Putting laundry out on the clothesline today might’ve been a fool’s errand — thunderstorms of unspecified time and duration were in the forecast. Yet the day was so clear<\/i>, the blue of the skies so deep<\/i>, the cottony clouds so billowy<\/i> that I didn’t care.<\/p>\n
A little past noon, I started pinning the laundry to the clothesline. I’d done my whites — undershirts, socks, some work shirts, some khakis, some shorts.<\/p>\n
I’d walked out into the backyard, still soggy from last night’s storms, in my bare feet, leaving impressions of toes and heels in the yard as I went.<\/p>\n
Twenty minutes later, black clouds had moved in and had blotted out the blue sky.<\/p>\n
I went inside and grabbed my car keys, I needed to put up the windows on the Beetle and close the sunroof. I managed to do this just in time; as I closed the car door, the skies opened up.<\/p>\n
I didn’t bother trying to save the laundry. “Let it get even more wet,” said I to myself. “Water never hurt anything, and if it rains all day and I have to let the laundry hang all night, then that’s what I’ll do.”<\/p>\n
I did, however, walk out into the middle of the back yard, still barefoot, because I eschew shoes at every opportunity. The muddy rainwater squished around my toes.<\/p>\n
And then, I spread my arms wide, looked up into the sky, and like Andy Dufresqne in The Shawshank Redemption<\/i>, I let the rain wash over me.<\/p>\n
It was a heavy rain and a cold rain.<\/p>\n
I stood there, arms outstretched, for several minutes, until my arms grew tired and the rain slacked off.<\/p>\n
If the neighbors watched, if they wondered what had come over me, I didn’t really care.<\/p>\n
The black clouds were gone within ten minutes. The laundry was dry by six o’clock.<\/p>\n
I love the smell of laundry from the line. It smells so… fresh<\/i>. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Putting laundry out on the clothesline today might’ve been a fool’s errand — thunderstorms of unspecified time and duration were in the forecast. Yet the day was so clear, the blue of the skies so deep, the cottony clouds so billowy that I didn’t care. A little past noon, I started pinning the laundry toContinue reading “On Laundry and the Rain”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[440,415],"class_list":["post-5828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-laundry","tag-rain","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}