Excited to do laundry?

Yes, this is a new low, I'll be the first to say so. It sounds like the punch-line to a joke: you know you've been sick when ... laundry is exciting. But of course, it isn't the laundry that's exciting, it's having the energy to do it that pleases me. And while the two loads I'm getting done tonight barely make a dent in the pile, it's a start.

I've done very, very little the rest of the weekend. We'll call it conserving energy, shall we? It seems to be working, at all events. I feel much peppier than I have in the last week, and my cough is currently missing, and the congestion, while lingering a bit, is not as bad. All in all, a marked improvement.

Now, I need to go put away some clean clothes, and then have the ice cream I promised myself for looking at the "bills" folder (I have to bribe myself to do that, sometimes). But first, I have a little story to tell.

I realized I never told you this one, from Nantucket. On that Sunday, my cousin took me to the give-and-take at the dump. As it sounds, that's an area at the dump where people take things they no longer want, that are still good, and so other people go to look over the offerings. It's kind of like a yard sale where you don't have to pay. Some of the things are Lesser, like books and clothes and toys, and some are More, such as while we were there, I saw people drop off a foosball table, and a few minutes later, someone else loaded it up. I picked up a few books, and we found some toys for my cousin's daughter, but no big finds. However, my cousin was telling about her recent big find.

She was looking in the clothes, and found a skirt she liked, in her size, a big-name designer (I think she said Ralph Lauren, but if not, something like), and with the tags still on. Nice, right? Who wouldn't be pleased? Nice new skirt?

And because the tags were still on, she knew that the skirt had a retail price of twelve hundred dollars.

Twelve. Hundred. Dollars.

That's where my mind warps, because I try to imagine someone buying a twelve-hundred-dollar skirt (which, to be honest, I have trouble with in the first place, spending a mortgage payment on one article of clothing), then deciding not to keep it for whatever reason (it didn't fit? don't like it after all? nothing to go with it?) and, instead of taking it back to the store, she took it to the dump and left it at the give-and-take. And my mind boggles.

Does yours?