Pinned

I grew up in an era when people wore air dried clothes, went to bed with fresh smelling sheets and finished their baths with scratchy towels. Some of my earliest memories are of handing wooden clothespins and wet garments to mom, aunts and grandmas  in housedresses and aprons as they hung their wash out on variously strung lines.

One friend’s mother had separate lines for the sun and for shade or rain. I always thought that was a cool idea as the Seattle area I was raised in more often than not had rain. In my childhood home, we had lines strung across our tiny basement for rainy days. Playing in there was hazardous as wet sheets can entangle small children in an instant!

As an adult I have chosen to continue that tradition. Well, at least I tried. At our old house I had a lovely ‘umbrella’ style clothesline that used a single post hole. When we built our current house shortly after Steve and I married, I decided to put up a retractable ‘pull out’ style line. It had a nice weather proof box that the lines rolled up into so that it was all put away with a simple unhooking from one T-post and walking the lines across to a second T-post, the spring loaded bar in the stationary box winding the lines as I walked.

That was years ago.

What happened? The yard swallowed the post holes.

How does one ‘lose’ post holes? Simple. One simply let’s one’s Aspergian husband mow the lawn. The Hubster insists that he has to have the grass clippings spew back onto the lawn in order to re-fertilize. He doesn’t like to mow so he puts it off for weeks. By the time he gets around to it, the grass is so long that our lawn resembles a freshly mown hayfield when he gets done. Viola! No more postholes anywhere to be found.

I had wanted to put plastic caps on the top of my pipe-lined post holes so that we could easily find them again after removing the T-posts. But no, husband didn’t want ‘the expense’, or ‘the hassle’ of figuring out where to store the caps when the T-posts were in the ground. So the grass clippings covered the holes. I've searched and searched. I know that they have to be there somewhere, but darned if I can find them.

Steve has organizational issues. And yes, it’s an Aspie thing.

I found an interesting article online that mentions Tony Atwood’s AS characterizations:

 “Attwood noted that Asperger’s may also be characterized by a strong desire for perfection, a special interest or talent, a fondness for routine, poor coordination, high cognitive skills, low organizational skills, and uneven processing of sensory input – being more or less sensitive than most.”

http://faaas.org/2011/02/adults-with-aspergers-syndrome-often-go-undiagnosed/

For whatever reason, my husband can’t or won’t put things back in the same spot twice. He will ‘organize’ the same type items in various ways in the same area. Maybe by color, size, first letter of word, day of use. All totally incomprehensible to me.

Camping gear, for instance. After we moved into our current home, we put up shelving at the back of our garage to store things. I put all of our coolers and sleeping bags on top shelves, bags to left and coolers to right. The rest of our camping supplies went down the shelves on the left according to weight. I don’t like to pull heavy things off of a shelf above my head.

My fishing gear and life vests went towards the middle of the shelves. Paint cans and painting supplies were below that. Sports gear went to the right. My household tools were (key word “were”) on the middle shelf on the far right as it was next to the door into our house, thus easy for me to reach.

And now? There are car parts and tools strewn everywhere (which are supposed to only be out in Steve’s separate three car shop, but aren’t because it’s so crammed with junk that he can’t find anything so he puts them in our attached garage, so now I can’t find anything). He puts a sleeping bag on the floor next to a paint can, a bicycle helmet and a camp stove because they are all green. My tools go back into whatever closet, drawer or cupboard in the house that was closest to where he was using them because he says he can’t remember where he got them from. Sports equipment is spread far and near. He built some new shelving in the opposite corner to put most of our ski boots and a bit of our gardening supplies, some old cookware, books, a few canning jars, and more overflow junk from his shop.

*Sigh*

I now hang my sheets to dry on our deck railings.