Sock it to me

Last night, amid the other usual loads of laundry, I manged to squeeze in the basket of baby clothes that had been loitering in Sam's room. As I loaded the washer, I marveled at how many it seemed to hold in comparison to the "big clothes" the rest of us wear and wash. I know the baby isn't going to exactly be debuting on a red carpet anytime soon after Sunday, but the little guy certainly needs at least a few freshly laundered onesies, blankets and socks. I tossed a handful of tiny socks into the washer, remembering sage advice from a friends of mine years ago -- get a lingerie bag (the kind with a zipper) and wash them in that... you'll never lose any socks. I laughed. The thought of trudging back upstairs to retrieve said lingerie bag in my bathroom was almost unbearable. I'll just remember it next time, I thought to myself. Besides, I'm right here to move the clothes to the dryer and then take them up to fold. How could I possibly lose anything?

Fast forward an hour or so, and there I am sitting on the bed folding clean, soft, warm onesies, sleepers, blankets and socks. Now, you have to understand, Jeff and I have sort of an ongoing joke about how much we both detest the "sock sorting" chore of the laundry. With five white-athletic-sock wearing men in the house -- two adults, three boys -- there is always a huge pile of socks to be matched. Inevitably, I end up with a handful that have no mates. Up until this past weekend, I kept a plastic shopping bag filled with unmatched socks--when I found a solo sock lying around, I immediately grabbed the bag and pawed through it, searching for its friend. Finally, it occurred to me that no one had been complaining about not having enough socks, even with the large number I'd saved in the bag. I made an executive decision while leading the "purge" this past weekend and pitched the bag of mismatched socks. Strange as it may sound, the action was liberating. But I digress...

So, there I am finishing the baby clothes and begin matching teeny, tiny socks -- and I realize I have four without mates.

In the immortal words of Homer J. Simpson... "D'OH!"