Skip to main content

Don't Waste Your Breath

I did some laundry on Sunday.
I hate doing laundry.
But the whole house was out of towels. And blankets.
Hell, the kids were gonna be out of underwear, too.
I noticed when I was folding everything, I had put in The Blanket.
The Cat Birth Blanket.

Sometimes, I try to make laundry fun.
So, sometimes something I would normally throw in the garbage, I will wash. The Blanket was a beautiful yellow sheet I had used in haste when Stray Cat went into labour a few years back.
It ended up being a pretty awesome mess.
I wanted to know if it could be cleaned.
I found out it could be.
You would never know a Stray Cat had babies on it.
Except, there is this patch of faded blood on the one corner.
The Blanket was such a sunny shade of colour, I decided to keep it anyway.

Monday evening, I decided to have a bath. I often decide to do this. But tonight I wanted it out of the way before Cindy came back. Tuesdays are my early days. My way too early days. Cindy now spends the night on Mondays.
I had a glorious bathtime.
I put my favorite smelling bubble bath of the moment into the rushing water. My favorite towel was clean and I laid it out for myself. I got out my sexiest bedtime clothing I could get away with without poor Ian thinking I was hitting on him...The water was actually the perfect temperature, for once.
I read Plato.
I shaved my legs.
I got to wrap myself in fluffy white softness.
I tossed Plato on my bed after I was done and I admired how sexy and how not sexy I looked in the my wooden oval mirror.
And then I turned to get Plato, I was not done with him.
That is when I saw Them.
Cindy's Dirty Underwear.
Beside My Pillow.
"Ian!" I cried like a girl.
And Ian came running down the hallway.
But Ian did not care if I cried like a girl.
Ian said no.
I had to move the Dirty Underwear by myself.
While I thought of all the reasons my employee might want to take off her Dirty Underwear in my room; I went and made her bed for the night with The Blanket.
I could hear The Voice grinning at me.
Don't Waste Your Breath, I warned him.

Comments

AJ in Nashville said…
If The Voice grins in the forest, and Queenie wasn't there to hear, would he make a sound?
Karri Bowman said…
Maybe Cindy and Ian are having a secret love affair.
Phoesable said…
there's something plain wrong with leaving your dirty underwear next to someone else's pillow. such a person deserves the WORST that can be brought... like, like, a blanket that a cat gave birth on!

LOL, Q. Great story.
Self Induced said…
By the way, my cousin Eric is staying over at our house for a while, and after I had an awesome baseball game (we actually tied it, 7-7) I put one of my nasty socks under his bedsheets. Good times.
Terrible lie said…
This is absolutly brilliant!!!
Brilliant i say!!!
They need spell checker on the comments!!!!

Popular posts from this blog

The Village Itself

Across the road from my home is an apartment building. It is made of brown brick and has three stories. It also has plenty of windows I often forget about while I go about my daily and nightly routines. I also forget my curtains are white, lacey and see-through scraps purchased from an aisle in Wal-Mart. Fifteen apartments. That may all house people with binoculars. It was the muggiest night this past summer had owned. Brenda was down for a visit and when she comes, it usually means a night spent over on my couch for her. Brenda lives in another town. It was one in the morning, no sleep to be found between the two us. We sat slouched on my front porch trying to capture the occasional breeze offered, sucking it deep into our lungs, praying it would cool us down. Our glasses of Pepsi sweated warning us how warm the drink would taste in our mouths. "Tilly! Tilly!" the shout sat our spines straight as we looked across the street to the where the sound was coming fr...

Unending Paper Chase

You check in on me when you get your break for lunchtime now. You never used to. You ask me, "Are you all right?" You breath in and out hard once through your nose, like it is a chore to even ask. It seems to me that for you everything is an obligation, even holding my hand. Everything you do doesn't feel like anything more than surveillance now. I don't want the days to end and it is getting harder to sleep at night. I am starting to feel sick, like I have the flu. I'm always cold. But I haven't eaten much lately. My stomach is filled with acid. I smile at you anyway. I write two letters a day. One to keep you smiling and one that tells of the truth, but they both look the same. You do not know that I form certain words and sentences in a way that triggers me, in a way that reminds me of what is real. It is something that I started doing in grade school for tests, so that I could easily remember the answers, and then later, so my mother would not underst...

Rosy Cheeks

My son's circle and lined wall, created with the permanent red marker, became something he liked to show-off. I guess the other kids who come here liked it, too.   I guess he wanted to show-off more. That is one of the many hypothesis I have about how the Map of Africa came to be. I just keep hoping my kid is some kind of odd little genius.  On the morning I discovered the map of Africa, I was not speechless and I could breathe. "What is this?" I demanded. And loudly. My son shrugged his shoulders. "I like it. It's nice. Took a long time." He had chipped paint off the wall. His walls are white. That morning, it was discovered his room used to be beige.   And it was starting to look like a room in an abandoned house. I thought to myself that maybe this look would be the in thing  20 years from now and he could make millions. He could be a visionary. It was a good enough excuse for me to leave the room. I used it...