Focus

WHAT I'M READING:
starting The Devil's Gamble by
Frank Slaughter

WHAT I'M WATCHING:
The Firm
This is the first time.
I'm always watching movies several
years after they've come out.

WHAT I'M LISTENING TO:
All You Can Do is All You Can Do

I really should be doing laundry instead of typing on this computer. But, laundry is just so DAILY, that I am quite tired of it.

What do most people do with odd socks? It would be easy if the socks were all matching for each person. But, they're not. There's 3 pairs of red knee socks--each with a different cable pattern. Then there's all kinds of white socks--most are tube socks, but, that doesn't mean they match. I would like to blame it on the washing machine or dryer...but, I can't. Not when I find socks in the places that I find them.

By now, most know that there are four kids in this household. (And right now, the sound of my son blowing in his recorder is driving me nuts!) They find new and unique hiding places for their socks. In a box of odds and ends picked up from the living room floor; in the cupboard under the bathroom sink; under chairs; on the side table in the kitchen; in the toybox; under MY bed; these are just some of the places where I can find dirty socks.

There's a chance that socks will turn up eventually. So, we keep the odd socks in a crate. When a kid says s/he doesn't have any clean socks, s/he is sent to start sorting socks in the crate.

The problem is that some socks never find their mates and the crate gets fuller and fuller and FULLER. But, we don't want the problem to escalate the way it did before we moved into this house.

My sister started putting odd socks into a 33 gallon trash sack from the time her first born was little. There were a lot of odd adult socks in the bag as well as kids socks. Year after year, the bag would get full and eventually, there were 3 huge sacks of socks.

I assure you that attempts were made to find matches. Sock matching parties were held. First, you decide what movies to watch while sorting. Then each person finds a place on the floor. Make sure everyone has a drink because this is thirsty business. Turn on the first movie. The host/ess takes the sack and dumps it in the middle of the carpet. Each person gets their choice: plain white, white with blue stripes, white with red stripes, white with green stripes. Attempts are made to match the socks. Well, let's sort these further. There's blue with red stripes and blue with yellow stripes and plain blue stripes. There's a whole bunch of different sizes. And someone has to sort the colored socks.

Now, are the red stripes surrounding the blue stripe or are the blue stripes surrounding the red stripe? Are the shades of color identical? Are the socks the same size? Is this close enough? (We have a lot of 'close enough' pairs.) If the red stripes are surrounding the blue stripe, can the person sorting the reds stripes sort them?

Our all time record is matching 92 pairs of socks. This still left two sacks of socks without mates. We tossed them out when we moved into this house.