on decadence

i have a confession.

i do not wash my underwear. i don't wash my socks, either.... nor sweaty t-shirts, nor Beloved's smelly jock straps. i don't wash kitchen dish-towels or household rags.

and no, i don't throw it all away... i SEND it all away... to the wonderful world of Wash n' Fold .... where stinky laundry becomes sweet. thanks to wash n' fold, my laundry is Under Control, my laundry room floor is clean and neat. not for me the weekly or daily Search for the Missing Sock. wash n' fold has elves who personally accompany each sock through the entire wash cycle from pre-rinse to final spin. they must, i decided, because we've never lost a sock since starting with wash n' fold.

all the dirty stuff gets dropped off and then is picked up again, folded, clean, and sorted. and all this little miracle costs is $1.25 a lb! it used to be even more perfect but then they stopped picking up and delivering. oh, well. nothing's perfect. at least not for long. so why the rant?

i can't quite See the Voice that whispers, in the far side of my mind, that nothing comes without a price, that $1.25 is just the tip of an iceberg that is built of human sweat, human bones and human skin. i have achieved a place in our culture where i can delegate one of the most distasteful, yet intimate of personal care chores onto someone else. under the heading of do-unto-others, i am perfectly aware on some level that the hourly wage earned by the person actually washing my clothes in no way compensates for the tedium, the distastefulness of the job.

and yet, under the heading of this-is-perfectly-okay-because-this-is-a-free-country-and-if-they-don't-like-it-they-can-do-something-else, i continue to live, whether or not that is actually the case.

bless me, Mother, for i continue to sin.