I readily confess that I was a spoiled child; I had a stay-at-home mom who took care of me, my sister, and the house, which meant I never had to do my own laundry until I left for college at age 18. My mom gave me the basics, but over the years, I've developed my own technique—oh, let's be honest and call it a ritual, shall we?—that I have elevated into a zen-like state of meditation.
The past week has afforded me the opportunity to get in touch with that state of inner laundered peace, as I've had my last week off from work as part of my college's holiday break, and Amy's been taking care of her mother, who has been ill in the hospital. I wanted to help her out by helping keep up with things in the house, and while I loathe most household chores, I find peace in a basket of clean laundry.
The meditative process begins with the basket or the hamper, which is chaos. Order must be sorted out of this chaos. Whites are separated first, followed by grays and khakis. Next comes dark colors, which are blues and purples for me, then bright colors, finally concluding with reds. Denim jeans and towels are separated into their own piles, forbidden to mix with the other clothes.
We next approach the washer. I have discovered laundry pods, pre-measured gel packets of detergent ready to toss in the washer. These are ingenious and should always be used instead of sticky liquids or dusty powders. Whites and towels are washed in hot water. I still like bleach with my whites. Everything else can be washed in cold water. The hot and the cold are the yin and the yang, the balance of all things.
When the load is finished, it goes into the dryer, making the transition from cold and wet to warm and dry, a perfect metaphor for how we move through this life. Dryer sheets are a necessity, and never forget to empty the lint trap. We should never forget that inner peace often comes at a messy price. We reload the washer with the next group of clothes, moving in the same order as we sorted them.
When the dryer is done, we experience the joy of warm, dry, freshly scented clothing. Folding is where we achieve the full consciousness of inner peace, making sure that each similar item is folded the same way, precisely, exactly, with no edges or corners out of place. Only the most advanced should attempt fitted bed sheets, however.
The joy of the process is short-lived, however, as one must put away all the laundry or risk the painful reality of a basket filled with clean laundry taking up unnecessary space on the bed, in the closet, or worst of all, at the foot of the stairs...
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
It's All Just Games and Fun
Amy and I took a post-Christmas shopping trip to Jonesboro, Arkansas, to spend a little leftover Christmas money (I know, right?!). One of the stores at the mall features calendars, jigsaw puzzles, and party games, and everything on hand was 50 percent off, so I bought three new party games. We love games in the Sanders house, and we also belong to a church group that has game night once a month, so the new additions will come in handy.
My new purchases were a six-in-one Party Charades game, a category matching game called "Tension," which is similar to the eighties game "Outburst," and a crazy party game called "Furt," which would take an entire blog entry to explain. Suffice to say the kids and I test-drove "Furt" Monday night, and it got the seal of approval from everyone.
This led me to think about what my top ten board games of all time list would be. I eliminated some of the more obvious choices like Monopoly (too vicious), Clue (boring), Scrabble (super-boring), and Risk (takes too long). My top ten is based on a combination of fun, challenging, and entertaining. Feel free to list some of your own favorites in the comments here or on Facebook.
10. Pente
A mainstay of college dorm study breaks at Mizzou, this simple game is similar to "Go," which experts say is the oldest human game in existence. The goal is simple: get five stones in a row or capture five pairs of stones from your opponent. We wasted hours of time that we should have been studying playing this game instead.
9. Mouse Trap
There's not a single one of you who grew up in the 1970s who didn't have this game. It was less of a game and more of an excuse to build the Rube Goldberg contraption that fell on the plastic mouse game piece. If your friends or siblings weren't around to play, you could just build it yourself.
8. Catan
A more recent addition, this deceptively simple game requires you to gather resources in order to build roads, settlements, and cities faster than your opponents, but you also can trade and collaborate with them to reach your goal. Since this game was featured on the 100th episode of "The Big Bang Theory," I can't play this game without thinking, "I have wood; I need sheep. Who has sheep for my wood?"
7. Taboo
One of the great 1980s-era party games, this game required you to get your team to guess a word on a card, but there were also five "taboo" words that you couldn't say to describe the word. For example, if the word was "hamburger," you couldn't use the words "beef, patty, bun, pickles, drive-thru" as part of your description. Just to make it more fun, your opponent, sitting next to you, had a buzzer to buzz you if you used a taboo word. Great game for making enemies out of friends.
6. Sorry!
The world's best game for torturing siblings, especially younger ones. Game play is remedial: you just flip a card and move the right number of spaces, but when you land on another player's space, you got to send them back to "Start"...and right into the grip of rage and insanity! Mwaa-haa-haa-haa!!!
5. Trivial Pursuit
The last time my family played this game with me, it was all of them (seven or eight people) against me by myself. Guess who won? To this day, this game is forbidden at family gatherings.
4. Pictionary
Drawing games have become a common activity in many other party games, such as "Cranium" (probably 11 or 12 on an expanded list for me) and my new "Furt" purchase, so it's easy to forget the perfection of the original. I prefer to play on twin whiteboards like Burt Reynolds' "Win, Lose, or Draw" game show, but the principle is still the same.
3. Dominion
A strategic card game set in a medieval kingdom, this game was introduced to me in the aforementioned church game group, and I was hooked from the beginning. The brilliant part is that you can mix and match the card groupings each time you play, making the game different every time. You have to think in terms of both short-term gains as well as long-term strategy. I could play this game in a 72-hour marathon without hesitation.
2. Dark Tower
A birthday present in 1981 (my 13th), this condensed take on "Dungeons & Dragons" featured board play spaces with an electronic tower in the middle of the game that acted as the digital dungeon master, determining the outcome of battles, haggling for goods, and final victory. Good luck finding a working version of this game; if you can even find it on eBay, prices start around $300. Why no one has updated this game today is a mystery to me.
1. Catchphrase
The party game of choice both in our house and among most of our friends, Catchphrase combines the skill of "Password"—the game gives you a word in a simple LED readout, and you have to get your team to guess the word without using any part of it—with the random frustration of "Hot Potato." The game has a beeping timer, and if your team is caught with the device when the timer goes off, the other team gets a point. We almost always play Men vs. Women, and as the years have gone by, the fun hasn't diminished one little bit.
My new purchases were a six-in-one Party Charades game, a category matching game called "Tension," which is similar to the eighties game "Outburst," and a crazy party game called "Furt," which would take an entire blog entry to explain. Suffice to say the kids and I test-drove "Furt" Monday night, and it got the seal of approval from everyone.
This led me to think about what my top ten board games of all time list would be. I eliminated some of the more obvious choices like Monopoly (too vicious), Clue (boring), Scrabble (super-boring), and Risk (takes too long). My top ten is based on a combination of fun, challenging, and entertaining. Feel free to list some of your own favorites in the comments here or on Facebook.
10. Pente
A mainstay of college dorm study breaks at Mizzou, this simple game is similar to "Go," which experts say is the oldest human game in existence. The goal is simple: get five stones in a row or capture five pairs of stones from your opponent. We wasted hours of time that we should have been studying playing this game instead.
9. Mouse Trap
There's not a single one of you who grew up in the 1970s who didn't have this game. It was less of a game and more of an excuse to build the Rube Goldberg contraption that fell on the plastic mouse game piece. If your friends or siblings weren't around to play, you could just build it yourself.
8. Catan
A more recent addition, this deceptively simple game requires you to gather resources in order to build roads, settlements, and cities faster than your opponents, but you also can trade and collaborate with them to reach your goal. Since this game was featured on the 100th episode of "The Big Bang Theory," I can't play this game without thinking, "I have wood; I need sheep. Who has sheep for my wood?"
7. Taboo
One of the great 1980s-era party games, this game required you to get your team to guess a word on a card, but there were also five "taboo" words that you couldn't say to describe the word. For example, if the word was "hamburger," you couldn't use the words "beef, patty, bun, pickles, drive-thru" as part of your description. Just to make it more fun, your opponent, sitting next to you, had a buzzer to buzz you if you used a taboo word. Great game for making enemies out of friends.
6. Sorry!
The world's best game for torturing siblings, especially younger ones. Game play is remedial: you just flip a card and move the right number of spaces, but when you land on another player's space, you got to send them back to "Start"...and right into the grip of rage and insanity! Mwaa-haa-haa-haa!!!
5. Trivial Pursuit
The last time my family played this game with me, it was all of them (seven or eight people) against me by myself. Guess who won? To this day, this game is forbidden at family gatherings.
4. Pictionary
Drawing games have become a common activity in many other party games, such as "Cranium" (probably 11 or 12 on an expanded list for me) and my new "Furt" purchase, so it's easy to forget the perfection of the original. I prefer to play on twin whiteboards like Burt Reynolds' "Win, Lose, or Draw" game show, but the principle is still the same.
3. Dominion
A strategic card game set in a medieval kingdom, this game was introduced to me in the aforementioned church game group, and I was hooked from the beginning. The brilliant part is that you can mix and match the card groupings each time you play, making the game different every time. You have to think in terms of both short-term gains as well as long-term strategy. I could play this game in a 72-hour marathon without hesitation.
2. Dark Tower
A birthday present in 1981 (my 13th), this condensed take on "Dungeons & Dragons" featured board play spaces with an electronic tower in the middle of the game that acted as the digital dungeon master, determining the outcome of battles, haggling for goods, and final victory. Good luck finding a working version of this game; if you can even find it on eBay, prices start around $300. Why no one has updated this game today is a mystery to me.
1. Catchphrase
The party game of choice both in our house and among most of our friends, Catchphrase combines the skill of "Password"—the game gives you a word in a simple LED readout, and you have to get your team to guess the word without using any part of it—with the random frustration of "Hot Potato." The game has a beeping timer, and if your team is caught with the device when the timer goes off, the other team gets a point. We almost always play Men vs. Women, and as the years have gone by, the fun hasn't diminished one little bit.
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