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Jack and I, when I’m home, walk together one mile around Kaolin Road, twice a day. That is when my mind wanders and I often think about what I am going to write about, especially if I haven’t been gardening, baking or cooking. No matter how I feel, I always try to get Jack out, for my own good as much as it is for his, the anti-exercise Jack Russell that he is. Today I was thinking that I hadn’t done anything to really write about, except for doing laundry and watching t.v. The thought of laundry which in my case, barely constitutes as a chore, considering that it wasn’t until I was 17 that my parents moved into their own house and had a washing machine and a dryer in the basement.

Prior to that all of our laundry was put into a laundry bag, then into the wheeled cart, eased down a flight of stairs and then down the stoop and down the street to the corner laundromat every Saturday morning. Those weren’t very enjoyable Saturday mornings for my mother. I know that going to the laundromat almost became my permanent chore, but I’m fairly sure that it didn’t because I accidentally created a soap induced flood in the laundromat and the man was very upset with me and I think with my mother, that she allowed me to do something that, obviously I was not equipped to do. I’ll never forget the panicky feeling when I realized that I had put in too much laundry detergent and the bubbles kept rising and multiplying until they were overflowing beyond the confines of the machine and I didn’t know what to do. After that disaster, I remember being given the chore of ironing and I became quite good at that and I never minded ironing, I found it to be relaxing, busy work where you can let your mind wander and make up stories or finish a story line currently running on your favorite soap opera.

While I was thinking of those days, I went back further in time to when my grandmothers had to do laundry. Now doing laundry back in those days, that was a chore. I can imagine that it had to have taken all day to wash the clothes, rinse the clothes and then to let them air dry. How did anyone get fed on those days, just picturing it would make me too tired to cook and it’s not like those poor women had microwaves or Hamburger Helper to relieve them of kitchen duty. We might complain about being women in this day and age and I know that it is still hard for many women; single mothers, single women, married women, but I still think that we have made progress in many ways. I love my washing machine!