One of my older friends said that old people stay together because it's just too much of a bother to separate all their stuff.  He might've been closer to the truth than he suspected, but in this day and age divorce is common even among older Americans.  How can a couple of people stay together fifty years and then divorce?  Whenever I hear about a divorce like that, one that ends after all that time, the thought crosses my mind that somebody finally got tired of suffering.  The two times in a marriage where divorce is most common is at the 7-10 year range and about the 16-20 year range.  I made it past the first bump in my first marriage, but the second bump got me. 

The second time around for me has been smoother sailing, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been some storms to last out.  All marriages go through bumpy periods, and sometimes they're due to little things - like baby blue panties in my wife's undie dresser drawer.  I do the laundry around here during the week, and she's got a bad habit of undressing in one big move.  This means that when her jeans come off, so do the panties . . . and they end up beside the tub with the white panties down inside the jeans.  I make rounds in the morning, scoop up all that's on the floor, and haul it into the laundry room.  Later on, I do the wash. 

Most of the time the panties stay inside the jeans during the washing process, even go to the drier still inside them.  But driers separate things with all the tumbling, so when I go to enpty the drier, there they are - baby blue panties.  Oh Shit!  If there's anything that pisses off the wife, it's baby blue panties.  Blue is her least favorite color, but half her panties are varying shades of light blue now.  Myself, I think light blue panties are sort of sexy, but I've noticed how whenever she's wearing those blue panties, there's no chance whatever that I'm getting lucky.  Just looking at them irks her, but wearing them chaps her ass in a way that has nothing whatever to do with a rash or anything like that.

I've been periodically banned from the laundry room, and my wife has gone to buying faded jeans to avoid the bleeding new jeans syndrome in the wash.  I've accepted some responsibility here for being lousy at separating clothes before they go into the washer, but it seems to me that a grown woman ought to be able to separate her own clothes.  Most folks don't shed clothes like a snake sheds skin . . . but my wife does.  And because of that habit (and my screw-ups) she's got baby blue panties in her dresser drawer.

There was a time when I sure didn't complain about her undressing habits.  Back about twenty years ago, I could say, "Hey Red!  Wanna fool around?" - and she'd head for the bedroom shucking clothes like a snowblower throwing snow into the air.  But age changes a lot of things.  She only does that now when the bath water is ready. 

I'm thinking about giving up doing the laundry.

D. Paz, 1/22/08