Laundry Chutes are dangerous

Did you think I was gone for good?

Nope, just trying to get my life sorted out.

I am on a laundry kick. With only one person, you can go a whole lotta time before you do laundry but eventually you open the pants drawer, to find, no pants. Wow! how does that happen? So I put on a pair of sweats and march all the way to the basement. To the basement laundry room where creepy crawlies exist and I try to stay out of it.

How strange! no pants in the laundry hamper. I am officially pant less. I accuse Olive and she wags her tail, which I have no idea what that means and I'm pretty sure she has no idea either. I trot back upstairs, no pants. Now I am not the smartest bulb in the world but I am pretty sure I own pants. Pants that for the life of me I cannot find.

I head over to the laundry chute. Now I have an old house. In the olden days, men planned the homes and built the homes but women were expected to run them. So it is nice in the old house that I drive right into the garage with a lovely tool bench and power galore. Men needed that and it was convenient that it was so close to them. Men however, did not need the laundry room and therefore it is located the furthest distance from the point of dirty clothes, in the basement right next to the furnace, the coal chute, the water tank, and the sump pump to keep the basement dry. I know, it is so brilliant to put it right there.

Of course, three flights of stairs up is where all the dirty stuff accumulates, so they gave the old house a laundry chute, going down. Going up, is a whole different ball game. It involves a woman, baskets, trying to see around the giant load of towels and not falling all the way back down the stairs. Add in two dogs twirling around and it is just a match made in heaven.

So today I peer down the laundry chute. It is dark. I reach my hand down and can feel something, which I desperately hope is clothes. I decide to get the broom. I will use the broom to shove the blockage down the laundry chute. Down the stairs I go and retrieve the broom. Up stairs I go. I shove and shove and push and push. Nothing happens. I have now made a lovely tight brick of clothes that are plugging the chute. I go to the second floor and open up the second door to the chute, nothing, which means it is somehow wedged up on the first floor.

I trudge back upstairs to access the problem. Of course, the dogs think this is a fine game and lets just play it all day long. I sweep the stairs, since they are covered in dog hair and I have the broom out. Then in hits me. I will throw something VERY HEAVY down the opening, it will knock the wedge of clothes loose and victory shall be mine.

Hmmmm! what to throw? Then it comes to me, my shoe. My tennis shoe. I have ginormous feet and that should just send those stupid clothes plummeting to the basement with my shoe on top, like a cherry on top of a sundae. I get the shoe. I go upstairs to the laundry chute. I huck that shoe for all it is worth. I wait for the lovely sound of clothes falling. I hear . . . nothing.

Nothing! that was a giant shoe. How did my brilliant plan not work?

I stare down into blackness. I go back to the second floor and stare up into blackness. I reach up and touch a shoe lace. I yank. Nothing. I yank harder. Still nothing. I go back upstairs, I shove that broom with all my might and I use some curse words for good measure.

Everything gives way. The broom shoots out of my hand and down the chute. I lose my balance and hit my head on the wall. I hear the clothes falling and it is a lovely sound. I am gleeful. I make the dogs sing "I am women, hear me roar."

I run downstairs to see pants, lots and lots of pants. I start to separate the clothes, when it hits me, where is the shoe? Shouldn't the shoe be on top of the heap. Where in the hell is the cherry shoe.

I can barely crawl up the stairs. I totally am in major hatred of the laundry chute. I look up and down on the second floor, I look down from the top floor. I get the broom and huck it down the chute. It comes out, with no shoe. I can feel the laces but no matter how hard I pull that shoe is wedged somewhere in the chute. I am not singing anymore. That shoe is still in there.

So the good news, is I now have pants but I will be wearing flip-flops for the winter since my shoe is vacationing inside my house. Literally.