Holiday Moves Henceforth Referred to As Mistakes 1-8

Yes, yes, I know I haven't been blogging much. Between work and the migration, things at the Rookery have been getting quite busy. When the economy tanked back in September, a good chunk of our passive income evaporated, ending my days as a part-time housepenguin and throwing me into the workforce. I have managed to land in the You Can Do It In Your Jammies industry (self-employed working from home), but that is a blog post for another time, if I can squeeze it in between paying jobs.

This post is about the winter migration. A few months back, Emp. Peng. thought we might take advantage of the normal between-Christmas-and-New-Year's lull in his business to migrate out to the relatives for a visit. When we presented this idea to PengMom, she (cunning momma bird that she is) and I developed a plan by which PengSis would not know of the impending migration until we landed on her doorstep on Christmas Eve.

Mistake #1. We have a rule about not seeing relatives at the holidays. Let's just say that was a terrific idea on paper--paper that did not include such interesting developments as record snowfall between the airport and Casa de PengSis, contagious upper respiratory tract infections in the two migratory pengs, dispatchers that kept the PengParents (aka "our ride from the airport") in Salt Lake City up to the day we left Ohio for Seattle, or custody issues that left the itinerary of half of the fledglings up in the air where penguins have no business. Don't get me wrong, here. The look on my sister's face when it finally seeped through the first six layers of maternal sleep deprivation that, yes, her sister really was sitting in her house was priceless. Had we turned around right then, driven back to Seattle and hopped the next flight home, things would have been perfect. But no, I had to try to do laundry.

Mistake #2. We flew in on one of the most pleasant airline experiences I have ever had, and I am not sure if that was because of or in spite of being booked on two canceled flights and being 2 hours late out of O'Hare because of the snow and subsequent de-icing of the plane with what appeared to be The Incredible Hulk's urine. We flew American, one of the airlines that has started charging a fee for the first checked bag. Not wanting to pay for the privilege of letting an airline lose my luggage, I determined that we could manage for a week with just our carry-on allotment, since we could wash the clothes while we were there. The day after Christmas, having almost exhausted our underwear supply and coated the sweaters with yams, I determined it was laundry time. The washing machine had other ideas, and promptly barfed up a belt, leaving every bit of clothes we had packed, except for what we were wearing at the time, wallowing in soapy ice water.

I fished everything out and finished the wash and rinse cycles, grape-stomper-style, in the bathtub. Unfortunately, the bathtub does not have a spin cycle and I was washing some very absorbent clothes. Underwear could be squeezed out easily enough, but there was no chance that jeans, cable-knit sweaters and fluffy towels were going to get wrung out enough for the dryer any time soon. Giving the problem what Nimrod calls "a coat of looking at," I arrived at what seemed at the time to be a good idea: hang the laundry in front of the fire to start drying.

Mistake #3. Normal people would have gone to a laundromat. PengDad and I are not normal people. Not only is he the one who coined the phrase, "If there is an easy way and a hard way, Janet will find a third, yet-more-difficult way," he is probably where I inherited such tendencies. I thought we could rig up some rope between a couple of chairs. PengDad settled on bringing in the umbrella-style clothesline from outdoors, and since it was his house, we went with his idea. Umbrella clotheslines are great things, but they depend on a certain amount of in-ground mounting structure that is absent from the living room of a double-wide manufactured home (however, in a later and unrelated development, we did shoot a hole in the floor of the other side of the living room which would have worked nicely to stabilize the clothesline, but at the time, punching a hole in the floor seemed like a bad idea). In our first attempt, PengDad simply leaned the clothesline against the wall.

Mistake #4. Trying to maintain perfect balance while hanging clothes on an unsupported clothesline is a bit like trying to play Jenga with your feet. I am sure someone out there can do it, but that person is not me. I began looking around for some way to brace the base of the clothesline and settled on the kindling bin, figuring that the wood would keep the pole vertical.

Mistake #5. I was wrong, but at least the clothesline missed the fireplace, breakable hearth ornaments and the laptop computer as it came crashing down. PengDad decided to rig up a hook in the ceiling to suspend the clothesline from. This actually turned out to be quite a good idea. Less good idea: not checking for the cotter pin that held the umbrella clothesline open once the suspension rig was in place.

Mistake #6. Have you ever been eaten by a clothesline? I have. We got the pin problem fixed and finally got the laundry hanging and dripping all over the floor. Still unsure who won, me or the clothesline, I retreated to the kitchen for a brandy-spiked eggnog.

Mistake #7. Brandy may be good in many things. Eggnog is not one of them. Irish cream eggnog, however, is good. Enough fat, sugar and calories to kill a person, but it tastes good and manages to make life look less sucky (we at Penguin Perspectives do not condone drunkenness as a a cure for stress, except when that stress involves being prey for a rabid clothesline). Things started to look good after the first eggnog, but I still failed to see the humor in the situation that the others were seeing, so I mixed myself another.

Mistake #8. Always let the first spiked eggnog hit before going back for seconds. Just trust me on that one.