Monday’s Treasure Chest: The Laundry Doer

I really don’t like Mondays. I know, I know. Who does, right? In addition to not liking Mondays in general, I’m pretty sure someone declared this “let’s irritate Lee” day and didn’t tell me. Seriously, with all the craziness and irritability, I would have bet it was a full moon. Of course, maybe it was just me who was feeling a bit crazy and irritable, but dammit, I’m entitled every now and then. (Gil, do NOT comment on that statement!)

I’ve spent some time today thinking about ways I could make my Mondays better. After ruling out taking every Monday as a vacation day, I have decided to make Monday my Treasure Chest day. “What is that?” you ask. The idea came from a tweet I read earlier today from @dose_of_love.  I’m a sucker for affirmation tweets and it always make me smile when I see one pop up in my twitter feed that I’m pretty sure was written solely for me, as this affirmation today was. It said “Count your blessings and you will find, life is a treasure chest, look inside.” Those simple little words have inspired me to take my usually blue Mondays and spend the day looking for treasure. My goal is to share that treasure with you guys every Monday. Some Mondays I may only find one treasure and some days I may be bombarded by them. I suspect that when I start looking for the treasures in my life, they will become much for evident.

Today I’m opening up my chest and I’m sharing the treasure that is my husband and how he’s always looking out for me. I’m not talking about how he takes care of me in the ways a husband takes care of his wife and family by providing and protecting them. I’m talking about the every day, little, unnoticeable actions that he seems to do without even thinking about it. Today was a perfect example of one of those events.

Gil is the general laundry doer in our home (because he’s SOOOOO good at it), but I like to take care of my own work clothes so that I can hang them right from the dryer so as to prevent wrinkles and having to iron. As I was heading to bed last night, I mentioned to him that I had put my last load of dirty laundry in a basket on top of the dryer and that I would wash that today when I got home because I was just too tired to stay up waiting for the dryer to finish. In an attempt to convince me he was listening, he nodded, but he was totally and completely distracted by the basketball game he was watching.  We said goodnight and off to bed I went.

This evening I headed straight for the laundry room. No, I wasn’t that anxious to do laundry but I knew if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have clean clothes for work tomorrow, and bathrobes and sweatpants are really frowned upon in my workplace. Now, imagine my pleasant surprise when I noticed my basket of laundry was folded. Then imagine my horror when I realized my new, cold water, delicate cycle only shirt was in that load. I fumbled through the basket only to realize that only the top few items were actually folded. Whew, maybe it was ok. But wait, there are more folded clothes near the bottom of the basket. I started wondering what the heck he did.  He was on his way to Danny’s scout meeting so I called him.

“Hey baby, did you wash my clothes today?” I asked with a smile.

“No, I saw Dudley (the spoiled princess cat) was sleeping on them and they looked wrinkled so I ran them through the dryer to get the wrinkles out for you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and then I folded them so they wouldn’t be wrinkled. I know how you hate for your clothes to be wrinkled.”

“Aww, thanks baby. So, you didn’t WASH them?”

“No, why?”

“Remember last night when I said I was putting my dirty laundry in a basket on top of the dryer?”

“Ummmm. Kinda. Maybe I remember you saying that. Yeah, I remember now. I wondered why they didn’t smell….clean.”

We both laughed a little and I said goodbye as I was putting my neatly folded dirty clothes into the washer. My first reaction was to grumble to myself that if he had paid attention to me instead of the basketball game, then he would have remembered our conversation and wouldn’t have wasted his time. But, really. Who could do that? He saw a situation (my clothes were wrinkled) and he took time out of his day to try and fix it for me, so that I wouldn’t have to iron later. He probably didn’t even think twice about what he was doing. He’s pretty good like that. Even though his actions were wasted, his thoughtful intentions once again melted my heart. For a moment today, I fell in love with my husband all over again. And that’s why he’s my treasure, my blessing, for today.