The Blue View - When Blue does Pink

When we divided up the various boat chores, some were arbitrarily assigned as blue or pink while others just naturally fell into one of the categories. Just because a job is labeled pink doesn't mean I'm not allowed to do it, however, it's just that it is usually Marcie's bailiwick. A case in point is the laundry, which on Nine of Cups is definitely a pink job. Now that Marcie has been back in the States for a few weeks, I'd re-worn my underwear about as much as I could get away with, and the laundry bag was full. My choices were to go buy more or do the laundry. Now, it isn't as if I've never done my own laundry. I was a bachelor several decades ago, and if memory serves, I did wash my clothes back then. How hard could it be?

I asked around about where the laundromat was and whether anyone could give me a lift. Gillian, a friend of a friend stopped by, and said she'd be happy to give me a ride.

Gillian is a pretty big gal, about 6 feet, 200 pounds, and works as a shipwright at a boatyard a few miles away. I suspect she is probably big and tough enough not to take much guff from her co-workers. We seemed an odd pair as she went off to look for boat parts while I was washing the clothes. We climbed into her 3/4 ton 4WD pickup and headed over to the laundromat. She said she'd be back in an hour or so, which would be perfect.

I separated the light clothes from the dark, added the appropriate amount of soap, inserted my coins, started the wash, and read my Kindle for a half an hour. Other than a colossal waste of time, this didn't seem too difficult.

Once the wash was done, I loaded it into the dryer, set it to high (cotton) and resumed reading my Kindle. I checked on it about 10 minutes later. There was an odd smell in the air. The clothes were extremely hot. I couldn't even handle them. So hot, in fact, that two of Marcie's panties had literally melted to the sides of the dryer. I was pretty sure this wasn't normal. I turned the temperature down to medium and when I checked again in five minutes, the clothes were only slightly warm. So the blue in me kicked in and I then ran it on hot for two minutes, then on medium for two minutes and so on until they were dry.

Other than that, there was only one other slight problem. Apparently something with ink must have previously been in the dryer (or maybe it was the molten panties), because several of our t-shirts now had what appeared to be small blue ink spots on them. I checked all the pockets and didn't find anything that could have caused it, and I was careful to put the dark and red clothes in a separate washer from the light colors. It remains a mystery to me.

So now Marcie is low on panties and we're both low on tee's. I am convinced that these were mishaps that could have happened to anyone and one shouldn't lose one's job over something so minor. On the other hand, if I let Marcie think I'm inept at laundry, she'll probably never let me do it again. That's a blue thought, ain't it?

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