Dryer sheets... You know, the ones you buy at the grocery store, bring home, toss in your dryer with your clean but wet clothes, and they smell nice and help keep clothes from wrinkling? I love those, how they smell, how soft they make everything, all of it.
My husband hates lavender so I never buy those. I like the clean scent ones, or the sunshine scented ones (whatever that is). The citrus ones tend to be a little overpowering for me (no matter the brand). Grabbing a freshly washed and dried towel from the dryer and wrapping up in it is a self care MUST. Even for just a moment.
One evening several years ago I was flipping laundry from washer to dryer and heard, "Hey babe?" This is a normal occurrence. I commended him for catching me when my head wasn't all the way down in the washer trying to grab that last sock stuck to the bottom. His studio is in the room adjacent to the laundry/mud room, separated by two stairs and a wall. I have a hearing deficiency, a genetic one. I do not wear hearing aids yet as I am trying to save what hearing I do have and the audiologist says I can wait. That does make communication with me more difficult and frustrating for my loved ones (and others who don't necessarily love me but need to communicate with me). "Yes?" I responded back. And waited. Three seconds... Six... "Babe?" I asked again. "Oh!" he says. This happens often. When he is into a painting he can be very distractible. I just figure it's paying me back for all the times I took off after my own squirrel before he started painting. "Babe do you have any used dryer sheets?"
Now what in tarnation could he want with those? And why did they have to be used? "Uh... none that don't have lint in them." Like any normal human I use the used dryer sheet to run across the lint filter and clean it out, then toss the whole thing in the trash. It's a very fancy laundry trash can set up... A grocery sack (usually Kroger brand) hung from a shelving unit above the washer/dryer that has hooks for hanging things. I am not sure the designer ever envisioned a lint filled Kroger bag as the central piece of Hook Row, but here we are.
"Darn," I hear. "Why honey?" I ask, now invested in what he is wanting do with the trash from the dryer. "I can spray through it for texture." Ah. Now I get it. You see, when you paint with an airbrush you spray the paint onto your surface instead of pushing it around with a brush. He has sprayed (or tried to spray) through so many random items over the years. I never know what the next one will be. This time it was a used dryer sheet. I offered him a new one and he declined. New ones still have the smell good/dewrinkling substances on them and do not have adequate pass through ability. Apparently.
And that is the story about how we ended up at our local craft store the next day to buy an embroidery hoop to hold a used dryer sheet for a texture tool. For my husband. Not for me. I love it when the cashiers find out he is the artist. Their faces are always slightly surprised. It's amusing. And it is just another day in my life with an artist.
