Nudist colony

It is great when you make a friend you can trust. That friendship is gold when you can laugh together. I am lucky to have several who share my sick sense of humor. Today’s guest blog post was written by one of them. Jennifer Gray (with an “A,” she was never left in a corner as a baby, but does have the time of her life.) She is the mother of two adorable children and is one crafty broad.

Suburban Nudist Colonies
by: Jen Gray

Nudist colonies must have been the brain child of a group of mothers fed up with doing laundry for the 1000th time in so many days. “THAT’S IT! We are moving to a nudist colony,” I yelled this morning. I do at least six loads of laundry a week or a family of four.

I wash seven pair of my underwear in as many days. It scares me that I only wash a total of ten pair of underwear in a week for the three other people who live in this house.

I am also sick of washing the same articles of clothing over and over. If I see that Under Armour shirt one more time I may choke someone with it. You don’t have to change your outfit like you’re hosting the Emmy’s, but I know you have more than one damn shirt.

Following suit of their father, my kids think the laundry fairy magically appears every night to tenderly wash all of their un-dirty items. I feel like Rain Man, rocking back and forth, babbling to myself how most of the items in the wash are, “definitely not dirty… definitely not dirty….” Are they trying to make me commit myself? I finally enacted a new rule for the whole house: you must read in silence for every minute I spend cleaning up after others. Guess what teachers? I don’t give a damn that I’m using reading as punishment! I am not the least bit ashamed. What else can one use? Money? A 7 and 5 year old have no concept of money. I found that out when I made my son pay the $40 it cost to buy two pair of school uniform pants. He cut holes in them because he was bored in class. I thought for sure he would freak out in hysterics over having to take money from his “ipad-piggy-bank” fund. Not even a tear and he really wants that iPad.

We can’t move to a nudist colony. It was another empty threat. There’s only one thing my kids love more than playing with each other and that’s being naked. My son even calls himself The Naked Ninja. He creeps around in the buff like he is on a covert mission before bath time. I actually have him on video, bare as a naked mole rat, karate chopping the air and summersaulting over his bed yelling, “Hiya!”

Turns out not even forced reading has curbed the laundry fiasco. You run out of options when you can’t punish kids with extra homework, forced nudity or extort money from them. You realize you have to put on your big girl panties (that are washed), pour a glass of wine and get at it. Because really, after wrangling my breasts into my sports bra today I realized that a nudist colony may not be the solution I’ve been looking for.