Unmitigated Disaster

Nearly five years after moving to town, I finally got a Boston library card. For the past month or so I've enjoyed free books (and the occasional cooking magazine), in an effort to keep my mind sharp and stimulated. Sorry CNN, you've really been dropping the ball lately and I can feel my IQ slowly deteriorating after a day of blathering from Rick Sanchez.

Well, all that money one is supposed to save from checking out a library book versus buying it at Borders flies straight out the window when said book goes in the laundry by mistake and through the washing machine. Yes, that's right, I did that. Apparently the book was unclean. I'll now owe the Boston Public Library money. I've been a little under the weather the last few days, but am, it turns out, a lot more foggy-brained than I ever could have imagined.

Its sort of difficult to see in the photo, but the used-to-be-white
laundry is mostly all gray and speckled with bits of paper, ugh.

The book wasn't just ruined, it was PULVERIZED. If I hadn't found the plastic-y cover still in tact, I might not have known it had ever been a book. It had disintegrated into a million pieces, except for one or two big mushy lumps. And of course the ink bled into my load of whites.

After removing the laundry and shaking out all the bits all over the floor.

Flutie inspects the pile of rubble.

Maybe I should cut Flutie some slack, now that he's not the only one destroying things around here (like the horrific ink stain he left on the downstairs carpet after chewing up a pen last week, or the scratches in our brand new leather chair or the umbrella he gnawed holes into the same day I bought it at Target ... he's really been on a destructive tear lately). Luckily, the laundry was all whites so I tried to put them back through the laundry with some bleach, hoping to the get the grayish ink stains out. It didn't totally work (a few items look fine, a few are blotched and gray forever), so I'll have to buy a new set of sheets, some socks, undershirts and sports bra for me. On top of a new book for the BPL. That was perhaps my most expensive load of laundry ever. And the mess!

Oy vei.