2005-01-14 - 5:43 p.m.

It�s like the time cycles I talked about recently.

Single men will wash their bed linen a) when they come home to find men in biohazard suits have erected a tent around their bed or b) when Haley�s Comet passes overhead, wearing a hat. Whichever happens last.

Well, yesterday somehow contrived to be washday. And since I was doing the pillowcases, I thought I�d do the pillows too. Yes, male reader, it turns out pillows are machine washable. The pillows I�ve got were bought from Marks and Spencer�s. They�re goose down or duck down or turkey down or something. When I bought them, they stank. Imagine a starving mouse has found some old cheese wrapped in an old incontinent woman�s pants. The mouse eats the cheese and is accidentally strangled by the pants. An unwell, short-sighted cat finds the mouse and eats it and the pants whole, then washes it down with rancid fox sputum. That cat�s burp was the smell of my pillows. And that�s when they were new. I don�t get it. Geese don�t stink, do they? So why do their feathers stink when stuffed in a pillow? And why is there no warning on the box? *Contents may stink* would cover it.

I�d forgotten about the smell, which had faded until seemingly being reactivated by the act of washing them. But that wasn�t the worst of it. The worst of it was drying the fuckers. At the end of the wash cycle, the filling was still so heavy with water that pulling them out of the washing machine was like trying to deliver a stillborn rhinoceros calf. The weight being thrown around the dryer threatened to loosen the drum from its moorings.

The moment was captured in IM with kristin:
MM: It sounds like there are orcs with a battering ram at my kitchen door.
K: hahaha.

Drying progress of wet pillows:

One hour: Soaking wet
Two hours: Soggy
Three hours: Wet
Four hours: Wet
Five hours: Damp
Six hours: Still just damp enough to stop you sleeping on them
Seven hours: Mm, not quite.
Eight: Ooh, getting late, isn�t it?
Nine: Maybe you should use some of the cushions from the living room instead.
Thirty-six: Completely d- oh, no, hang on�wet.
April: Wet.
2009: Wet
Advent of the Third Age of the Bee-People: Tiny bit moist.

But for all that, when I finally hit the sack at about 2am, the combination of freshly laundered everything and being shattered beyond insanity made for delicious sleep.

Can anyone smell goose?

Profilage - Previosity - Nextitude