About Me

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Red Bluff, CA, United States
The life of us: a single mother and her 5 resilient, awe-inspiring children. Currently a part-time waitress and full-time nursing student with the simple hopes of retaining my sanity, or at least enough of it, in order to seek employment upon graduating. In the meantime I hope to encourage, love, teach, and in the end release each of my children into the world as independent thinkers, selfless Christians, hard-working contributors, and appreciative life seekers. Herein lies bits of that journey.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Unmatched Socks: Their Hold On Me

So today was fall back day!  Can I get a woot, woot!?!?  Love having an extra hour!  After today though I think maybe I am more in love with the thought of an extra hour that the extra hour itself.  I get giddy over the imaginary ways I could spend that hour-if I wasn't me of course; then I resort to making grandiose plans for those 60 minutes in order to utilize every second; this then turns into sitting down at the end of the day dumbfounded and wondering how every other day you could have used that hour for a million and one things but today, when you have the hour, it's just too much to do anything with and the day comes and goes and the hour just disappears again.

Some people might make decent use of that hour though: sleep, I suppose, is probably a popular option?  I mean if you do it right you could technically sleep an hour longer.  But that's not really prime utilization in my sleep-deprived opinion because you can do that any day - just go to bed an hour earlier.... right?  Some people might spend it studying, like I should have, like I had intended on doing.  I woke up this morning all jazzed up at the thought of being more efficient and actually having the one thing (among many, mind you, and definitely not in order of priority) I wish for on a daily basis: more.time.  The extra nursing care plan I could type up; the 73 more flash cards I could make; the 3 more loads of laundry I could finish; the tack room I could seal off, the half a movie I could watch with my kids or the walk we could take - oh the possibilities!!  Till, of course, Unmatched Socks sunk their stinky, stained, holey seams into that hour - into the WHOLE hour!

We all have our pet peeves about unmatched socks, don't we?  How'd it happen? Where'd it go? Implementation of the best laid plans to prevent paired-sock estrangement.  Blame - then we start blaming people: the kids, the kids' friends, whoever helped with laundry last, the cat, the dog, the sock fairy, the dryer - you know the drill. Well for some reason I think I have an unhealthy obsession with not losing the battle of single-sock excess to, well, socks.  In order to prevent this I have a plastic grocery bag of single socks that I have packed around with me for approximately 8 years now.  Believe it.  8 years of adding, subtracting, pairing up, and sorting through lone, separated socks. 

A few weeks ago, when the weather started cooling, I had all three of the older girls go through their dressers and closets and clean out too small, worn out, and clothes that I made the mistake of buying them without their presence/approval and subsequently NEVER left the closet due to my uncool/old-mom taste.  Needless to say an abundance of single socks showed up in their piles. 

Dear Inventor of the fade that swept through every little girls sock drawer a few years back which involved wearing two completely difference socks, You Suck. 

Also,

To The Department Stores Who Actually SOLD Mismatched Socks, You Owe Me $!
So now not only are there socks that don't have their pair, there are socks that do have their pair but don't match their pair so it's virtually impossible unless the socks have been washed the exact same number of times and worn under identical circumstance as to avoid uneven fading, wear and tear, or stretching since you have to match by color themes for the most part.

Today, in an effort to clear the walkway by the front door I decided I would sift through the collection of discarded clothes to see where they should go from here; this is where I unfortunately stumbled on a large bag of socks.  I thought to myself, "Self, DO.NOT. start sorting these."  So the next thing I do, naturally, is head to the laundry room where my now 5-lb plastic bag holding my 8-year collection of sock rebels is located and decide I will quickly see if there were any matches in there.

And, folks, there you have it - how I spent my precious-as-gold extra hour today.

The silver lining?  I matched 12 pairs of socks!!!!  Only 71 more rouge partners to find!!

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