(Laundry) Basket Case

One of my friends is having a baby.  (YAY! You know who you are!) When I found out she was pregnant, I was surprised and, then for a moment, weirdly envious.

Not because I want to have a baby. I don’t want to have a baby.

But because my friend has her shit together enough that she can be like, Hell yeah, I’m having a baby!* and know, deep within her soul, that she can have this baby and be a great mom and it’s all going to be completely fabulous. I mean, I imagine that there’s probably some of that pregnant lady stuff happening in her head (like the “HOLY CRAP I’M GROWING A PERSON” thoughts, which would have me curled up on the floor in the – hahaha – fetal position) but she’s mostly cool as a cucumber.

Which is why I was envious.

Because I’m never cool as a cucumber. I am a mess. I’m … a tomatillo. Or some other weird produce item.

Here’s one of MANY things that lets me know that I am not with it enough to have a baby:

Laundry blindness.

I think there are two kind of people in the world. The kind who have no idea what laundry blindness is, and the kind who chuckled, knowingly, when they read the previous paragraph.

Laundry blindness is an inability to see laundry, as though it doesn’t exist. The hamper may be overflowing, but that means nothing. **

The afflicted individual might run out of clean underwear. S/he will then think: “That’s weird. I used to have plenty of underwear,” and will then GO TO THE STORE AND BUY MORE. Because being out of clean underwear has no connection with a failure to do laundry – how can it, when laundry doesn’t seem to exist?

I have been diagnosed with laundry blindness. The only cure is this: I MUST follow a strict laundry schedule. If I get off schedule? It’s not pretty because by the time something in my head thinks, “Hey, shouldn’t we, you know, wash some clothes or something?” it’s like laundrymageddon in there. Honestly.  

If I can’t be counted on to wash my own clothes, I can’t have a baby.

I mean, really.

My momentary envy was, however, quickly replaced by joy. Because the truth is, I don’t need to have a baby. SO MANY OTHER PEOPLE (my friend not the least among them) ARE DOING IT FOR ME!

There are babies I can hang out with everywhere.

Which is awesome, and not simply because I don’t have to worry about washing their little baby clothes.

*I don’t think my friend has ever said “Hell, yeah” EVER, now that I think about it.

**until it starts looking messy, which offends my highly developed sense of order. Which is the other reason I can’t have a baby – I can’t cope with messiness and disorder, and babies are tornadoes of bodily fluids etc by DEFINITION.  I would be a basket case. And that would be sad.