Odd Socks . Wednesday May 19, 2010

I remember years ago that my mother became very excited because she had a new vacuum cleaner. I distinctly remember at the time thinking “how sad”. The fact that it was a vacuum cleaner that caused her so much pleasure, made me believe that her life was devoid of real enjoyment. Well Mum, now you can have the last laugh because I am now officially “sad” and by my own admission.

Last Friday my new washing machine was plumbed in (thank you Marcelo – what would I do without you) and today my tumble dryer was hooked up. I was so happy. Up until now I have done without a tumble dryer so everything that has been washed has had to be line dried. This was fine when the outdoor temperature was high, and humidity notwithstanding, drying was not a problem.

Now that the weather has turned much colder and it is still pretty damp, getting things dry had been proving to be rather more difficult. Add into the equation, the fact that the laundry room still floods every time it rains and last week I discovered that the base of the cabinets have become completely rotten from all the water, and the smell of mould in there is so bad that I can’t leave anything in there without it acquiring a pretty disgusting whiff. That has meant line drying everything on racks in the kitchen. Just as well there are only two of us. Much more laundry and you wouldn’t be able to turn around without bumping into a rack.

So today, I dried my first load in the dryer. It is huge, American and swallowed a load of laundry in no time at all – bliss.

I have had a washing machine for all the time that we have been in the house, - it was rented of course and I was very happy to see the back of it. It was Brazilian; and had 4 settings – soak, wash and rinse and spin. There was nothing as sophisticated as hot/warm/cold water or fast/medium/slow spin. And as for delicates or hand wash – forget it. However the worse thing about it was the fact that it made the most awful noise. It was a top loader with an agitating arm sticking up from the bottom. Every time this arm moved it made a sort of high pitched EEEEEEE sort of noise. It was so annoying but having spoken to several other people, it seems, this is perfectly normal. So, having an American front loader with programmable choices of wash is absolute bliss. Again I say, how sad.

But here is the crux of this blog. What is it about tumble dryers that produce odd socks? So far, since being here I have washed pairs of socks. They go through the EEEEEE machine and come out the other side, get dried and paired up and then put back in the correct sock drawer.

When we were living in the US, I had an entire drawer devoted to odd socks. You can guarantee that the day I decided that the sock had been there long enough and it was never going to see its partner and threw it out, so its pair appeared – maddening.

Emma used to have a really annoying habit of coming down in the morning with no socks. When I told her to go and get some, she could never be bothered to go back upstairs and so would raid the odd sock drawer. Several days later those odd socks would make it through the wash ( well sometimes) and I would get very excited because I knew that there were odd ones waiting in the drawer to be paired up. How annoying to discover that it was Emma’s game of taking socks from the drawer. Little madam.

When we left to come to Brazil I threw the lot away. There must have been at least 15 maybe 20 socks that were never going to see their mate again. I was determined that starting afresh; I was never again going to have a drawer dedicated to odd socks.

Well, today as I have said, I did my first load of drying in my new dryer and guess what? There were 6 odd socks. Go figure.