Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Slice of Life


"I'm going to take my iron and ironing board to hen party tonight," I said.
"What?" he questioned.
"We have to iron all of Emily's chair covers and lavender sashes for the reception!" I replied.
(He has learned to not ask too many questions when it comes to the Hen Party.)

We all pulled into my mother's driveway separately but all of our cars contained the same items, an iron and an ironing board. We set them all up next to the six pronged outlet in the living room. We waited for the irons to heat up and then we began. Chipper at first we talked, gossiped about the beauty of the color lavender, and ironed. Our arms worked at a feverish pace. My girls worked in a corner to unwrap each piece of fabric, stacking them by the multiple ironing boards. We laughed about the hilarity of four ironing boards sitting in one room. What if someone could see into my mother's living room? What would they think was occurring inside this house?
After about two hours of continuous ironing we broke and dished out ice cream, strawberries, and shortcake. We sat, careful not to spill, and relaxed during our dessert break. My grandmother complained about her back hurting, my aunt about her foot, and I just kept ironing. We found the style channel on TV, watching "shallow" TV so that we could concentrate on our job.
At 10:30 p.m., four and a half hours after starting we began to get silly. Noticing any time that someone set their iron down. We counted how many pieces were left to iron, the task becoming daunting. Still, we continued to iron.
Finally, at 11:45 my mother and I, who had to be at work in the morning decided that we would stop at midnight. We sighed and continued to iron, watching the ever ticking clock. Our bodies tired, and sore. And then the clock struck midnight...
We unplugged our irons, collapsed our boards, loaded up and headed home...to our beds.
Finished? Not exactly, but close. We will finish this week, in the evenings, until Thursday when they will all be collected and taken to the reception hall. This slice of life was work, hard, hot, satisfying work.

3 comments:

GirlGriot said...

That's a lot of ironing! Nearly six hours straight ... whew! I hope there's not too much let to do.
--Stacie

Stacey Shubitz said...

That's a heck of a lot of ironing!

Cathy said...

Hey, um...you around? I want to get together, but I'm going to assume you are somewhere on vacation!