How An Ink Pen Almost Caused My Divorce

I can still remember the little flutters that filled my belly, as my son, then six months along, moved and stretched inside my womb. It was no doubt the happiest time in my life, with the exception of when he made his arrival into the world. It had taken so long for us to have this chance at parenthood and now it was here, it was real.

At this point in my pregnancy, I still felt fairly well, and had a lot more energy than during the first trimester. Everyone tells you to take it easy, but anyone who has ever had a baby knows that this is typically one of the busiest times in your life.

I was getting ready for the arrival of a tiny human. I had limited time to make sure that everything was perfect. They call this “nesting”. I was preparing our nest for our little baby bird.

Naturally, pregnancy anxiety, coupled with my already high anxiety created a cleaning monster. I had laid out a week for each room to be completely and thoroughly cleaned. I remember trying to get up after sitting on the floor for hours cleaning baseboards. As my legs and butt were asleep and was top heavy for the first time in life, I’m sure it was pretty hilarious. Like a newborn deer taking his first steps, on a frozen lake, after eating a watermelon whole.

Get to the Point Already…

So I gots to do the laundry, but I hates it (grammatically incorrect with a purpose). The Martha Stewarts of the world are about to have a panic attack. I separate lights and darks. I typically don’t do a load of just whites unless they’re dingy, mostly because I don’t see the point and it’s more time and energy being put into the one chore that I despise. I also wash my husband’s and my clothes together. I don’t see the point in doing six mini loads when three regular size loads will suffice , and save water.

At six months pregnant, I could forget wearing any regular clothes. It was either maternity clothes (I mean, who would have thought?) or my husband’s XL t-shirts and gym shorts.

I began the Satan’s dance of doing laundry for the week. I separated the lights and darks and placed the lights into the washer. I put in the detergent and fabric softener and pressed the ON button. Typically there’s no suspense here, but just wait.

40 or so minutes later, I hurriedly moved the now wet clothes over to the dryer.

“Well did you check them?”

Why in the hell would I check them? They’re wet because they were just washed. They smell nice. I was just gonna be super naive and assume that they were just as they should be.

I placed them in the dryer and went about my obsessive cleaning in other parts of the house.

There She Blows!

The dinging of the dryer said “Come on down!” so I waddled along, basket in hand to get out this load of laundry, which I probably should say now, contained the majority of my maternity clothes as well as my husband’s cargo work pants.

I began pulling out the clothes and placed them into the basket with the grace of an ogre with a hangover. A spot on on one of my tank tops caught my attention.

“What is that blue stuff?”

So I turned the shirt over in my hands and continued looking. All over were more blots of what I realized is INK. I immediately knew what happened. I pulled all of the clothes out and there, in the bottom of my dryer, was the devil’s spawn himself, the cartridge of a blue ink pen, just lying there in it’s smug puddle of blueness.

I anxiously started looking at each article of clothing. On one of my husband’s khaki cargo pants was a huge blue stain on the side pocket, where he always sticks things. He may be the crime scene investigator in the family, but it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what had happened.

He stored the pen in his pocket and then he took them off and placed them into the dirty clothes bin (or more than likely, on the floor beside the dirty clothes bin) without checking his pockets first. They then went into washer, the pen burst, and destroyed the clothes. I then dried the clothes, which indefinitely set in the stain, which further destroyed the clothes. Not to mention, I then had to figure out how to get all of the remnants out of my dryer.

I can tell you that the pregnancy hormones, coupled with the fact that my husband succeeded in completely ruining about $500 in maternity clothes without even being home was a toxic combination.

I LOST MY SHIT

I screamed at no one, threw things across the room, mad cried, hit the pile of now expensive cleaning rags, scowled, fumed, paced, and overall just showed my ass. THEN I called him.

I don’t remember what I said verbatim, but it was not pleasant.

Pretty sure it ended in something like “when you get home you can pack your shit. At least you don’t have quite so many clothes to pack since you ruined most of your work pants”, or something to that effect.

I had no idea what he was doing when I called. He could have been in a work meeting, driving, on the toilet, testifying in court, or praying with his pastor. I didn’t care. I went completely insane for about an hour.

Then I went into “I can fix it” mode. I googled ways to get the stains out, and lucky for my husband, I was able to salvage a few pieces.

I finally calmed down, realized that they were just clothes and could be replaced (not cheaply, but still). Plus, I guess I needed a father for my unborn child, so I decided to let him live. However, I’ve decided that when I go to a wedding and they have the little cards that you fill out with advice on how to have a happy marriage, I will simply write “Always check your pockets.”