I was minding my own business, working in my own study when I saw a post from the former girlfriend pop up on my Facebook Page, it was called “There’s No Glory In Laundry,” and it may have seemed like an innocent hard-working domestic housewife lamenting the lack of fun in doing laundry, but I took it quite differently, as I am the Blondie Bumstead of Bedlam Farm and understood the true and hidden message.  This was aimed at me, an airing of the dirty laundry in our household, a lament about the drudgery of laundry, while I get all the glory of cooking. The blush is off the Rose, don’t be distracted by all those warm photos of donkey-cuddling. The former girlfriend (who spends hours slaving over her blogs but spat this one out in a few seconds) was suggesting that all the glory goes to the people who buy, prepare and serve the food in a household, while the poor laundry doer goes unheralded. She even invoked the old sweat-shops of the last century.

Since I do all of the shopping and cooking, and she does the laundry, the sub-text was clear enough to those in the know – me and Red. He cowered under the table.

There was, she wrote, lots of hype around cooking, like the glamor of the sizzling pans and hot stoves, the joy of shopping, but there was no glory in doing the laundry, she wrote, which she does, more or less, when she is not distracted or inspired to make a scarf or potholder or clever little streaming piece or go and visit with the chickens. She came into the house after the post appeared, twinkling mischievously, asking me if I saw her laundry piece and I was just finishing it and had begun sputtering.

She seemed  very pleased with herself.  You aren’t getting away with this, I wrote. Glory in cooking?, I said. In shopping, planning for meals, slaving over a hot stove while some of us are cavorting with our muses, spinning out potholders, sketching out our creations, putting up their photos. Is there glory in kneading dough, sticking your head in a hot oven? There is no glory in laundry, I suggested archly, if it isn’t done, and when I have to scrounge around the house every day looking for my socks.

Let me tell you about artists. If you live with them, you will understand the outlooks of housewives in the 50’s, those poor women who used to steam and fume while the food went cold and the husband were late at the office or reading over their newspapers. They are my kindred spirits.   Artists are not domestic people, they live in their heads, they don’t care if they starve or not, sometimes they even like it. They will spend hours moving flowers around, decorating windowsills with stones and feathers, but the laundry basket could be blocking the bedroom door and they will not see it or give it a thought.

There is no glory in waiting in line in supermarkets, I harangued, or noticing there is no bread or vegetables or cooking oil or milk or cereal when you live with an artist, and you have to rush out to the store ten times a week, they would just as soon eat dirt warmed in the oven as to stop making something they are excited about. “Do you really need to go shopping tonight?,” she will ask, “don’t we have any old bread?”

Writers are dull, middle-class plodders compared to artists. Ordinary people.

The search for socks may not be glorious, although it is exciting, a daily adventure, that is on the two or three days when they can be found at all. I’ve bought about a dozen extra pairs of socks this year figuring I will have enough to weather the dry periods, but the former girlfriend is a devourer of socks, she kills them just by looking at them, they shrink, shrivel and vanish in the laundry or disappear into black holes.  If it is cold, she steals my socks and wears them – she will take any of my clothes at any time – and when she does wash them, she has a secret system of hiding them, drying them out in clever and artistic ways. Once, she took them and used them to stuff window cracks against the wind in her studio.  Another time, they were singed to a crisp by the fire.

Most of my socks shrink into toe-warmers. Do you know where the socks are?, I will ask politely each night, plotting my strategy for finding some in the morning. She finds this annoying. I’m reading, she says, can’t you see I’m busy? IDon’t be such a grump, she says, in the morning, when I ask where the socks are,  I have a lot of scarves to make, she says, I am imagining my quilts. I know most of her sock hiding places, she has a strong aversion to bringing them upstairs, she just won’t do it. It’s a submission thing, I think, she does not like being told what to do, or to do what is expected of her.

In the winter, my socks migrate all over the house, they might be hanging by the wood stove, or the fireplace. Sometimes by the bannister along the stairs, sometimes draped over chairs in the dining room, every now and then over the sofa. One thing I can count on, they will never be on my dresser. I notice the laundry basket swelling to overflow, I say nothing. My socks are in there, I know it.  If I complain about this, I am quickly labeled an insensitive brute, one of those men.

I will be honest, there is some fun and creativity to cooking. I like to shop (and a good thing, too because my spouse does not like to shop) and I start fussing over breakfast, dinner and lunch long before meal time. Maria says I start thinking about dinner at dawn, I suppose that is true. She is not thinking about the laundry then, that is for sure.  I pride myself on healthy food, fresh and warm food, a good supply of fruit, multi-grain bread,  polenta, Kale, a balanced meal, etc. But the bottom line is there is food on the table at every meal on time, is this honor or glory? No wonder, I complained, there is no glory in washing socks. I never have any!

As a matter of fact, before I wrote this, the former girlfriend came into my study and tossed a sock on my desk. Oh here, said, I found one of your socks. It was on the dining room table, of course.