman made a decision. She will not do any more laundry that day and will refuse to do anymore PERIOD until everyone has put away their clean clothes and returned their empty baskets to the laundry room. She will also not venture back into the laundry room until the floor is cleaned of the food stains and crumbs.

After that decision, the lady entered the kitchen and again saw the messes. She shook her head and walked away. She really would like to make meatballs and cook spaghetti sauce, but didn’t want to, yet again, clean up someone else’s mess before she can begin.

It would be safe to say that right now she is going through an internal struggle.