Let me start by saying I am no Domestic Goddess! 

As I set up the ironing board this morning I felt the senility creeping over my brain.  I don’t iron.  If I have, it has been about a dozen times in the last 35 years with the exception of when I sew costumes.  Yep in my household if it ain’t wash and wear it don’t get bought.  I don’t care how lovely it is or how inexpensive, the thrill is gone the minute I read the label and it says press with a warm iron. 

Now I apply heat to clothes with a dryer, to dishes with the dish washer, and to my body with the thermostat but I don’t iron.  For years I have said the hardest part of ironing was setting up the board so I didn’t!  Oh sometimes the hubby or the kids left the house looking like they had slept in a cement mixer but by the end of the day they looked that way anyway.  I figure people would look at them for the first half of the day and say what a piss poor wife/mother they have.  But in the second half of the day they looked like everybody else.

But things have changed here lately.  The old ironing board has been up two times in the last ten days to iron a tablecloth and some shirts.  Now the shirts were gifts from the sons and I used to hide them in the back of the closet where hubby couldn’t see them.  But the need for shirts that open in the front started with dialysis and the hiding had to stop. 

Now I admit I was a little ashamed to send him off to treatment in a rumpled shirt so I conceded the point and finally hauled out the iron.  As I stood there staring at my task I had to recall do I iron the yoke first ( is that what you call the area across the shoulders in back)?  Or do I do the sleeves first!  I know I iron the plackets before the body and then the rest of the garment.  I thought this was like riding a bike—you didn’t forget. 

Oh well the deed is done but I am still sitting with furrowed brow trying to remember the word for the back of the shirt across the shoulders!