feeding the washer

today i learned that our washer likes to eat my beautiful placemats.

after our spring break cleaning raid of the house, i had a big pile of laundry sitting in the corner waiting to be washed. it was mostly dish towels and wash cloths, mop pads and guest sheets. but i also threw in 2 of these beautiful placemats that my mom got me for christmas. i have a set of 6 or 8 or something, and 2 of them had been hanging out on the kitchen table for awhile collecting crumbs. in my purge of all things dirty, they got tossed into the mix without a second thought or glance.

earlier this week, i finally got a chance to get them into the washer- i really hate laundry and avoid it like the plague. i promptly forgot about it, and waited until the next afternoon to hastily move the grab bag load into the dryer so i could start a load of my clothes that had been piling up for weeks. since it was my "no-dry" load- i hate shrinkage as much as i hate laundry- i didn't need to use the dryer again, and forgot about the load with my placemats sitting innocently inside.

but, when sam went to do his laundry today, he very kindly took out my abandoned laundry and began to fold. i had no idea he was doing it since i was upstairs watching friends and vegging out, and so my week-old load of random laundry remained blissfully absent from my head. and then, he came upstairs with a teetering pile of folded dish towels, wash cloths, mop pads, and guest sheets, and suddenly one of the placemats lands face down in my lap. perplexed, i turn it over and let out a strangled gasp.

right down it's beautiful middle was a big, giant rip. actually, two giant rips. and the edges were frayed and raveled and very clearly ruined. it was a very sad moment for me and my placemat. i hugged it. i felt the ripped seam, looking for any possible way to fix it (there is none). and finally, i asked sam to throw it out for me. and now i have an odd number of placemats, which just won't do.

time to go shopping :-D

ps- i didn't post yesterday (my first missed post). in a nutshell, i learned that a certain sofa absolutely will not fit into our basement no matter how hard we try. after dealing with that and the following let down, i had no energy left for blogging. hopefully the sofa we picked out today WILL fit when it comes next week!