On laundry

While coconut trees and stunning sunsets over calm seas are part of daily life here in The Micro, one can't ALWAYS be thinking about trees and looking into the sky. One does, occasionally, get interrupted by the more immediate responsibilities she must tend to, and even those can be a handful. Take the example of doing laundry, a simple chore at most. Maybe it is medium hard if it was cashmere (non applicable in this region). It then never ceases to amaze me how this simple chore can cause such complex problems.

Let it be known that our laundry machine is a raging beast. It ingests perfectly normal clothing of typical proportions, chomps on it some, and then spits back a pile that resembles the original, but maybe stretched out, stained (where there weren't stains), ripped, bleached (when there wasn't bleach).

So now that my clothes are effectively over-stretched, spotted all over with mysterious black dots, ripped, and bleached in awkward places, I'm thinking that this doing laundry business needs to be re examined. Serious consideration is being placed on the hand washing route: time consuming, but perhaps the preventative solution to the black dot mystery.

It's possible that I may be the worst Micronesian laundry washer, ever. People who have a knack for it seem to possess an intuitive gift of timing. Taking the clothes off the line too early will lead to a moldy stench entrenched into the fabric that will decrease your likability at an exponential rate. Taking the clothes off too late will lead to it becoming re-drenched by the next onslaught of rain, thus ruining your efforts to produce clean clothes. Laundry timing skills are clutch for survival, and go hand in hand with cloud watching skills (something I also lack at the moment).

Cloud watching skills are equally, if not more important, than the former; mostly because skilled cloud watchers are able to reduce the number of sticky situations they find themselves in. Aside from producing consistent and excellent laundry results, a seasoned cloud watcher can reduce the occurrence of a larger situation, like getting stuck on the opposite side of the island because of a thunderstorm. At the very best, my cloud watching skills can be currently classified at the basic CloudRunner level. CloudRunners are not able to predict the movement or severity of the clouds at a preferable distance, but see the oncoming heavy clouds right about the cross over the island, acknowledges their presence, and then engages in a heart pounding bike vs. nature race home to see who can first get to the clothes on the laundry line.

Since we're on the topic of clothes, my tastes have changed considerably. Granted, I've never really had an affinity for fashion. Nonetheless, a recent desire to add more frills, sequins, and bows to the already colorful knee length potato sacks we call "nuk nuks" was nonexistent prior to arriving the Micro. A typical conversation exchange concerning daily attire goes something like this:

"Hey, I really like your nuk nuk. The two buttons at the bottom really complement the sewn apron at the collar."

“Thanks. Are you thinking of asking your host mother to make you another nuk- nuk?”

“Yeah, she’s great with frills at the skirt bottom. I bought the floral fabric yesterday. Do you think I should add more sequins across the top, or sew a flower across the skirt middle? Would doing both be too much?”

Clearly, it's a silly question, because we all know that there is no such thing as it being too much.