laundry: Browse The Strips

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Lynn's Comments: The vacuum hose on the stairwell also provided my kids with a diversion. I taught them what to do! I mean, indoor activities that don't involve fast food and television are hard to come up with and usually require adult involvement. Rolling stuff down the vacuum tube is harmless and relatively noise free entertainment. I let them play with this set up whenever they couldn't play outside and anything that would roll down the pipe without clogging it was OK with me. I just drew the line at liquids and frozen peas.

Cleaning up at the end of the day was an easy price to pay for the peace it provided... besides, I knew what they were doing and where they were. The stairwell we used as kids went down into our basement. The one my kids played on sent everything into the living room. This made for some hide and seek thereafter and although I made a thorough search for marbles and the like, I kept finding residual rolling stock until the day we moved away.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Lynn's Comments: When the kids were small, the work involved often filled a day. By suppertime when laundry, cleaning, shopping and meals were done, I wondered where the time had gone. It wasn't until the dishes were done and the kids in bed that I could sit down - without guilt - and enjoy the paper. It's amazing how "invisible" a housekeeper's job is! For those who share the home and enjoy the fruits of "Mom's labor" things like clean clothes folded neatly in drawers, a tidy, sanitary refrigerator, vacuumed rugs, washed floors, swept and organized closets, prepared meals, answered mail, full toilet roll holders and all the other myriad details that go into running a home seem to occur like magic. If you don't see or take part in the process, you just accept it and expect it all to be done for you. In fact, unless something is NOT done, you don't notice it at all! This revelation came to me when I hired a housekeeper. My sweet lady would come one day every week. I'd leave things for Janet to do. After awhile, dusting and ironing and clean floors just "happened". Recycling was done, mats were shaken and shelves were wiped clean...and if I wasn't there to have a coffee with her and see her work for myself - I took my clean house for granted! Being a "housewife" is a full time job. Add parenting to this and you have an all- encompassing career - for which many of us apologize! I was lucky enough to have a job that allowed me to work at home. I had two jobs! Strips like this one were done to support all the smart, productive and caring moms I knew who were struggling to stay sane. These comic strip complaints also made me less resentful of my own responsibilities. It felt amazingly good to confide my feelings to an unseen community of friends...millions of them!!!

Friday, March 11, 2011

Lynn's Comments: Lynn Lake was such a small town that gossip came back to you the same day. It was fun to hear the latest community news, as long as you weren't part of it! Here's an example of how fast word travelled: Annette was one of our dental assistants. She was expecting her first baby and when she went into labor, I knew she had been admitted to the hospital because when I went to buy groceries, I ran into a guy who knew her husband. A few minutes later, I went to the drugstore to buy her a gift and I ran into the doctor's wife who told me Annette and Peter had just had a baby boy. I went home, wrapped the gift, walked to the hospital and there were the proud parents holding a baby so new, he hadn't even been washed yet! I guess there's a difference between news and gossip, and it didn't take me long to learn that in a small town, you had to be careful with both.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Lynn's Comments: I got into trouble for this story line, too; people who read the comics to their children didn't want to have to explain the origin of the Santa species. But, I figured if the kid was old enough to read and understand the comics page, he likely had the Santa thing figured out anyway. Not so, apparently!

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Lynn's Comments: Here is another word for word exchange between my husband and me. The punch line was exactly as written. I didn't toss a measuring cup--but I sure wanted to. This resulted in his taking over the pressing of his own shirts and clinic gowns--until we hired a housekeeper who came once a week and actually enjoyed ironing!

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Lynn's Comments: In the log home we owned from 1983 until 2003 our laundry was upstairs and out of the way. It was therefore easily ignored until we needed clean clothes. Next to the laundry appliances I had a sewing table, which would eventually become so heaped with mending that the sewing machine disappeared. When I finally grit my teeth and settled into the task of fixing all the defective duds, I would inevitably discover items of kids' clothing that had been there so long, my kids had outgrown them! By putting this scenario into the strip, I absolved myself of guilt and hoped that other busy moms would also forgive themselves and do what I did: pass the stuff on to someone else! I did, however, repair it beforehand!

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Lynn's Comments: One of the things I resented about working from home was the inability to get away from housekeeping. I was jealous of friends who would dress well, leave for work, and enter an environment devoid of kids, dish detergent, and the omnipresent whiff of laundry. I thought it would be wonderful to have a separate space to call my own, and to have adult conversation when I needed a break from it all. Interestingly, the friends whose work-space I envied, thought I was the one who had it made.