I got a stomach bug on my last trip to Winnipeg. I ended up wasting a day in my hotel room, unable to leave for fear of shitting my pants. I dozed and internetted during most of the day and in the evening I watched television. I ordered a small, light meal from room service, ate it slowly and cautiously and kept it down. Then I rolled over and shit the bed without warning.

Staying in a hotel has its advantages. I stripped the bed and dumped everything in the hallway; washed up in the bathroom and put the soiled towels out in the hallway; called Housekeeping to pick up the soiled linens; and moved into the other bed. Cool. It happened again in the middle of the night, but then I didn’t have a clean bed to move in to. I wrapped myself in a complimentary bathrobe and spread a towel on the bare mattress. That’s when I started feeling sorry for my future self, imagining myself living alone and poor in an HLM with a laundromat in the basement, wondering how long it would take me before I stopped changing the sheets when I was sick. 

Then I realised I hadn’t been paying attention to all the television ads I’d been watching. Of course. When I am that sick, in that situation, I will just wear diapers. 

The next morning I didn’t try to eat right away, but took a taxi to work and set my things up in my usual conference room. Then I walked to a drugstore and bought myself a package of Depends and changed into them before getting breakfast at the company cafeteria. They are surprisingly comfortable, which is good to know. I kept a couple of changes in my purse for the flight back to Montreal that afternoon, but I didn’t need them. The bug seemed to have run its course. And all day I was thinking of the Active Woman in the Depends ads, who can leave her home to lead a Busy Life. And I thought how liberating the availability of a disposable consumer product can be.

Hmm, this one seems to have hit some sort of sensitive nerve out there. I’ve gotten lots of helpful responses from people who seem to understand the place that properly done laundry has in a satisfying life.

So far:

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Too much information/oversharing: three votes (including one cast vigourously by Mark).

While over the past years I have recounted amourous and occasionally unorthodox adventures and admitted dark urges to smash my chihuahua’s head open against a wall, these confessions are apparently a normal part of the public sphere or at least entertaining enough that their trespass into the public sphere was tolerated without comment.

The feelings of desolation that follow domestic disagreements with a legally bonded mate apparently enjoy no such license. Either they are too personal and not to be displayed because they are too boring (like nose-picking, tooth-brushing and breast-feeding); too personal and not to be displayed because they are too important (like how much money one makes); or occasion too much uncomfortable echo in the reader; or are simply not funny.

Whatever, I have been advised that by discussing laundry in public I went too far.

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Separating laundry is an important aspect of clothing care: five votes.

Five friends seized upon the occasion to share their personal approaches to laundry, happy to share hard-won expertise with someone needing their help.

All are strongly in favour of separating, though the importance they attribute to different categories differs. Some separate icky from sweet; others, lint-generating from lint-collecting; sturdy from fragile; light from dark; large from small.

***
This probably doesn’t have much to do with laundry at all: three votes.

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Laundry is not important enough to get that worked up about: two votes.

***
The bourgeois lifestyle is inherently violent: one intriguing vote.

Actual quote: “The bourgeois life is a violent life, it restructures all of everything into the space of consumerism & then isolates it. I think this re-channeling of desires from open-ended to the very concrete, with its limits but reassurances, is what you are going through. It’s the politics of capitalism in everyday life, not easy for any of us, and always in flux.”

When pressed for clarification, “bourgeois” was defined as middle-class with a separation of public and private spheres. “Yes, absolutely, it is much more convenient to do your laundry in your own machine in your own home. No question! But then you don’t leave the house.”

***
What I’ve settled with:

1) Domestic disputes are much scarier when you’re living together and legally married. Especially as Mark and I took the old-fashioned route of courting first, then marrying, then moving in together. Highly stressful.

2) Front-loaders do in fact require a different approach to laundry than top-loaders. You have to do a full load every time or else the machine gets unbalanced during the spin cycle. For our machine this isn’t fatal: it stops spinning, shakes the clothes around a bit, then tries again. But if the load is too small it will just keep trying forever and never really spin right. So it takes a bit of teeth-gritting to put things together that you wouldn’t have combined in a top-loader. Repeating to oneself that front-loaders are much gentler on clothes than top-loaders helps, as does viewing the washing process through the porthole and watching the machine toss your garments tenderly like an organic baby lettuce salad with raspberry-mustard dressing.

3) I’m still not combining mops and underwear. So there!

Hugs again to all!

[originally transmitted by e-mail September 28, 2003]

Ok, I haven’t been writing my usual e-mails lately and people have been sending somewhat worried queries as to the sympathy of married life.

Hard to say. We were married July 1st and Mark left for the Netherlands July 11th. The he arrived 15 days ago as a landed immigrant, entitled to live, work, breathe, travel but not vote. Yippee!

So that makes a total of 25 days of connubial bliss to report on. As someone with scientific training I can tell you that’s a very small n. But we have visited family in Ottawa, Mark has taken the dogs to the vet, everything seems kind of normal and couple-like. Except that we’re both terrified and are acting kind of stiff and awkward. (Though Mark stole my heart all over again when he introduced himself to someone as my friend last weekend. Yes!)

Tuesday was particularly stressful as Mark slated three major appliances (washer, dryer, refrigerator) for the St Vincent de Paul society and replaced them with shiny new energy-efficient ones that *work.* Yuppie!

Apparently too stressful for our meagre resources. We had our first married fight last night over the washing machine. It turns out that he’s not going to let me use it unless I wash clothes his way: everything together in one load, no separating, and the hottest water possible. He thinks he’s educating me on the use of superior front-loading machines and raising my consciousness about energy use. I think he’s being weird (I think I should be allowed to wash t-shirts and underpants separately from floor mops, and in cold water).

I am having nasty flashbacks to my ex, who wouldn’t let me use the radio or play music. I suppose I should be delighted to find myself married to someone who won’t let me do laundry, but I don’t take well to being forbidden. And I *like* doing laundry.

Hmm… I am thinking something about suffering and privation being good for creative expression. I think there must be something to that.

Hugs all, and if you don’t hear from me soon, that just means we kissed and made up!

[originally transmitted by e-mail September 26, 2003]

I asked Pat from IT for a new monitor yesterday morning and he brought me one. I also whined about my filthy keyboard and asked what I was supposed to do about it: take two hours out of my day to pop the key caps and scrub them in the sink? Leave a note for Housekeeping?

Pat said that he’d never heard of Housekeeping doing it, but he could get me a new keyboard. Somewhat miffed, I wanted to know if I was the only person in the organisation who managed to make her keyboard so filthy?

No, said Pat. Certainly not. But I was the only one in the organisation who wanted someone else to clean it for her.

Oh.

He brought me a new keyboard.

[originally transmitted by e-mail June 12, 2003]