Is your washing machine running? Better go catch it!

Apparently, I don't do enough laundry. At least that's the accusation I received from my 11-year-old the other day as I critiqued his choice of wardrobe. "Well, if you did laundry more often, I'd have other shirts to wear." Really? MORE laundry? Okay, I can do that. Or wait. Actually, in order to do more laundry, we'd need a second washing machine because the one we have right now runs more than Forrest Gump did after he lost his Jenny. In other words, the thing runs NON-STOP.

Seriously. Dirty laundry in our house reproduces like (previous blog reference coming. . .wait for it. . . wait for it. . . BOOM!) Tribbles. For a while, I thought maybe there was a small migrant family secretly living in my basement not only putting their dirty clothes in my hamper but also leaving every light in the house on, never flushing the toilets and always finishing off the bag of sour cream and chedder potato chips. But then, like so many things that'll make you crazy, I figured out it was (shockingly) my kids all along. (Well, except for the sour cream and chedder chips thing, right honey?)

The thing is, for whatever reason, my kids go through more clothes than John Mayer goes through Hollywood actresses. We've got the 11-year-old who has more wardrobe changes in a day than a Britney Spears concert. Pajamas to school clothes (which are always layered because, hey, it's cool). School clothes to outside clothes. Outside clothes to different outside clothes. Outside clothes to inside-before-bed clothes. Inside-before-bed clothes back to pajamas. By my count that's 2 pajama tops, 2 pajama bottoms, 9 shirts (two layered for school, two layered for outside, twice and one for inside) 1 pair of jeans and two pairs of sweatpants. That's 16 pieces of clothing for one kid. In one day! Even OctoMom doesn't have to deal with 16 pieces of clothes in one day!

Then there's the 8-year-old. While we have the one who wears everything in his closet within a 12-hour period, we have another who stockpiles dirty laundry in his room like David Letterman stockpiles hot, busty, female comedy writers backstage at the Ed Sullivan Theater. When we finally do force him to bring it all down, it's like a Gap Kids exploded in our laundry room. Literally, clothes everywhere.

To this day, the bottom of our clothes hamper is kind of like the Yeti: I've heard rumors that it exists, yet I've never actually seen it. One day I might actually get every piece of clothing out of there before it fills up again. And if, when I do, I find out THAT'S where the migrant family has been living, we're going to have a little talk about learning how to flush. . . .

I can remember the exact moment when I first heard someone utter the F-word. It was 6th grade, I was home sick from school, down in the basement. Dad came home and, not knowing I was there said it, curiously, to the cat. (See, that's the kind of weird things you do when you're home alone during a weekday — carry on profanity-laced conversations with creatures whose only understanding of human language are "Here kitty-kitty-kitty" and, apparently, "HEY! Get off the F*$&#NG table, cat!".) Oh. And yes, I too have had this conversation multiple times since last February, along with some like "Stop F*$&ing barking" and "Can you believe that F*$&ing Judge Judy?" But, I digress. . .

Why I can remember this seemingly insignificant moment in my life is beyond me. After all, I can barely remember to make the bed every morning when I get up. I don't know. Maybe it's a fascination with the fact that four simple letters can make up a word filthier than Pamela Anderson's home movie collection. Maybe I'm amazed that one word can cover so much territory as a noun, pronoun, verb, adverb AND an adjective. Sometimes all in the same sentence. Whatever the reason, I've learned as a writer that some words have more power than others. I love words (especially those that, when said in public, elicit the same looks you'd get by farting in a crowded elevator) and have been blown away by some of the new ones I've learned simply by doing housework. For example: Trivet.

First time I heard the word "Trivet," I thought of those goofy little balls of sex-crazed fur from Star Trek that kept multiplying and multiplying until the Enterprise was overrun with thousands of fuzzy, purring hairballs from hell. Then I remembered those were "Tribbles." "So what the F*$& is a F*$&ing Trivet?," I asked (see how versatile it is? Amazing.) Turns out it's one of those decorative tile (or metal) hotplates that every good Scandanavian grandmother used as wall decor but was really meant for placing hot pots or pans on so as not to burn the wood on the table. Who knew?

Another word I've recently learned that, if uttered in the company of my guy friends would at the very least result in a lot of teasing, at the very worst, leave me stripped naked, duct-taped to a lightpole with the words "I am a Loser" magic-markered on my forehead: Duvet Cover.

Duvet Cover. Seriously. What's a Duvet and what's it supposed to cover? Oh really? It's a quilt? And it covers a bed, not something actually called a Duvet? Gotcha. Now it all makes sense. That's WAY less confusing than actually calling it something like, I don't know, a blanket.

So where do these words come from? I have no idea but at some point, it would be nice to know things like who decided that a Chest of Drawers was anything other than a dresser? When it was determined that the words "gravy boat" made more sense than "gravy bowl?" And at what point did it become "throw pillow" rather than just "pillow?" I mean, I don't know about you, but at our house, you throw a pillow and you get grounded.

Especially if it knocks one of my handmade, Mexican Tile Trivets off the F*$&ing wall . . .