Now I mostly find little pots of lip gloss that occasionally slip past me. They turn up, empty, in the dryer, the clothes having acquired a kind of adolescent sheen. (I don't know what teenage girls did before lip gloss was invented. I guess their untreated lips just sort of scabbed over and fell off.)
I wash the grown-up laundry, too. And I try to separate everything into different piles: darks, lights, bleachable whites. When each load is dry, I put it into a plastic basket and bring it back upstairs. Everything is usually done by Sunday evening.
_____Children's Campaign_____
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Washington Post columnist John Kelly is raising money for the Children's National Medical Center, one of the nation's leading pediatric hospitals. You may make a tax-deductible contribution online anytime between Nov. 29th and Jan. 21st. Thank you for your support.
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_____By John Kelly_____
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A Long Ride for a Good Time (The Washington Post, Mar 9, 2005)
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Giving Us the Old Song and Dance (The Washington Post, Mar 8, 2005)
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An Index of, Um, Accomplishment (The Washington Post, Mar 7, 2005)
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A License to Ask Silly Questions (The Washington Post, Mar 4, 2005)
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More Columns
_____Live Discussions_____
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John Kelly's Washington Live (Live Online, Mar 11, 2005)
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John Kelly's Washington Live (Live Online, Mar 4, 2005)
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John Kelly's Washington Live (Live Online, Feb 25, 2005)
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Did you know that all freshwater eels, the species known as Anguilla rostrata, grow from eggs laid in the warm waters of the Sargasso Sea? Tiny baby eels, known as pelagic larvae, drift with the ocean currents for about a year before migrating into estuaries and bays. Some continue their migration, moving into rivers and streams. Each eel, as it nears the end of its life some five to 20 years later, somehow knows to return to the Sargasso Sea to spawn.
I have just described the life cycle of my laundry. Once I bring it upstairs, I dump it on the bed, where it is picked through by my children, My Lovely Wife and me.
Sometimes it is actually put away: folded, hung on hangers, put in drawers and closets. Often, though, like an eel on its lonely, circular journey, it goes from the bed to a pile on the floor. There it is picked through as needed to clothe various Kellys. The clean pile falls as the dirty pile grows, and suddenly it's Saturday again.
The circle of life. The circle of laundry. It's nice to have a purpose, don't you think?
First in an Occasional Series
The 2,160 miles of the Appalachian Trail are divided into 11 guidebooks for hikers. Last year, sales of the New York-New Jersey guide overtook the perennial leaders, the guides to North Carolina-Georgia and Massachusetts-Connecticut. Thirteen percent of all guide books sold were the one dedicated to the New York-New Jersey portion of the trail.
Here was the breakdown for 2004, according to the Appalachian Trail Conference's Brian King:
1. New York-New Jersey: 13.0%
2. North Carolina-Georgia: 11.7%
3. Massachusetts-Connecticut: 11.5%
4. Maine: 10.0%
5. Tennessee-North Carolina: 9.8%
6. New Hampshire-Vermont: 9.2%
7. Pennsylvania: 7.9%
8. Maryland-Northern Virginia: 7.4%
9. Shenandoah National Park: 7.0%
10. Southwest Virginia: 6.6%
11. Central Virginia: 5.8%
Are you in possession of some arcane bit of data? Or do you know a good way to get Nutella stains out of a cashmere sweater? I'm at kellyj@washpost.com.
