Laundro-gasm

When you are the mother of three children, you start to have a relationship with your laundry. I can only relate it to Stockholm syndrome. You struggle against it and complain about it and just generally beat your chest and wail about it for so long, and then one day you wake up and realize, "I.CANNOT.EFFING.WAIT.TO.DO.THE.LAUNDRY." You, my friend, are Patty Hearst. You begin doing it everyday and you think of ways to spice it up--handwashing, laying flat to dry, stain removal. And when you buy new clothes for yourself or your children, you immediately think of how it will look in the closet, how it will feel when you fold it or slide that hanger in and watch as the fabric tumbles down. You imagine people coming into your home while you are gone and looking in your closets and thinking, "Wow, that kitchen wasn't much to write home about but this closet...Jesus Christ on a rubber crutch, look at this closet!!!"

(What? Just me? Alrighty then...)

My daughter and I are both allergic to Tide, me less um, vehemently than Gabby. We both break out in huge red bumps that itch like crazy if we even sleep on sheets washed in it, much less wear clothes in it. But. Gabby is not only allergic to Tide, she hates its very being. She once almost made my stepmother cry because she uses it. I wish I were kidding. Therefore, I have always used All Free and Clear. It is relatively cheap, it gets the job done, and no one in my house foams at the mouth when they see the bottle sitting around. I also always use some sort of fabric softener or dryer sheet because my husband likes dryer sheets and uses them for various chores around the house. Again, not kidding. He also does weird stuff with Swiffer sheets, but that is another post for another time. For diapers, I use Rockin' Green, which, well, is rockin'. We started this when Alice started eating solids and things just got turned up a whole nother level if you know what I mean.

Well, one day I went to Target, which is probably how my autobiography will start. And I got frisky. And I bought a big bottle of Method Laundry Detergent in Fresh Air. I bought this, totally afraid that I would break out in huge running sores after use, but a bit turned on by switching up the whole laundry routine. Just like Patty when she robbed that bank.

Gabby made fun of me mercilessly. "Air? What does Air even smell like? What if it is the air over a chicken farm? What will it smell like then?" But I stuck to my guns. And I spent $15 on a bottle of laundry detergent.

And yes, it is fairly awesome. I don't know if it is $15 worth of awesome because you can buy a fairly good bottle of wine for $15 and that would probably make me happier in the long run. But being able to just pump out the stuff and not having to measure is definitely cool. And the bottle is small and not unwieldy so there is much less in the trash. And it doesn't smell like the air over a chicken farm.

Another purchase I made that fine day was a bottle of Downy Simple Pleasures fabric softener in Spice Blossom Dare. Isn't that the most idiotic name for a fabric softener that you have ever heard? What is it "daring" me to do? Write a sexually charged blog post about doing my laundry? Because BOO-YA DOWNY. I'M ALREADY THERE. It also made me think of Virginia Dare, who was the first English baby born in the New World and part of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island. And yes, I'm cool like that.

And now folks let me tell you the main reason I am writing this post. When you combine these two things together, the scent is OUT OF CONTROL. It is so good. Like slap your mama good. Like I wash my laundry and need a cigarette good. In fact, let me lay it out math-style for all you back to school'ers out there:

Method Laundry detergent + Downy Spice Blossom Dare = candy + sex + new shoes + new movie starring Robert Downey Jr. and Liev Shrieber as pastry chefs who save the world

And in other news, I'm afraid I need to get out more.