SOCKS AND THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE

Welcome back from my self imposed long weekend. I feel that every so often, in order for the creative juices society calls "hatred" to be refreshed, I must take a few days off from venting and allow the pressure to build. Having thus, satisfied this recuperative requirement I am ready to provide you with my bitterness.

A few words of introduction:
Every now and then I come across an activity I find so utterly confounding that I find the need to devote an entire day's post to understand its' absurdity, that activity is, today, LAUNDRY. So here they are:

Top 5 Things That Bother Me About Laundry

#1 - Fading – Ok, so I get that the more you wash something, the more the color will fade, that makes sense to me, there are dyes in the material that get washed out with each successive treatment. What I don’t understand, what keeps from trusting that the Maytag repairman is the kindly old soul the commercials make him out to be is that my already white undershirts, somehow come out less white after being washed. White is the absence of color, the ABSENCE of color, so shouldn’t a faded white shirt be even whiter than when it started. I’m just saying it's illogical, AND IT BOTHERS ME!

#2 - Missing socks – I know, I know everyone has commented on the disappearing sock but what I didn’t realize until I actually did my laundry, and by “did” I mean stood in the room and watched while someone else did it for me, is that it’s actually true; socks really do just vanish! How is this not a matter of national security? If socks can just magically escape from the confines of a washing machine how can we ever consider ourselves truly safe from terrorism? We need to have scientists, men with protractors and a deep and comprehensive understanding of the unified string theory working on this problem. In the meantime, I’m looking for a gray and green argyle sock.

#3 - Folding – The deceptive nature of laundry is that while you may have finished washing and drying the clothes themselves the work for you is not done. No, because now that hot and toasty fresh load has to be folded. This situation is much akin to climbing Everest, thinking you’ve reached the summit, congratulating yourself on overcoming hypothermia, oxygen deprivation, and common sense, only to find that you still have another 500 feet left to go. It’s even worse when you get abandoned by your sherpa at the faux peak and have to actually do the folding yourself instead of, you know, watching someone else do it.

#4 - The dryer cycle lasts longer than washer’s – It’s 12:30 am your ready for bed and your load of wash is done, you want to just throw it into the dryer and go relax, but no, you still have to wait another 20 minutes until the dryer is done with the previous load. Argh! This ranks right up there with 12 hot dogs to a package and 8 buns to a bag, Paris Hilton and television, and those two chemicals you had to mix to make an explosive from “Die Hard 3” as perhaps the worst conceived combination in the history of man.

#5 - Those stupid tags – First of all, what’s the story with the laundering instruction tags that don’t even deign to use words, when did being an expert in hieroglyphics become a prerequisite to washing underwear? But more importantly, do those instructions actually mean anything? If I wash my boxers (thus ends the boxers or briefs mystery) in warm water instead of cold are they going to cease functioning? Are they going to change colors or take the vanishing sock escape route and disappear? And if not, why have them, to justify all those buttons on the washing machine?