April, 2016

Prior Planning Pays
(or)
Lack of Planning on Your Part Does Not Constitute an Emergency on Mine

"Mommy!"

The tones coming from upstairs were those of horror along the lines of discovering the dog does eat homework, the $325 textbook you had borrowed from the library had been the recipient of a full bottle of ink, or worse. I strolled from the kitchen to the foot of the stairs and briefly considered a lecture on bellowing down the stairs, deciding a, "Yes?" called up in a volume barely enough to reach the second floor was better.

Lexi tore down the hall and skidded to a stop. "Mommy!" she repeated imploringly, with a tiny moan at the end.

"Yes?" I repeated with a loud sigh.

"I don't have anything to wear for school!"

I stared at her. "Oh?" I said politely.

This was not a shock. Since she had reached a height big enough to drag her laundry down to the basement (I had the dream of a non-cellar laundry room by the time I started collecting Social Security; we had been talking about it for a good five years), it had been her responsibility to bring her laundry down once a week. When she was four, she was pretty good about the chore, though it took an occasional nudge. As time dragged on, she became more forgetful and I became more annoyed with having to remind her. The last reminder was coupled with a warning: if you don't start getting the laundry downstairs in time, you're going to do your own damned laundry. Now things had come to a head. "It's too late to do laundry!"

I made a point of leaning over to peer into the living room at the ugly mantle clock. "Well…it's too late for me to do laundry," I said mildly.

"What can I dooooooooo?!"

I 'thought hard.' "Well…I guess you get to do your own laundry…or go to school in dirty clothes."

It was hard to tell which option was more horrifying. "I don't know how to do laundry!"

I smiled very, very brightly. "It's always a good thing to learn a new skill!"

I almost skipped upstairs. It had been a while since I looked in her room; the mountain of laundry was a little scary. (It reminded me of my laundry in college. Urk.) I hadn't realized how much she had in terms of clothing—no wonder she had gone weeks without coming to this head. "Okay. You only have time to do one load, you'll have to do the rest tomorrow after school."

"Karate!"

"After karate."

"I don't get home until six!" Brows were knit and the voice was climbing up the scale.

I gave her 'the look.' "I'm sorry," I said with excruciating civility. "I am unable to understand words spoken in that tone of voice. Could you please try again?"

Lexi took a deep breath to chase away the whine that I had taught her was incompatible with my hearing since she was about two. "I don't get home until six," she said again, in a more measured tone. I nodded approval. "I can't do all of this."

"True. So you will need to divide your loads over the next days and get caught up."

"But—!"

I held up a hand. "You have the responsibility to get your laundry downstairs on Wednesday and Saturday. Your chores are listed on the chore board and you know full well how to read it. What did I tell you—" I thought back. "A month and a half ago! If you don't get it down on time, I'm not going to nag you any more. Your clothing, your responsibility. How old are you?"

"Seven," she mumbled.

"Old enough. So—let's sort out enough for one load, things you can mix together…"

She hauled down enough full outfits for three days, and had the other laundry sorted into piles for the next days' worth of work—multiple days. "And every day I'm going to add that day's dirty clothes! It's never going to end!"

"Welcome to adulting," I muttered. Down in the basement, I gave her a quick lesson in cycles, temperature, soil level and so forth, as well as dispensing soap and softener (both in pump bottle dispensers, at least). "Okay—you might want to set the kitchen timer so you don't end up accidentally staying up until midnight. The full cycle is forty-five minutes, then you need to throw things into the dryer. If you pull out your shirts and pants after a half hour or so, you can hang them up and they won't be wrinkled, they can air dry and the rest can keep drying and sit overnight."

Lexi followed me back to the kitchen and set the alarm. "Oh, man, I'm going to be up until eleven," she moaned. Ducky, sitting silently at the kitchen table, was strangling on his repressed smile as he thumbed through one of our newest cookbooks. She was normally up until ten or eleven, sneaking chapters of her current book, but this was different. She gave a tiny gasp, and you could almost see the light bulb go overhead. "Oh!" She pelted upstairs, returning in short order with an omnibus of Heinlein juveniles. "Since I finished all my homework, I guess I'll just read while I wait for the alarm," she said almost primly.

Ducky leaned back slightly and caught my eye behind Lexi's back. Seriously, he was going to strangle on the laughter he was stuffing down. I had the sudden realization that I had created a monster. "This is an exception," I said quickly. "Staying up until ten and eleven on a school night is not acceptable. This is why we keep turning out your light. Laundry will be done by nine p.m. Is this understood?" I gave her a light glower.

"Yes, ma'am," she said quickly. She dove into her book.

I think I won this skirmish.

I think.