Because I'm lucky these days if I get home before eight, and because mr rampy would have to wear a paper bag to work tomorrow if the laundry went undone a day longer, mr rampy buckled down tonight to the task of washing all our clothes.

One would not think this to be such a great chore, considering that he did his own laundry for years and years--and with much more care than I was doing mine at the same time, I might add--before he met me. He was all about not just separating whites and darks, but about grouping blues with greens and putting special liquid soap thingies in with the delicates.

Me, I was washing together in one jumbo load anything that made its way into my laundry basket, including shoes and dishes. I actually had to relearn how to do laundry when we got married (or really, when we were dating) so as to do it up to his standards.

And here we are three years later where it is a big deal for him to wash the clothes--so big a deal that he called me at work to tell me all about it while I was frantically struggling to get a package ready to go out with the last UPS pickup at 8. Of course, ostensibly he was just asking me how long the washers run (because I'm the big expert) so he'd know if he had enough time to go take the dry-cleaning in.

And in the end it did turn out to be a big deal, seeing as how over the course of a single calamitous trip downstairs to put some clothes in the washer he managed to scrape a huge bloody cut on his knuckle from the corner of the CD cabinet, rip his shirt on a wall staple on the way down the stairs, and bruise his finger trying to force coins down the jammed slot.

You do have to give him snaps for being creative enough not to go the old "dyed your whites pink, honey" route.

Except with, you know, blood from his gaping knuckle-wound.