I’ve recently tried my hand at being a matchmaker. I say “recently,” but in truth it’s been a few years. A few years of miserable failure.

Example #1 – I tried to set up a close female friend with a customer from the gas station I worked at. He came in every night and we had struck up a friendship of sorts. I knew he had a job and a car, so he wasn’t a bum who would use her for her money. He was funny and nice, so I hoped he wouldn’t break her heart. I planned a group outing and was dismayed when during the night, she said she wasn’t interested. Plus, she was insistent that he liked me. Nope, she had to be dead wrong. My gut feeling was that he liked her. One year later, we got married.

Example #2 – When planning the wedding, my mom decided she would set up the friend from example #1 with the son of her best friend. No way, Mom. Those two would never get together! A year later, we were sitting at *their* wedding.

Example #3 – I was noticed how flirty two mutual friends were being. They spent a lot of time together and seemed to be really close. I couldn’t understand why they weren’t dating. When I approached my female friend, she said she viewed him as a brother and dating him would be too weird. When I approached my male friend, he also said dating her would be too weird since she was like a little sister. I was shot down before either gave it a chance. (For the record, I still think they’d make a cute couple. But, whatever. It’s not like they know best or anything.)

Example #4 – When lamenting to a friend about how my career as a matchmaker was crashing, he told me to pretend to introduce him to a mutual male friend. As I made my introductions between the two heterosexual guys who had been friends for years, they locked into an embrace. Success! Even if it had been their way of mocking me.

I take what I can.

While on my way to campus today, I was driving on the freeway and noticed a car tapping his brakes. It stuck out because there were no cars ahead causing him to slow down. My typical response to this sort of thing is to get as far away from the driver as possible. I assume he is a bad driver, crazy and/or distracted. As I was merging as far left as I could, I noticed that his brake lights had a rhythmic quality to them. Paying close attention, I could make out a pattern. Fast fast fast, slow slow slow, fast fast fast. This is Morse Code! And they are the only 2 letters I happen to know of Morse Code! The driver is signaling SOS!!!

I had seen a news report of a woman tapping SOS on her brakes during a carjacking. Another driver saw it and called the police, who managed to get her to pull over and probably saved her life. I worried that the driver was in distress and probably being held at gunpoint. I took a mental note of the license plate and the make/model of the car. Cautiously, I pulled alongside the vehicle to get a look at the driver and carjacker. I wanted to be sure that if I was called to give testimony as a witness, I could pick the perp out of a line up. I also didn’t particularly want to get shot though, so it was an incredibly slow pull up beside them. Taking a deep breath, I looked to my left.

Instead of seeing a poor housewife with a young thug pointing a gun at her head, I saw a middle aged man trying to talk on the phone, eat, drive and write something down. All at the same time.

I’m proud of myself for a number of reasons. #1 – I remembered Morse Code. #2 – I stayed calm during a time of emergency. I probably could have saved a life. #3 – I did not show my road rage and force this stupid driver off the road. #4 – As soon as I got home, I deleted all Law and Order and CSI episodes from my Tivo. I watch too many cop dramas.

When I was younger, my parents had a very specific method for doing laundry. My mom would tell us to bring down our laundry and we’d put it off for as long as possible until smoke poured out of her ears like the good, obedient children we were, we followed orders immediately. Mom would do all the loads and she and Dad would then fold it. We were to sort through it and take our respective baskets immediately upstairs to put away. There’d be serious trouble if we did not have our laundry put away by the time Mom and Dad checked on us.

You’d think that with the steady training for 10-15 years, I’d have laundry down pat. You’d think I have a super organized system that resulted in color sorted closets and labeled laundry baskets. Rather, I loathe laundry. It is partially because when I was working on costume crews in the theater, I was spending nights in the basement of the building, doing laundry for the actors. I’d have to wait around for them to change into their normal clothes and then we’d say goodbye. They’d head off, going home or out to eat. I would be heading downstairs, going to do loads of laundry. My first year, the closing crew member would just throw the loads in and the opening crew member would throw them into the dryer in the morning. We’d fold and sort during lab hours that afternoon and iron them right before the actor’s call that night for the show. We lost a lot of our budget the second year, and I became the sole regular crew member. We’d get other volunteers, but they were normally just trying to get a certain number of required volunteer hours in for a class and would vanish after one show. I’m a push over nice person and would let the one or two crew members I had leave early. I’d take care of all the laundry every night and would stick around to throw it in the dryer so that I didn’t have to come in early the next morning. Including my own personal stuff, I did more piles of laundry in college than I have my entire life.

Needless to say, I’m tired of doing it. Since I’m only 28, this does not bode well for our future. I still do laundry of course. This is mainly because Dan will not let me just buy new clothes every day.

He is mean.

Anyway, we have a basket for towels, a basket for whites and three giant baskets for everything else. Each time I finally get a load done, I pile it on the bed. It sits there until we go to bed, and then I drop it into a basket. When we get dressed the next morning, our clothes are wrinkled. I whine and moan about it and harrass Dan that his shirt looks too sloppy for work. He sighs and hangs up all the laundry. It could be because he’s nice and knows I hate to do laundry, but it’s more likely because I can whine loudly.

There’s more of a point to this blog than just telling you my super awesome methods of doing laundry. The bigger point is how to successfully do housework.

#1 – Fail miserably at it.

#2 – Whine to your husband about how awful your cleaning/folding/sorting skills are.

#3 – Whine louder about how sloppy/disorganized he looks because of your failed skills.

#4 – Go to wash the dishes while he cleans/folds/sorts.

#5 – Break a plate or leave hard water stains on the dishes.

#6 – Repeat steps #1-5 as necessary.