Sometimes there are moments when I wonder "what put this into my head?" These are not the rare, strange, crazy moments, but the lowly, mundane, pedestrian times when I am doing things I have done a thousand times, but at that particular split-second I make an association that leads to analysis. It is Saturday morning and I have been awake for hours even though it is only 8:30. During this time I have been avoiding all the washing that must be done today - laundry, dogs, dishes, the bathrooms - but a pang of guilt got me to start a load of laundry and while I was looking at the Kirkland 28 lb. bucket of detergent and thinking that perhaps it really did do 200 loads because I bought it on my trip to Cleveland last June and here it is almost April and I've got powder to spare, I reached into my spiffy front-loading machine and it hit me: I sort of miss the old top-loading machines.
My machine has that tiny hole in front, surrounded by a thick black rubber gasket. For some reason when ever I pit my arm in to fill or empty I always think of the milking machines they used on the dairy farm in Holland I stayed at 25 years ago. The inside is stainless steel and it shines next to the gasketing and white enamel on the front of the machine. Yet as I stoop to shove the clothes through the opening, I miss looking down into the wide empty space of the top-loader. It didn't have a little porthole window through which I could catch a glimpse of the water, suds, and fabric mixing together, it used more water, it made more noise, and it didn't clean as well.
