3.59pm 29 May 2008 Thursday
The clock on my desktop is stuck at 3.59pm. I glanced at it before starting on this post, thinking, "What a coincidence I'm writing this right before the top of the hour, but I bet it'll turn to 4pm even before I can manage a word."
I typed, and I typed, looking at the clock after every keystroke, expecting the numbers to jump forward, but the release didn't come until I stopped focussing on the dial.
Thus is my life, obsessing over minutes that trickle by...
I never thought I would belong to the crazy Western European set, you know, the ones who iron their bedsheets. I make it a rule never to iron anything unless I'm supremely embarrassed by appearing in public in it, and I have never gone out in bedsheets. Unfortunately I have, however, slept between the crisp, cool, soft and impossibly smooth sheets at my in-laws', and that was the start of my downhill slide into decadence.
We had spent two weeks with the little ones and had the parents over for dinner the same day the kiddies left, because the older ones were en route from Bodensee back to Wendtorf. You can imagine the chaos that ensued before and after the dinner. We wanted to crash into bed, nary to do with cleaning up, but what did the missus do? She just had to iron the gosh darn sheets.
Now, I have piles of unironed clothes rivalling the Leaning Tower of Pisa hidden in my closet and all who know me know that I hate ironing. But at 11pm that night, I just had to sleep on ironed sheets, and by golly, that was what I was going to do! I dragged the beastly ironing board out of the tiny closet with 4 pairs of rollerblades rolling over my feet, as there was simply nowhere else to stash them while I got the ironing board out, and started ironing.
If you have done any kind of ironing, you would know that ironing masses of straight, uncomplicated bolts of cloth is one of the easiest thing ever, and after 20 minutes, I was done. We dressed the bed quickly, plopped our big butts on it, and savoured the sensation.
An unironed bedsheet is nothing bad. You feel the creases, but usually exhaustion takes its toll on you and the Sandman claims your consciousness before you are too bothered by the uneven material.
An ironed bedsheet, however, is a totally different ballgame. The boring cotton is transformed into a cool yet warm material, not unlike satin without the static or cold. Our light summer blankets sit in the duvet covers snugly, not once bunching up into a ball like they usually do. Instead, they enclose us in their fluffy, airy goodness without stifling, and as you drift off into Neverneverland, you think, "Ah, this is how royalty live..."
