Day 295

I've lost a day!!! Oh hang on, I may have gained it. I can't work it out. (How the hell is poor Tahlia ever going to get on top of her numeracy when I can't get on top of mine?) Anyway, I've miscounted my days! Here I am at Day 295 when in fact I am supposed to be at Day 296. I doubled up a month or so back and now I can't get it back. That's like waking up thinking you've just turned 40 when in fact you have just turned 41!!! Shocking. It's really shocking. So in order to get back on track I decided to call this day 294 and a half. But then quickly realised (ok, not so quickly ... more like intense concentration, a frown, fingers to my temples and squinting one eye ball ...) that I was going backwards and that would send me 1.5 days in arrears instead of one day. So, now I am in a dilemma. Do I just count on ahead a day to catch up and hope no one realises? But what if I count on ahead a day and the day I have just skipped over is the day I win the lotto (metaphorically speaking since I haven't bought a lotto ticket). Look, it's all too hard. I think I may just give myself an extra day of being 40 ... how does that sound? I'll just keep counting and when I reach my birthday we can ring the bell for the bonus round ....

Ok, now that is sorted, let's talk about fluff. Not the dribble that gets about the blogosphere, nor the stuff you pick out of your belly button (although we're getting warmer) but the fluff that manages to turn up uninvited on a load of freshly washed darks.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? It's the dust of the clothes world. Worse than the dust, it's the head lice of garment land.

I wash the family clothing in a specific manner. Please note the word CLOTHING there. I wash clothes in my machine - Derek on the other hand will wash other household (and backyard) items in there ... but that was a story for a previous post. You can read about it here. Let's get back to my clothes washing shall we? Whites and lights have their own load, colours get a load to themselves, towels and sheets are thrown in with the other "household help", and darks are then divided up further (if necessary) to heavy fabrics like jeans and sweaters, and lighter fabrics like dress pants (slacks), underwear, school uniforms and t-shirts etc. But for some reason completely unbeknowns to me our black clothes still manage to get random strips of lint caked onto them. I have changed washing liquid, I've tried putting those little fuzzy velcro lint remover balls in the wash, I've made sure there are no fuzzy socks or fleece lined clothes in the wash with our good clothes. And before you say it, all pockets are emptied and tissues and paper removed. It is driving me batty!! Yesterday I was wearing a black long sleeve poly/cotton/lycra blend t-shirt and was about to walk out the door (running late) when Derek says "you've got white shit all over the back of your shirt". Crap. I didn't have time to worry about it so threw on a jacket and kept on going. But where does it come from?

It's been going on for years of course so it's not a new conundrum. Just another little mystery to keep life interesting and to test the strength of my skull.