lamentations of the laundress

When the laundry is made clean, then the people are blinded. "Where are my socks?" they ask, even though their very socks are before them, in the basket or even in a designated sock drawer. "Where is my shirt?" the people ask, because they are unwilling to turn their faces, even to turn their faces to the left and see where their shirts have been placed. And when I say to you, "Right there" and I point, you do not incline your eyes to where I am pointing but look wildly at the ceiling.

When the laundry is made dirty, I, the mom, merciful unless I'm annoyed, wise and faithful, carry the ketchup-laden clothing down 2 flights of stairs and make great mounds of filthy garments, and then I wash those garments, because I am altogether wonderful, although I smell like pee-clothes, and then I dry those clothes and then I carry the clothes up 2 flights of stairs and fold them and put them in baskets, for your drawers are full of clothes you won't wear and I am too tired from answering questions to sort them. And when I have done this thing and I should find favor in your sight, then you decide that every sort of evil should be done. And you upend the baskets and use them for a cat cage or wear them as a robot head and you take the towels and wear them as capes and all your folded clothes are utterly downcast. And though I chide you, you hear me not, you are as the deaf. 

And though you have done much evil, I would forgive it all if you would not then wear the clean clothes outside for a challenge involving spraying an entire can of sunscreen on your brother and then after you have emptied the can, then his anger rages against you and he then pushes you into the dirt and then, indeed, you come inside and sit on the couch and mourn and use 4 towels to dry yourself. And when your father comes home and his weeping is heard in all the land because he cannot find a towel to use one time and then throw on the bathroom floor, then my own rage burns against your father.

I, the mom, hungry and only relatively sane, am going to throw away all of your clothes and make you go to school naked. Or maybe I'll just wash them again.