august 21, 2001. Fifteen minute entry. Tonight is a night of heinous housework. On Friday I leave for Toronto & the Boy leaves for the Evolve Festival and points East. 1000 grey socks must be laundered, along with any other soiled clothing (honestly, does anyone else own a grey sock?? I have the feeling that my husband has cornered the market.) The mountain of stinky dishes must be washed. Food must be evaluated for the evil potential to stink up the place during an unsupervised week. Lists must be made. Banking must be accomplished. And with the Boy away this week until Thursday, the responsibility for all this largely devolves upon me. I've been letting him take care of the wash for a while now; ever since he leaned to sort colours from whites he reached the limit of what I could teach him anyway. Tonight, hauling 3 full baskets of clothes across the complex to the second-floor laundry room, I got in touch with what I hate about laundry. 'Coz if you don't have an ensuite machine, laundry is nothing more than physical labour. Sort, pile, lift. Carry, walk, dump. Walk, rest, walk. Lift, transfer, walk. Rest, walk, pile. Fold fold fold. My poor Boy does this every week, or there abouts. But he's so much stronger than me...and he's good at it...and...and...I'm very lame, aren't I. It's all part & parcel of my general childish distaste for looking after myself. My virtuous poverty has given me a whole new appreciation for bourgeois housekeeping alliances. As I scrub my dishes in my single sink, I vow never to grumble about loading a dishwasher. As I haul laundry several hundred meters and up a flight of concrete steps, I fantasize about an unfinished basement with an old washer and drier. And that's 15 minutes. this time 2 years ago: tedious data entry, paper cuts, flesh-coloured nylons, office humour and the joy of being the lowest on the corporate ladder.