A Different Kind Of Normal

Life’s too damn short to be cleaning the washing machine with a toothbrush but that’s exactly what I found myself doing it this afternoon.

The question is, WHY?

Is it because I’m a clean freak and obsessed with cleanliness?

Do I have a secret desire to live in a sterile bubble where everything is painted white?

Do I get a strange sense of satisfaction from cleaning the dust and fluff from all the tiny little grooves that form the parts of the door (well, hmmm, yes actually, that was kind of fun).

But basically. No!!!

It’s all down to Mark, yes, he who still owes us an explanation for his green phobia.

A couple of nights ago, for some reason, we were talking about washing , Don’t ask me why, I have no idea how we got onto that subject but our conversations have many and varied twists and turns and go off on unusual and sometimes bizarre tangents.

Possibly we had been talking about achieving our goals in life. One of mine being, discovering the bottom of the washing basket.

This is where the conversation started to take on what I consider to be a surreal quality (please tell me I’m right).

It transpired that apparently he bases what he’s going to wear on whatever happens to be in the washing basket on any given day. Now to the average person this might suggest that EVERYTHING was in there and it was a case of deciding which ‘thing’ could possibly pass for one more day.

Not so.

It’s is so that when there is enough dirty washing for a machine load it’s all the same colour and everything can go in together. Now I know all about separating colours and whites etc, but this seems to me to be taking it to the extreme.

For example, mostly back stuff in the basket?  Well, he would choose black pants even if he really wanted to wear these: 

(haha, aren’t they FAB. Can you BELIEVE I found them on Google images).

Now I can see there’s a logic in that but surely that doesn’t make it normal? 

Normal is opening your wardrobe (or checking the ironing basket), standing in contemplation and waiting for something to CALL to you. 

Normal is wearing whatever happens to be clean and, if you’re lucky even ironed. Normal is ……… well, normal is NOT that!  

I happen to have quite a lot of purple in my washing basket at the moment. What am I going to do?  Oh, hang on, I’ll just pop out and buy some BIG PURPLE PANTS to make up the load.  See what I mean, it’s weird!

Mind you, this is a man who arranges his CD’s not only in alphabetical order but then by release date and KNOWS if you put one out of place.

This is a man who owns socks with the days of the weeks on them and not only wouldn’t dream of wearing a Thursday sock on his left foot with a Monday on his right but also only wears them on the correctly corresponding day!

This is the man who regularly vacuums the tops of door frames and claims never to have been licked by a dog.  Well, he HAS now. Lovely Frodo a beautiful ex racing greyhound we saw at my local park took a liking to his crotch and left a lovely slobbery mark all over his leathers.

See, that’s the thing.  In complete contrast he also drinks like a fish, swears like a trooper, loves his inks (tattoos to the uninitiated) and rides a fuck off great Harley.

I am certain that one of us is weird. What I’m not so clear on is which of us it is!