Will it all come out in the wash

 PEACE AND JOY—DOES IT ALL COME OUT IN THE WASH?

It’s early morning and the dryer just stopped spinning.  Now due to some lovely architecture and the fact that we dropped our full sized dryer in the move last spring, we have a mini-dryer.  It, of course, is not called a mini-dryer it’s a “space saver, it’s economy-sized, it’s “apartment friendly—it’s “great for young professionals on the go.”  In short it holds a towel, three shirts, and 9 socks which  may have been 10 but one always goes missing.  Now they should have called. It the slot machine dryer because most of the time. You can sit and wash it spin but nothing  of value is going to  happen and you almost never get  a good return for your time or money.   Okay...enough complaining about that let’s get  down to  the river and beat this entry on a rock.  

Sometimes seeking peace and joy requires a bit of musing and today I started musing about how many terms we use that are  laundry related.  For example I’m not sure  recent events will all come out  in the wash and  I am feeling like  we have all been put through the wringer over the past year.  for certain our attention is taxed by a mind-numbing  flood of information that lasts only as long as the global-political spin cycle.   Sometimes it seems that the average  person gets  reamed, steamed, or dry cleaned and some people  get just plain hung out to dry.   Tempers run hot and cold and while many folks just hope for a  normal day or two we all only have time to spin and rinse away yesterday before setting out for another heavy duty day.  Just to maintain our current status, many folks are turned inside out, lain flat, or treated very delicately so to speak.  

On the other hand the washer and dryer doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom.  Sure it suggests we separate things, however, most the time. You can throw a lot of things in together and  things turn out  as good as new and maybe in life we can put together a lot of different things and things will come out  better than when they went in—with the possible  exception of “new” red stuff and white  stuff.  Even then you might come out with something that makes it seem like you are viewing the world through rose-colored glasses and that wouldn’t be all that bad  would it?  These machines give us lots of choices.  there isn’t just scalding hot or freezing cold water.  There is hot, warm, normal, cool, and cold.  There is heavy duty, normal perma-press, and delicate.  There is rinse and spin only.  The dryer offers  low and high heat and no heat along with “fluff only which could be labeled  “the news cycle because  there’s a lot of spin but no outcome that I have noticed.  Anyway the point is..there are choices which means no matter what you want to bring to  the situation with your baskets, tubs, and hampers...you are going to have options and in seeking peace and joy —-and in most of life—options are good.  

Oh and let’s not forget fabric softeners we can add things that make our clothes feel and smell better.   Maybe once a week each of us should try to be a cultural fabric  softener and make the world. A little softer and smell a little better or stink a little less so to speak.   

Well... the dryer is  done and unlike. Me  I can control the wrinkles if I do what is needed so I’d better get to it.  So... let’s all toss a bit of our outer shell in... add a little  liquid  that may make us bubbly, and take  life for a spin cycle or two... 

More  soon.