Oh, the tangled webs we weave

More contemporary art

in Ralph Lauren men's dress shirts and socks

I couldn't imagine what had happened to an article of clothing in the dryer when I opened it this morning, bringing in the load from last night with my work-out clothes in it.

What on earth had unraveled like that? There was white thread everywhere. Everywhere. I reached in an touched it, disbelieving.

What could come unraveled that way, besides me confronted with the prospect of a McPalin White House on November 5?

Have you ever noticed how long the moments of disbelief seem to last before the obvious answer rushes through the door of your consciousness, telling you not to worry, everything's alright?

Thread.

Warm-up jacket.

Spool of thread in the pocket I found at the gym last week.

The day I got out the thread to fix the skirt of the slipcover of the armchair I had just ripped with the small nozzle on the vacuum cleaner, but couldn't find any needles and finished by stuffing the spool of thread in the pocket of my warm-up jacket.

Realization dawned, clear and bright.

I had left it in the pocket when I washed the jacket, and now, there it was, wrapped around sleeves and buttons and the drawstring of my running pants like thread wrapped around the intestines of a dog who ate it.

You haven't heard that story? Well, it's true, and it was much worse than what happened to my laundry.

It took a pair of scissors and a lot of patience to extricate my warm-up jacket and everything else that needed to return to the dryer to finish drying. Extremely compressed laundry does not dry, turning in the tumbler as one massive, wet lump of fabric.

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The dryer

But that's almost nothing compared to what I have to do just to run the dryer, which is out in the garage, plugged into an outdoor extension cord, which is plugged into another outdoor extension cord, which runs through a hole in the wood at the bottom of the door, through the entry and living room, to the multi-plug thing, which is plugged into the wall behind the table next to the beat-up sofa.

All this because a) there is only 1 plug out of 4 between the door and that far side of the living room that works, and something like 5 in the whole house (ok, I am exaggerating. There are 9 or 10 that work), and b) the concrete mixer for the chaux blew a fuse in the garage, and we bought 20 Amp fuses this morning, but not 32 Amp ones, of which minun aviomies said, "Look, here's a package with a mix, 10, 16, 20 and 32 Amp ones -- but whoever needs the 32 Amp ones."

Of course it was the 32 Amp ones we needed.

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The furnace

Oh, and did I mention that when we tried to turn the furnace on to the winter cycle for heat as well as hot water, it knocked out the hot water and failed to offer heat to the radiators?

Tuesday we have a delivery of 1,000 liters of wondrously inexpensive oil arriving for a non-functioning heap of whimpering cold steel and wires.

I sit and type in my old alpaca winter overcoat that I wear like a blanket with buttons. When will there be a fall when we will not be shivering here?

Time to go take a freezing shower to go to a friends' house for dinner. The champagne is chilling.

Too.

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And, did I mention that CHAOS is back?

Live TV : Ustream

(((((CHAOS)))))

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