Tara's no good, awful, terrible no luck day

In my coversations with the world travelers I know, I am often dumbfounded at their sense of surperiority when talking about jet-lag. Recently, Tara and I have learned that 30,000 or 3,000 miles doesn't make much of a difference. Add that we visited three states, two state parks, and five national parks/monuments in six days to the recent daylight savings change, and the 4:30 am departure to the airport, and that two of the three states we visited observe daylight savings and the other doesn't (and is in a different time zone) and finally, add that we waited nearly 45 minutes for our baggage and didn't get home until 1 am on Tuesday night, and you have two very tired gals. The only thing that could make this worse is if we had a 2 year old.

Well, we don't have a two year old, but it got to the point this week that we were telling time based on when we woke up, when we ate and when we were naturally hungry. This meant sometimes that we ate dinner at 11 pm or 1 am or whenever. Needless to say, when we returned home, we were exhausted. Ask me later about the phenomenal varieties of the southwest-lack-of humidity-induced snoring. When we finally went to bed on Tuesday night (2 am), our body clocks were thoroughly confused. It only got worse when Tara had to get up at 7:30 to go to work. After she plowed through 135 emails, she had to leave for class, which went until after six when I picked her up at UMass.

We had grand plans to vegitate in front of the TV and do laundry. As I cooked dinner, Tara took care of some stuff around the house. Once dinner was on, I sorted and started the laundry, which, you should know, is something we try to do at least twice a week because of the size of our dryer. We have a stackable 3/4 size washer/dryer in our apartment. This means the loads are smaller, and it takes longer to do laundry. Well, by last night at 7 when we started laundry, we had at least ten loads. Ten Loads. Ten full loads. In fact, we had so many loads that each color got its own load. Purple. Reds and Pinks. White. Green. Blues and aquas. For some reason we have a lot of aqua colored clothes. Tara's bathingsuit is aqua. My favorite shirt is aqua. A shirt we bought new for vacation that was worn once is is aqua. Wait -- make that two shirts we bought for vacation.

After we finished dinner, cleaned up, and watched some TiVo, I went to take the fourth load out of the dryer, and put the fifth load into the dryer and the sixth load into the washer. It should be known that I hate doing laundry, though I love having clean clothes. Hate it. I find it tedious and annoying, and it never ends. It certainly never ends when you have 10 loads plus sheets and towels, and you've already had a really long day. As I opened the dryer door on the aqua/blue load, I see something strange in the back of the dryer. In fact, the strange thing I see is actually a collection of things, and then, to my horror, THE THING in the back. I load up my arms full of clothes silently gasping at their appearance, grab The Thing out of the dryer and say, "Um, honey?" Still blissfully ignorant Tara says, "Yes, honey?" and I walk into the living room and hand it to her. It. Her lovely, $9.99 ball point Dr. Grip pen, which has now exploded in the dryer, spraying ink all over the clothes, and staining the enamel on the inside of the drying unit. I drop the clothes in front of her and set to work at getting any of the ink off I can while the ink is still wet. I'm scrubbing and scrubbing, but the inside drum of the dryer looks like the outside of a dalmation, and the ink is not budging. I hear Tara say, "FUCK!" a few times, then the familiar sound of the stain remover spray bottle. The clothes are only half dry, so Tara was still holding out hope.

And so there we were, scrubbing then spraying. Spraying and scrubbing. After ten minutes, I had gotten most if not all of the wet ink off of the dryer when I heard the spray bottle stop, and a deep sigh from the living room. When I pulled my head out of the dryer, Tara was standing there, and when I looked at her she wailed, "I'M SOOOOORRRRRRRYYYYY!" and started to cry. I hugged her, then we went into the living room to assess the damage. It wasn't good. Not only did the dryer look a dalmation, we now had seven or eight blue skinned dalmations lying on the living room floor.

We spent the next hour or so spraying, rubbing, scrubbing, and finally, looking on the internet to find some miracle solution. Let it be known here and now: ink does not come out. Dry or wet, it does not come out. Tonight we're going to try rubbing alcohol, and they also suggest pure acetone. PURE ACETONE. And then what, put it in the dryer?! Blue skinned dalmations is one thing. Exploding blue skinned dalmations is something entirely different.

If I'm feeling particularly cruel or humorous, I'll post a picture of the carnage later.