How is it already December?  I have no idea what happened to the last three weeks; November absolutely flew by.  The end of the semester is always so busy, and I’ve been running around like a crazy woman trying to get everything wrapped up before Christmas break.  That being said, I’ve pushed my blog down to the bottom of my priority list.  I’ll work on that…

I’m working on my lecture for tomorrow’s class, so I don’t have much time for a “real” post, but I wanted to post something so that those of you who are still checking my little blog know that I’m still alive and still posting.  I’ll work on getting a longer post up later this week.

In the mean time, I’ll leave with you a mini story from yesterday:

I am in the bad habit of taking my clean clothes out of the dryer and laying them neatly on my couch until I have time to fold them.  When things are calm, I can be quite on top of things, folding and putting away the laundry almost immediately.  When life gets busy, however, my pile of clean clothes can stack up quite a bit.  Given that I live alone, it’s not that big of a deal, though I definitely prefer when I get it done right away.  That being said, it drives my friend Diego crazy. For the last couple of years, he’s been on my case about putting my laundry up as soon as I take it out of the dryer.  He’s an impressive immediate folder-and-put-awayer himself, so he just doesn’t understand how I can leave my clean laundry piled (neatly) up.  He gets on my case about it a lot, but I tend to just blow him off and happily go about my life.

Well, (and it pains me to write this), it turns out I should have listened to Diego.

As I said at the beginning of this post, the last few weeks have been busy. I can hardly see myself coming or going, and I’ve let many things, including my laundry, sort of slide to the wayside.  As a result, I have huge pile of clean laundry (some folded, some neatly stacked) sitting on a chair in my living room–the same chair that I often unload my bags onto when I get home from work.  This system of taking what I need from the chair when I need them has been working for me, and I’ve been in no hurry to put the clothes away.

That is, I was in no hurry to put the clothes away until yesterday.

You see, yesterday, for the first time in a couple of weeks, I popped out of bed in the morning and really felt like I had it together.  I got up a little earlier than usual, I made breakfast, picked up my living room, graded some papers, and ran an errand all before work. In addition, I was having a “cute” day, and I was feeling pretty smart.

I grabbed my bags, left my apartment, waved hello to the lawn care people, smiled at a teenage kid walking by, and said hi to a neighbor.  I ran my errand, drove to work, and parked my car.  As I was sauntering up to my office, I was feeling pretty with it.  This was going to be a good day, I thought to myself.  It was at the exact moment that this thought was running through my head that I caught sight of something unusual on my bag.  I looked down only to discover that I had been walking around all morning with a pair of clean underwear stuck to the outside of my bag.

Oh, Erin.

Thankfully, I found it before I actually made it into my office or walked in view of any students.  Unfortunately, I had been out and about waving and smiling at random strangers all morning.  I suppose that might explain the look the teenage kid gave me or the big goofy smile I received from one of the lawn care guys.

Feeling humiliated, I told Diego about the situation, and instead of the sweet compassion I was looking for, he just said that maybe if I would put away my laundry immediately, I wouldn’t have to worry about these kinds of situations happening.  I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that I flaunted my panties to the world or the fact that I gave Diego the satisfaction of saying “I told you so.”

Stupid static cling.

I’ve since put the clothes away and promised myself that all future departures from my apartment will include a thorough check for any and all stray panties.

Anyway, hope you all are having a good week!  Check back soon for another new post.

*I’d like to note that Diego may know best about the folding laundry timeline, but I refuse to make a public proclamation that he knows best about anything else.