Dryer Quotes

Going round and around inside a dryer can be fatal, whereas pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it.

Well, when I was five, I wanted my mother to let me go around and around inside a dryer with the clothes,” Clary said. “The difference is, she didn’t let me.” “Probably because going around and around in a dryer can be fatal,” Jace pointed out, “whereas pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it.

Normal" is just a setting on your dryer.

I personally subscribe to the belief that normal is just a setting on the dryer.

Well, thanks. It was nice of you to give me anything." The tension between them seemed to press down on her like humid air. "Better than a bath in spaghetti any day." He said darkly, "If you share that little bit of personal information with anyone, I may have to kill you." "Well, when I was five, I wanted my mother to let me go around and around inside the dryer with the clothes," Clary said. "The difference is, she didn't let me." "Probably because going around and around inside a dryer can be fatal," Jace pointed out, "whereas pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it.

Did you ever, when you were little, endure your parents’ warnings, then wait for them to leave the room, pry loose protective covers and consider inserting some metal object into an electrical outlet? Did you wonder if for once you might light up the room? When you were big enough to cross the street on your own, did you ever wait for a signal, hear the frenzied approach of a fire truck and feel like stepping out in front of it? Did you wonder just how far that rocket ride might take you? When you were almost grown, did you ever sit in a bubble bath, perspiration pooling, notice a blow dryer plugged in within easy reach, and think about dropping it into the water? Did you wonder if the expected rush might somehow fail you? And now, do you ever dangle your toes over the precipice, dare the cliff to crumble, defy the frozen deity to suffer the sun, thaw feather and bone, take wing to fly you home?

Two hundred women, no phones, no washing machines, no hair dryers--it was like Lord of the Flies on estrogen.

My chest bumps like a dryer with shoes in it.

Our relationship feels different. Like someone has taken my favorite sweater and thrown it in the dryer and it doesn't fit right anymore. I want to pull and tug on it until it feels comfortable again.

all those nights with the phone warming the side of my face like the sun. you made jokes and sure, i may have even laughed a little but mostly you were not funny. mostly you were beautiful. mostly you were unremarkable, even your mediocrity was unremarkable. when friends would ask ‘what do you like about him?” i would think of you holding a bouquet against the denim of your shirt. i mean, you had my face as your screensaver for gods sake, do you know what that does for the self-esteem of girl with an apparition for a father? hey, do you remember the quiet between us in all those restaurants? all the other couples engrossed in deep conversation and us, as quiet as a closed mouth. that one afternoon when i asked ‘why do you love me?’ and you replied as quick as a toin coss ‘because you’re mad, because you’re crazy’ and i said ‘why else?’ and you said ‘that mouth, i love that mouth’ and i collapsed into myself like a sheet right out of the dryer. you clean, beautiful, unremarkable boy, raised by a pleasant mother, was i just a riot you loved to watch up close? there were times i picked arguments just so that we could have something to talk about. last week, i walked through the part of the city i loved when i still loved you, our old haunts. you know, even the ghosts have moved on.

Normal' is a dryer setting.

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still

I've never been this wet in my life, " said Kira. "Even immersed in a bathtub I swear I was dryer than I am now. " "Look on the bright side, " said Marcus. Kira waited. "This is the point at which you would traditionally suggest a bright side. " "I've never been a real traditional guy," said Marcus. "Besides, I'm not saying I know a bright side, I just think this would be a great time to look at one.

On game shows, some people will take the trip to France, but most people will take the washer and dryer pair.

What do you miss about being alive?" The sound of my mom singing, a little off-key. The way my dad went to all my swim meets and I could hear his whistle when my head was underwater, even if he did yell at me afterward for not trying harder. I miss going to the library. I miss the smell of clothes fresh out of the dryer. I miss diving off the highest board and nailing the landing. I miss waffles" - p. 272.

Its funny how certain objects convey a message -- my washer and dryer, for example. They can't speak, of course, but whenever I pass them they remind me that I'm doing fairly well. "No more laundromat for you," they hum. My stove, a downer, tells me every day that I can't cook, and before I can defend myself my scale jumps in, shouting from the bathroom, "Well, he must be doing something. My numbers are off the charts." The skeleton has a much more limited vocabulary and says only one thing: "You are going to die.

I washed a sock. Then I put it in the dryer. When I took it out, it was gone.

I’m confiscating your hair dryer—you’ve fried your brain.

My chest bumps like a dryer with shoes in it. I compose what I project will be seen as a smile. I turn this way and that, slightly, sort of directing the expression to everyone in the room.

In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.

There is no such thing as 'normal.' Normal is just a setting on the dryer." - Ariana's Grandma

Our relationship was a lot like underwear in a dryer without a static control sheet. One minute we were floating through life, buoyant and carefree. The next we were attached at the crotch

When we spend time together, I feel this peace that I don't get when you're not around. It's kind of like when you're a kid, and you put on fresh PJs after a bath and get into a made bed with clean sheets straight out of the dryer. That's what being with you feels like.

It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.

I never realized how powerful desire could be. It consumes every part of you, enhancing your senses by a million. When you’re in the moment, it enhances your sense of sight, and all you can do is focus on the person in front of you. It enhances your sense of smell, and suddenly, you’re aware of the fact that his hair has just been washed and his shirt is fresh out of the dryer. It enhances your sense of touch and makes your skin prickle and your fingertips tingle, and it leaves you craving to be touched. It enhances your sense of taste, and your mouth becomes hungry and wanting, and the only thing that can satisfy it is the relief of another mouth in search of the same.

A fecking flamethrower! Why didn't I think of that? Best I came up with was a measly hair dryer.

You know before you know, of course. You are bending over the dryer, pulling out the still-warm sheets, and the knowledge walks up your backbone. You stare at the man you love and you are staring at nothing; he is gone before he is gone.

It was black-black, so thick it drank two containers of relaxer at the salon, so full it took hours under the hooded dryer, and, when finally released from pink plastic rollers, sprang free and full, flowing down her back like a celebration. Her father called it a crown of glory.

Then his lips caress mine. It’s only a brush, but the warmth overheats every part of me. Leaning back, my elbow bumps into the power button on the dryer and the old appliance starts moving. Spinning. Spinning like my head. Like my heart.

I wish the dryer were running, because man, I could use a good...tumble dry."-Eve Rosser

Gentler than the Lanisters is dryer than the sea.

So what I want to know is this. How often do all these hairy-faced men wash their faces? It is only once a week, like us, on Sunday nights? And do they shampoo it? Do they use a hair-dryer? Do they rub hair-tonic in to stop their faces from going bald? Do they go to a barber to have their hairy faces cut and trimmed or do they do it themselves in front of the bathroom mirror with nail-scissors?

Opening my door to Dillon Ruddick, my bulding super. I handed him a cup of coffee. "Sorry about the blood." "What was it this time?" No one reported gunfire." "I hit a guy in the face with a hair dryer." "Whoa." Dillon said. "It wasn't my fault," I told him. "Maybe we should lay down some linoleum here. It would make things easier for clean up.

I like to see cats tumble around, but I wish they wouldn’t meow so much when I shove them in the dryer.

Our relationship was a lot like underwear in a dryer without a static control sheet. One minute we were floating through life, buoyant and carefree. The next we were attached at the crotch.

I can't give you up now. When we spend time together, I feel this peace that I don't get when you're not around. It's kind of like when you're a kid, and you put on fresh PJs after a bath and get into a made bed with clean sheets straight out of the dryer. That's what being with you feels like.

The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics … Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930?

A new beginning done right," she said out loud, because everyone knew that saying it out loud made it true. "You hear that, karma?" She glanced upward through her slightly leaky sunroof into a dark sky, where storm clouds tumbled together like a dryer full of gray wool blankets. "This time, I'm gong to be strong." Like Katharine Hepburn. Like Ingrid Bergman ."So go torture someone else and leave me alone." A bolt of lightning blinded her, followed by a boom of thunder that nearly had her jerking out of her skin. "Okay, so I meant pretty please leave me alone." -Maddie

He was distracted at that moment by a black lace bra that was reclining provocatively but somewhat casually on top of the dryer. He gazed at it and realized that the number and cup size that popped into his head the night he'd taken her to Harbour Sixty for dinner were absolutely correct. Gabriel silently congratulated himself.

Normal is just a settng on your dryer

As I head back up the stairs, I hear the dryer make a sound of great mechanical distress, nnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, and I pause for only a moment before I decide that if I leave, I will no longer intimidate the machine, and it will then do its job very well without me.

She was the kind of elegance That would never tarnish. A mixture of lace and mesh, Like a classic heirloom that begged to be worn. She was sharp intellect and quick wit. The type of woman that spoke her mind, Even if it shook. (Or even if no one was listening.) She was beautiful. But not someone you’d see in magazines, Her hips were too wide, her hair a mess of wispy tendrils, (Rather, she was actually very ordinary.) My, was she stubborn! She’d drive you mad! (Sometimes, you’d probably call her crazy.) But mostly, her laughter was a joyful moments. Like a warm towel fresh from the dryer, Or finding a twenty-dollar bill in your winter coat. And that was the true revelation. That magic does exist, It ran through her like a wild, fiery current.

She, Laura, likes to imagine (it's one of her most closely held secrets) that she has a touch of brilliance herself, just a hint of it, though she knows most people probably walk around with similar hopeful suspicions curled up like tiny fists inside them, never divulged. She wonders, while she pushes a cart through the supermarket or has her hair done, it the other women aren't all thinking, to some degree or other, the same thing: Here is the brilliant spirit, the woman of sorrows, the woman of transcendent joys, who would rather be elsewhere, who has consented to perform simple and essentially foolish tasks, to examine tomatoes, to sit under a hair dryer, because it is her art and her duty.

Tell the world what scares you the most” says Brandy. She gives us each an Aubergine Dreams eyebrow pencil and says “Save the world with some advice from the future” Seth writes on the back of a card and hands the card to Brandy for her to read. On game shows, Brandy reads, some people will take the trip to France, but most people will take the washer dryer pair.” Brandy puts a big Plumbago kiss in the little square for the stamp and lets the wind lift and card and sail it off toward the towers of downtown Seattle. Seth hands her another, and Brandy reads: Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random useless facts that are all we have left from our education” A kiss and the card’s on it’s way toward Lake Washington. From Seth: When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?” A kiss and it’s off on the wind toward Ballard. Only when we eat up this planet will God give us another. We’ll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.” Interstate 5 snakes by in the distance. From high atop the Space Needle, the southbound lanes are red chase lights, and the northbound lanes are white chase lights. I take a card and write: I love Seth Thomas so much I have to destroy him. I overcompensate by worshipping the queen supreme. Seth will never love me. No one will ever love me ever again. Beandy is waiting to rake the card and read it out loud. Brandy’s waiting to read my worst fears to the world, but I don’t give her the card. I kiss it myself with the lips I don’t have and let the wind take it out of my hand. The card flies up, up, up to the stars and then falls down to land in the suicide net. While I watch my future trapped in the suicide net Brandy reads another card from Seth. We are all self-composting” I write another card from the future and Brandy reads it: When we don’t know who to hate, we hate ourselves” An updraft lifts up my worst fears from the suicide net and lifts them away. Seth writes and Brandy reads. You have to keep recycling yourself”. I write and Brandy reads. Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.” I write and Brandy reads. The one you love and the one who loves you are never ever the same person.

She was the only doctor's wife in Branford, Maine, who hung her wash on an outdoor clothesline instead of putting it through a dryer, because she liked to look out the window and see the clothes blowing in the wind. She had been especially delighted, one day, when one sleeve of the top of her husband's pajamas, prodded by the stiff breeze off the bay, reached over and grabbed her nightgown around the waist.

he’d looked as tall and cool as ever, but a faint panicked light in his blue eyes had put her oddly in mind of a cat that had just had an inadvertent ride in a dryer.

If women are choosing not to run the world, it’s partly because men are choosing not to run the washer and dryer.

What is lint? How does it find hair dryers and navels?

Up and down lost all meaning. Her world became a violent tumble-dryer, an endless, crashing kaleidoscope.

Some people look like they were born on a clothes hanger. Not me. I look more like I was born in a dryer.

SIT WITH ME I’m not trying to write a tailored suit. I’m trying to write boot socks, warm from the dryer. There’s an endless autumn in me, scenting my thoughts like campfire smoke. I write for the weather I know.

I believe the way to solve this dilemma is if you marry me, so I’ll always be close by.” Love swelled up in her heart. “I think I can manage that.” “Good, ’cause the way I’ve got it figured, it’s the only way I can stay somewhere in the same vicinity as my balls.” ~Dryer and Charlotte

Let’s say that Person 1 thinks their hair dryer is telling them to shoot every redhead who gets on the 9:04 train. And let’s say Person 2 thinks their hair dryer is telling them to volunteer twice a week at a homeless shelter. Is it better to volunteer at a homeless shelter than it is to shoot every redhead who gets on the 9:04 train? Of course it is. But you still have a basic problem — which is that you think your hair dryer is talking to you.

Design is not limited to fancy new gadgets. Our family just bought a new washing machine and dryer. We didn’t have a very good one so we spent a little time looking at them. It turns out that the Americans make washers and dryers all wrong. The Europeans make them much better – but they take twice as long to do clothes! It turns out that they wash them with about a quarter as much water and your clothes end up with a lot less detergent on them. Most important, they don’t trash your clothes. They use a lot less soap, a lot less water, but they come out much cleaner, much softer, and they last a lot longer. We spent some time in our family talking about what’s the trade-off we want to make. We ended up talking a lot about design, but also about the values of our family. Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer? Did we care about using a quarter of the water? We spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table. We’d get around to that old washer-dryer discussion. And the talk was about design. We ended up opting for these Miele appliances, made in Germany. They’re too expensive, but that’s just because nobody buys them in this country. They are really wonderfully made and one of the few products we’ve bought over the last few years that we’re all really happy about. These guys really thought the process through. They did such a great job designing these washers and dryers. I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years.

You're the warm sheets next to me every morning, and the bright colors in the dryer when we do laundry. You're the toothbrush next to mine on the sink. You're the first sip of coffee in the morning, and the last sip of win at night.

Other, dryer customers came and went, having just stepped out of their conveyances or popped down the street from their houses in the town. They left their umbrellas dripping at the door, and looked at her with that particular combination of sympathy and amusement that the soaked seem always to elicit in the dry.

Meena wasn't sure which she found more disturbing: that she'd been hunting her ex-boyfriend's murderous wife with a hair dryer beneath the streets of Manhattan, or that when she opened her eyes after having been knocked unconscious by this person, she realized she'd been rescued by another one of her ex-boyfriends.

I hope you gaze at cloud art galleries against azure summer skies and pause to gasp at rainbows and watch butterflies fly by; I hope wildflowers make you happy and sad songs make you cry and old books stacked in dusty nooks are gems you can't pass by; I hope burnt toast mornings are little things you handle with a smile and midnight talks and starlit walks keep you up once in awhile; I hope laundry warm from the dryer brings a sigh of contentment and front porch swings on cool evenings offer rest when you are spent; I hope your life is light in sorrow and heavy with laughter and you greet each season of your life like a new favorite chapter; I hope you honor every soul you meet and always go that extra mile and when you think of me, my love, I hope it's with a smile.

Like socks in a dryer, it had vanished into the ether.

Normal is just a setting on the dryer, Star.

No, I really do like the way babies smell. It’s like laundry fresh out of the dryer.” “Only the dryer is a vagina.

I had to use the blow dryer this morning to unthaw my privates.

The launderette, you say? Hmm. Delightful as a career manning the tumble dryers sounds, I think I’ll stick with songwriting for a bit longer.

Let me kisss you. "Okay." "No." His eyes crashed into mine and his hands flattened against the dryer above my shoulders. "I need to kiss your body.

I’ve given up on normal as a life goal, having realized that ‘normal’ is just a setting on one’s dryer.

There is no such thing as 'normal.' Normal is just a setting on the dryer." - Ariana's Grandma

IT WAS LIKE RIDING INTO THE BLAST OF A HAIR-DRYER SET ON HOT.

actions on a loop. Change the diaper. Make the formula. Warm the bottle. Pour the Cheerios. Wipe up the mess. Negotiate. Beg. Change his sleeper. Get her clothes out. Where’s the lunch box? Bundle them up. Walk. Faster. We’re late. Hug her good-bye. Push the swing. Find the lost mitten. Rub the pinched finger. Give him a snack. Get another bottle. Kiss, kiss, kiss. Put him in the crib. Clean. Tidy. Find. Make. Defrost the chicken. Get him up from the crib. Kiss, kiss, kiss. Change his diaper. Put him in the high chair. Clean up his face. Wash the dishes. Tickle. Change the diaper. Tickle. Put the snacks in a baggie. Start the washing machine. Bundle him up. Buy diapers. And dish soap. Race for pickup. Hello, hello! Hurry, hurry. Unbundle. Laundry in the dryer. Turn on her show. Time-out. Please. Listen to my words. No! Stain remover. Diaper. Dinner. Dishes. Answer the question again and again. Run the bath. Take off their clothes.

When the body dies, where will they go, those migrant birds and prayer calls, as heat from sheets when taken from a dryer? With voices of the ones I loved, great loves and small loves, train wheels, crickets, clock-ticks, thunder – where will they, when in fragrant, tumbled heat they also leave?

Our relationship was a lot like underwear in a dryer without a static control sheet. One minute we were floating through life, buoyant and carefree. The next we were attached at the crotch. Rattled,

I am mad again, he thought. Tears brimmed. He swallowed in a tightened throat. I don't want to be. I'm tired, I'm tired and horny, I'm so tired I can't make sense out of any of it and my mind won't work right half the time I try. I'm thirsty. My head's all filled with kapok coffee wouldn't clear. Still, I wish I had some. Where am I going, what am I doing, stumbling in this smoking graveyard? It's not the pain; only that the pain keeps going on. He tried to let all his muscles go and stepped aimlessly from sidewalk to gutter, his mouth dryer and dryer and dryer. Well, he thought, if it hurts, it hurts. It's only pain.

The bathroom’s down the hall if you want to take off your tights. I can throw ‘em in the dryer for you if you want. Or, you can hang them on the shower curtain rod.” He turned. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a woman’s tights draped over my rod.” A quick wink and he was gone before she could do anything more than gape.

Her next words took me by surprise. I lay as still as I could, barely breathing, afraid that if I moved she would stop speaking her heart. “My mom wanted six children. She only got me, and that sucks for her because I was a total weirdo.” “You were not,” I said. She twisted her head up to look at me. “I used to line my lips in black eyeliner and sit cross-legged on the kitchen table … meditating.” “Not that bad,” I said. “Crying out for attention.” “Okay, when I was twelve I started writing letters to my birth mother because I wanted to be adopted.” I shook my head. “Your childhood sucked, you wanted a new reality.” She snorted air through her nose. “I thought a mermaid lived in my shower drain, and I used to call her Sarah and talk to her.” “Active imagination,” I countered. She was becoming more insistent, her little body wriggling in my grip. “I used to make paper out of dryer lint.” “Nerdy.” “I wanted to be one with nature, so I started boiling grass and drinking it with a little bit of dirt for sugar.” I paused. “Okay, that’s weird.” “Thank you!” she said. Then, she got serious again. “My mom just loved me through all of it.

She stands under the hand dryers in the rest room, because she likes the feeling of wind whooshing through her hair, as though she's leaning her head out a car window on the highway, or like she's Superman, circling the Earth. How does the hand dryer know to start as soon as you stick your hands out? It's amazing, this, but the women in the restroom don't notice, and just stare, panicked, into the mirror, trying to work out what's wrong with them before anyone else does.

There was the sink incident - which I may have overreacted to because it reminded me of a memory I had of my parents - the walking in while I was having a shower to ask me where the television remote was incident, the eating his lunch in the kitchen without a shirt on incident- he said he 'accidently' spilled coffee down it and had to put it in the washer/dryer- and there were the many, many 'looking at me for no reason' incidents. I swear to God he was wearing on my panties

I relaxed back into the mattress as other elements in the room began to filter though my senses, namely the extraordinary warmth at my back. The air was filled with the smell of masculine skin and hints of cologne, soap, and dryer sheets. Hank was back. And his scent wasn't the only thing surrounding me; his arm was thrown over my hip and my back was tucked nicely against his front. ... It was nice. Good. Right, even. And then another feeling struck me in a novel way. Protected. I felt protected. A disbelieving laugh bubbled in my throat as I lay there, a small smile parked on my face. I was always the one out there protecting people. And after Will and I had split, I'd had no one to go to for comfort, to let all my guards down, to take a rest from being the caregiver, provider, guard, and detective. To let someone else be tough for a while. Had to admit, I liked it. And I never thought in a gazillion years I'd find this feeling with an off-worlder. I liked Hank's strength, his power, his quirky humor, even the badass attitude he caught sometimes. I was in so much trouble.

The rover was not so lucky. It continued tumbling down the hill, bouncing the traveler around like clothes in a dryer. After twenty meters, the soft powder gave way to more solid sand and the rover shuddered to a halt. It had come to rest on its side. The valves leading to the now- missing hoses had detected the sudden pressure drop and closed. The pressure seal was not breached. The traveler was alive, for now.

Yes, Cabbage: prison diplomacy. It’s called offering the newcomer a very warm welcome. You can tell Mares that I made lots of friends at two in the morning on the first night and continued making friends in the back of the laundry room and if I didn’t make friends there they would shove me into an industrial tumble-dryer and spin me around a few times until I was dizzy enough to make lots of friends at the same time.

You have like … seven pockets in those pants. Imagine carrying seven pockets with you at the carnival. You can’t. You’d need a purse. Then you’d get on the Zipper and it’d be fine for a minute until your purse popped open and all of your stuff was being poltergeisted around the cage at you like you were a kitten in a dryer full of batteries, and then your phone gave you a black eye. This is all based on real life, by the way.

I was a soldier, executing a series of physical actions on a loop. Change the diaper. Make the formula. Warm the bottle. Pour the Cheerios. Wipe up the mess. Negotiate. Beg. Change his sleeper. Get her clothes out. Where’s the lunch box? Bundle them up. Walk. Faster. We’re late. Hug her good-bye. Push the swing. Find the lost mitten. Rub the pinched finger. Give him a snack. Get another bottle. Kiss, kiss, kiss. Put him in the crib. Clean. Tidy. Find. Make. Defrost the chicken. Get him up from the crib. Kiss, kiss, kiss. Change his diaper. Put him in the high chair. Clean up his face. Wash the dishes. Tickle. Change the diaper. Tickle. Put the snacks in a baggie. Start the washing machine. Bundle him up. Buy diapers. And dish soap. Race for pickup. Hello, hello! Hurry, hurry. Unbundle. Laundry in the dryer. Turn on her show. Time-out. Please. Listen to my words. No! Stain remover. Diaper. Dinner. Dishes. Answer the question again and again. Run the bath. Take off their clothes. Wipe up the floor. Are you listening? Brush teeth. Find Benny the Bunny. Put on pajamas. Nurse. A story. Another story. Keep going, keep going, keep going.

Sometimes we might poop a bit if we are fresh. Which is just what I did, out on the cart that day: I pooped a bit while fresh, in my sick-box, out of rage, and what was the result? I have kept that poop with me all this time, and as a matter of fact—I hope you do not find this rude, young sir, or off-putting, I hope it does not impair our nascent friendship—that poop is still down there, at this moment, in my sick-box, albeit much dryer!

I can’t believe he’s going along with this.” She flops on her bed, then wrinkles her forehead and stares at the mattress. “Did you make my bed?” “Yes,” I say sheepishly, but she doesn’t seem pissed. I’d already warned her that my OCD might rear its incredibly tidy head every now and then, and so far she hasn’t batted an eye when it happens. The only items on her don’t-touch-or-I’ll-fuck-you-up list are her shoes and her iTunes music library. “Wait, but you didn’t fold my laundry?” She mock gasps. “What the hell, Grace? I thought we were friends.” I stick out my tongue. “I’m not your maid. Fold your own damn laundry.” Daisy’s eyes gleam. “So you’re telling me you can look at that basket overflowing with fresh-from-the-dryer clothes—” she gestures to the basket in question “—and you aren’t the teensiest bit tempted to fold them? All those shirts…forming wrinkles as we speak. Lonely socks…longing for their pairs—” “Let’s fold your laundry,” I blurt out. A gale of laughter overtakes her small body. “That’s what I thought.

Jen's Mum Will Write Jen's mum writes advertising copy. She specializes in white goods: washing machines, dryers, fridges, freezers, dishwashers. She hates these appliances hulking in corners, power-hungry and fractious. One day, she will have a wood stove, and she'll write about things that matter- she will write about birth and death, about love and the absence of love, about fathers and children, about mothers and daughters, about lovers and friends. She'll write about the whole goddamn wonderful, awful business of loving and being loved

Thank you, Obvious Warning Labels. Without you I might have stuck my kid in a washing machine, lit a match near an open gas line, used my hair dryer while sleeping, or, God forbid, not realized eggs may contain—wait for it—eggs. I have no idea how I ever function without you. (I almost ingested the contents of a lava lamp just yesterday, but your label made another quick save. God bless.)

For as long as I’d been dating, I’d had a mental flow chart, a schedule, of how things usually went. Relationships always started with that heady, swoonish period, where the other person is like some new invention that suddenly solves all life’s worst problems, like losing socks in the dryer or toasting bagels without burning the edges. At this phase, which usually lasts about six weeks max, the other person is perfect. But at six weeks and two days, the cracks begin to show; not real structural damage yet, but little things that niggle and nag. Like the way they always assume you’ll pay for your own movie, just because you did once, or how they use the dashboard of their car as an imaginary keyboard at long stoplights. Once, you might have thought this was cute, or endearing. Now, it annoys you, but not enough to change anything. Come week eight, though, the strain is starting to show. This person is, in fact, human, and here’s where most relationships splinter and die. Because either you can stick around and deal with these problems, or ease out gracefully, knowing that at some point in the not-too-distant future, there will emerge another perfect person, who will fix everything, at least for six weeks.

But Wolfheart freezes in the middle of the movement. Between him and the blood covered man stands a woman who looks so small and frail that the wind should be able to pass right through her ...Every ounce of her seems to be yelling at her to run for her life. But she stays where she is, staring at Wolfheart with the resolute gaze of someone who has nothing left to lose. She rolls up the tumble-dryer fluff in the palm of one hand and clasps her hands over her stomach; then looks at with determination at Wolfheart and says with complete authority: "We don't beat people to death in this leaseholders' association.

These things matter to me, Daniel, says the man with six days to live. They are sitting on the porch in the last light. These things matter to me, son. The way the hawks huddle their shoulders angrily against hissing snow. Wrens whirring in the bare bones of bushes in winter. The way swallows and swifts veer and whirl and swim and slice and carve and curve and swerve. The way that frozen dew outlines every blade of grass. Salmonberries thimbleberries cloudberries snowberries elderberries salalberries gooseberries. My children learning to read. My wife's voice velvet in my ear at night in the dark under the covers. Her hair in my nose as we slept curled like spoons. The sinuous pace of rivers and minks and cats. Fresh bread with too much butter. My children's hands when they cup my face in their hands. Toys. Exuberance. Mowing the lawn. Tiny wrenches and screwdrivers. Tears of sorrow, which are the salt sea of the heart. Sleep in every form from doze to bone-weary. Pay stubs. Trains. The shivering ache of a saxophone and the yearning of a soprano. Folding laundry hot from the dryer. A spotless kitchen floor. The sound of bagpipes. The way horses smell in spring. Red wines. Furnaces. Stone walls. Sweat. Postcards on which the sender has written so much that he or she can barely squeeze in the signature. Opera on the radio. Bathrobes, back rubs. Potatoes. Mink oil on boots. The bands at wedding receptions. Box-elder bugs. The postman's grin. Linen table napkins. Tent flaps. The green sifting powdery snow of cedar pollen on my porch every year. Raccoons. The way a heron labors through the sky with such a vast elderly dignity. The cheerful ears of dogs. Smoked fish and the smokehouses where fish are smoked. The way barbers sweep up circles of hair after a haircut. Handkerchiefs. Poems read aloud by poets. Cigar-scissors. Book marginalia written with the lightest possible pencil as if the reader is whispering to the writer. People who keep dead languages alive. Fresh-mown lawns. First-basemen's mitts. Dish-racks. My wife's breasts. Lumber. Newspapers folded under arms. Hats. The way my children smelled after their baths when they were little. Sneakers. The way my father's face shone right after he shaved. Pants that fit. Soap half gone. Weeds forcing their way through sidewalks. Worms. The sound of ice shaken in drinks. Nutcrackers. Boxing matches. Diapers. Rain in every form from mist to sluice. The sound of my daughters typing their papers for school. My wife's eyes, as blue and green and gray as the sea. The sea, as blue and green and gray as her eyes. Her eyes. Her.

1976. The Bicentennial. In the laundromat, you want for the time on your coins to run out. Through the porthole of the dryer, you watch your bedeviled towels and sheets leap and fall. The radio station piped in from the ceiling plays slow, sad Motown; it encircles you with the desperate hopefulness of a boy at a dance, and it makes you cry. When you get back to your apartment, dump everything on your bed. Your mother is knitting crookedly: red, white, and blue. Kiss her hello. Say: "Sure was warm in the place." She will seem not to hear you.

Like a dingy London bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant fields, where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and faded, dwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged without experience of genial youth, and so long used to make his cramped nest in holes and corners of human nature that he has forgotten its broader and better range, comes sauntering home. In the oven made by the hot pavements and hot buildings, he has baked himself dryer than usual; and he has in his thirsty mind his mellowed port-wine half a century old.

The gospel gives it all. Justification for our guilt. Sanctification for deconstructing our false ideals. Adoption for the red face of our secret shame. And suddenly, in place of the raw emotions that continually joined forces against us, knocking us around like a nickel in a clothes dryer, the sun can now rise in the morning on a truly perfect storm, as God’s grace feeds in us a new passion for Him, and passion responds by feeding us even more grace—a revitalizing shower where the only water seeping into our hearts is from the fountain of living waters, replenishing our once-guilty, once-shameful hearts with sheer joy, acceptance, and freedom. Let it rain.

How old is she now?” “Oh, she’s twenty now.” She hesitated. She was obligated to end our little chat with a stylized flourish. The way it’s done in serial television. So she wet her little bunny mouth, sleepied her eyes, widened her nostrils, patted her hair, arched her back, stood canted and hip-shot, huskied her voice and said, “See you aroun’, huh?” “Sure, Marianne. Sure.” Bless them all, the forlorn little rabbits. They are the displaced persons of our emotional culture. They are ravenous for romance, yet settle for what they call making out. Their futile, acne-pitted men drift out of high school into a world so surfeited with unskilled labor there is competition for bag-boy jobs in the supermarkets. They yearn for security, but all they can have is what they make for themselves, chittering little flocks of them in the restaurants and stores, talking of style and adornment, dreaming of the terribly sincere stranger who will come along and lift them out of the gypsy life of the two-bit tip and the unemployment, cut a tall cake with them, swell them up with sassy babies, and guide them masterfully into the shoal water of the electrified house where everybody brushes after every meal. But most of the wistful rabbits marry their unskilled men, and keep right on working. And discover the end of the dream. They have been taught that if you are sunny, cheery, sincere, group-adjusted, popular, the world is yours, including barbecue pits, charge plates, diaper service, percale sheets, friends for dinner, washer-dryer combinations, color slides of the kiddies on the home projector, and eternal whimsical romance—with crinkly smiles and Rock Hudson dialogue. So they all come smiling and confident and unskilled into a technician’s world, and in a few years they learn that it is all going to be grinding and brutal and hateful and precarious. These are the slums of the heart. Bless the bunnies. These are the new people, and we are making no place for them. We hold the dream in front of them like a carrot, and finally say sorry you can’t have any. And the schools where we teach them non-survival are gloriously architectured. They will never live in places so fine, unless they contract something incurable.

A few years later, Jobs described to Wired the process that went into getting a new washing machine: It turns out that the Americans make washers and dryers all wrong. The Europeans make them much better—but they take twice as long to do clothes! It turns out that they wash them with about a quarter as much water and your clothes end up with a lot less detergent on them. Most important, they don’t trash your clothes. They use a lot less soap, a lot less water, but they come out much cleaner, much softer, and they last a lot longer. We spent some time in our family talking about what’s the trade-off we want to make. We ended up talking a lot about design, but also about the values of our family. Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer? Did we care about using a quarter of the water? We spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table. They ended up getting a Miele washer and dryer, made in Germany. “I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years,” Jobs said.

We can pray over the cholera victim, or we can give her 500 milligrams of tetracycline every 12 hours. (There is still a religion, Christian Science, that denies the germ theory of disease; if prayer fails, the faithful would rather see their children die than give them antibiotics.) We can try nearly futile psychoanalytic talk therapy on the schizophrenic patient, or we can give him 300 to 500 milligrams a day of clozapine. The scientific treatments are hundreds or thousands of times more effective than the alternatives. (And even when the alternatives seem to work, we don’t actually know that they played any role: Spontaneous remissions, even of cholera and schizophrenia, can occur without prayer and without psychoanalysis.) Abandoning science means abandoning much more than air conditioning, CD players, hair dryers, and fast cars.

The official record for the fastest manmade object is the Helios 2 probe, which reached about 70 km/s in a close swing around the Sun. But it’s possible the actual holder of that title is a two-ton metal manhole cover. The cover sat atop a shaft at an underground nuclear test site operated by Los Alamos as part of Operation Plumbbob. When the 1-kiloton nuke went off below, the facility effectively became a nuclear potato cannon, giving the cap a gigantic kick. A high-speed camera trained on the lid caught only one frame of it moving upward before it vanished—which means it was moving at a minimum of 66 km/s. The cap was never found. Now, 66 km/s is about six times escape velocity, but contrary to common speculation, it’s unlikely the cap ever reached space. Newton’s impact depth approximation suggests that it was either destroyed completely by impact with the air or slowed and fell back to Earth. When we turn it back on, our reactivated hair dryer box, bobbing in lake water, undergoes a similar process. The heated steam below it expands outward, and as the box rises into the air, the entire surface of the lake turns to steam. The steam, heated to a plasma by the flood of radiation, accelerates the box faster and faster. Photo courtesy of Commander Hadfield Rather than slam into the atmosphere like the manhole cover, the box flies through a bubble of expanding plasma that offers little resistance. It exits the atmosphere and continues away, slowly fading from second sun to dim star. Much of the Northwest Territories is burning, but the Earth has survived.

He wouldn’t have understood. He wouldn’t have been able to understand in the least the desire, the pure quintessential need of my readers for escape, a thing I myself understood only too well. Life had been hard on them and they had not fought back, they’d collapsed like soufflés in a high wind. Escape wasn’t a luxury for them, it was a necessity. They had to get it somehow. And when they were too tired to invent escapes of their own, mine were available for them at the corner drugstore, neatly packaged like the other painkillers. They could be taken in capsule form, quickly and discreetly, during those moments when the hair-dryer was stiffening the curls around their plastic rollers or the bath oil in the bath was turning their skins to pink velvet, leaving a ring in the tub to be removed later with Ajax Cleanser, which would make their hands smell like a hospital and cause their husbands to remark that they were about as sexy as a dishcloth. Then they would mourn their lack of beauty, their departing youth.… I knew all about escape, I was brought up on it.

But just in case you don’t want to spend eternity giving yourself high colonics on some sleazy Web site, ogled by millions of men with serious intimacy problems, the other type of work which most people do in Hell is—telemarketing. Yes, this means sitting at a desk, elbow-to-elbow with fellow doomed telemarketing associates who stretch to the horizon in either direction, all of you yakking on headsets. My job is: The dark forces are constantly calculating when it’s dinnertime anywhere on earth, and a computer autodials those phone numbers so I can interrupt everyone’s meal. My goal isn’t actually to sell you anything; I just ask if you have a few seconds to take part in a market research study identifying consumer trends in chewing gum. In mouthwash. In dryer fabric-softener sheets. I get to wear my headset telephone and work from a flowchart of possible responses. Best of all, I get to talk to real-live people—like yourself—who are still living and breathing and have no idea that I’m dead and phoning them from the Afterlife. Trust me, the vast majority of telemarketing people who ring you up, they’re dead. As are pretty much all Internet porn models.

I hadn't wanted to explain the lipstick. Or the mascara. Or the skinny jeans I'd snagged from Sienna's laundrey and washed under cover of darkness and paired with a black turtleneck that a jaunt through the dryer had made, to ne honest, a size too small. But this news about the Willing Archive trumped all of that. He gave me a careful once-over. "Well." I sat down next to him, aiming for casual. I should have aimed my butt. I sat on his geometry book. "Well what?" "Don't even.The day you become a good liar is the day I leave you for one of the Hannandas." "I have an appointment at the Willing Archive." I will say this for Frankie: He pays attention. "The utterly-off-limits, place-to-bury-your-face-in-Edward's-old-knickers archive?" "Nice.But yes,that one.Mrs. Evers got me in." "About time someone did." He bumped a shoulder against mine. "I really do hate to burst your bubble, Fiorella, but Edward is a century past appreciating the sight of you in tight jeans. So tell me whassup." I squirmed a little. "What sort of idiot do you think I am?" He sighed. "You look good, but I am concerned about the inspiration." "It's not a big deal. It's some makeup." "When I want a boy to look ta me, it's a day that ends in y. You, it's something else. It's a big deal.

Walking home's going to be...interesting half dressed." Alan mused as he dropped the shirt over the lip of the sink. Shelby shot a look over her shoulder, but the retort she had in mind slipped away from her.He was lean enough so she could have counted his ribs, but there was a sense of power and endurance in the breadth of his chest and shoulders, the streamlined waist. His body made her forget any other man she'd ever seen. It had been he,she realized all at once, whom she'd been thinking of when she'd thrown the clay into that clean-lined bowl. Shelby let the first flow of arousal rush through her because it was as sweet as it was sharp. Then she tensed against it, rendering it a distant throb she could control. "You're in excellent shape," she commented lightly. "You should be able to make it to P street in under three minutes at a steady jog." "Shelby, that's downright unfriendly." "I thought it was more rude," she corrected as she struggled against a grin. "I suppose I could be a nice guy and throw it in the dryer for you." "It was your clay." "It was your move," she reminded him, but snatched up the damp shirt. "Okay, come on upstairs." With one hand, she tugged off her work apron, tossing it aside as she breezed through the doorway. "I suppose you're entitled to one drink on the house." "You're all heart," Alan murmured as he followed her up the stairs. "My reputation for generosity precedes me.

It is said that when Martin Luther would slip into one of his darker places (which happened a lot, the dude was totally bipolar), he would comfort himself by saying, “Martin, be calm, you are baptized.” I suspect his comfort came not from recalling the moment of baptism itself, or in relying on baptism as a sort of magic charm, but in remembering what his baptism signified: his identity as a beloved child of God. Because ultimately, baptism is a naming. When Jesus emerged from the waters of the Jordan, a voice from heaven declared, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Jesus did not begin to be loved at the moment of his baptism, nor did he cease to be loved when his baptism became a memory. Baptism simply named the reality of his existing and unending belovedness. As my friend Nadia puts it, “Identity. It’s always God’s first move.”9 So, too, it is with us. In baptism, we are identified as beloved children of God, and our adoption into the sprawling, beautiful, dysfunctional family of the church is celebrated by whoever happens to be standing on the shoreline with a hair dryer and deviled eggs. This is why the baptism font is typically located near the entrance of a church. The central aisle represents the Christian’s journey through life toward God, a journey that begins with baptism. The good news is you are a beloved child of God; the bad news is you don’t get to choose your siblings.

Ballad" Oh dream, why do you do me this way? Again, with the digging, again with the digging up. Once more with the shovels. Once more, the shovels full of dirt. The vault lid. The prying. The damp boards. Mother beside me. Like she’s an old hat at this. Like all she’s got left is curiosity. Like curiosity didn’t kill the red cat. Such a sweet, gentle cat it was. Here we go again, dream. Mother, wearing her take-out-the-garbage coat. I haven’t seen that coat in years. The coat she wore to pick me up from school early. She appeared at the back of the classroom, early. Go with your mother, teacher said. Diane, you are excused. I was a little girl. Already a famous actress. I looked at the other kids. I acted lucky. Though everyone knows what an early pick-up means. An early pick-up, dream. What’s wrong, I asked my mother. It is early spring. Bright sunlight. The usual birds. Air, teetering between bearable and unbearable. Cold, but not cold enough to shiver. Still, dream, I shiver. You know, my mother said. Her long garbage coat flying. There was a wind, that day. A wind like a scurrying grandmother, dusting. Look inside yourself, my mother said. You know why I have come for you. And still I acted lucky. Lucky to be out. Lucky to be out in the cold world with my mother. I’m innocent, I wanted to say. A little white girl, trying out her innocence. A white lamb, born into a cold field. Frozen almost solid. Brought into the house. Warmed all night with hair dryers. Death? I said. Smiling. Lucky. We’re barely to the parking lot. Barely to the car ride home. But the classroom already feels like the distant past. Long ago, my classmates pitying me. Arriving at this car full of uncles. Were they wearing suits? Death such a formal occasion. My sister, angry-crying next to me. Me, encountering a fragment of evil in myself. Evilly wanting my mother to say it. What? I asked, smiling. My lamb on full display at the fair. He’s dead! my sister said. Hit me in the gut with her flute. Her flute case. Her rental flute. He’s dead! Our father. Our father, who we were not supposed to know had been dying. He’s dead! The flute gleaming in its red case. Here, my mother said at home. She’d poured us each a small glass of Pepsi We normally couldn’t afford Pepsi. Lucky, I acted. He’s no longer suffering, my mother said. Here, she said. Drink this. The little bubbles flew. They bit my tongue. My evil persisted. What is death? I asked. And now, dream, once more you bring me my answer. Dig, my mother says. Pry, she says. I don’t want to see, dream. The lid so damp it crumbles under my hands. The casket just a drawerful of bones. A drawerful. Just bones and teeth. That one tooth he had. Crooked like mine.