Ah, lip gloss and laundry. A pair that was never meant to be. Two items, that when joined together equalled me having my first Den Flannery “Son of a B! Who left their Chapstick in their pocket and threw it in dryer?” moment. (But replace that “B” with the full word and potentially pepper the sentence with some other choice words. And then picture me or either of my brothers panicking, hoping it wasn’t us, and if we were the guilty party, praying it didn’t “ruin the dryer”, thanking God when the dryer was deemed in good shape, then re-washing loads of laundry in a row home basement in Philadelphia. Good times. Good times. I am still not sure if washing a Chapstick or washing tissues was a worse offense.)

I am sure, as it was when I was growing up, this is the first of many such laundry delights I will endure at the mercy of our children.

For some reason, I woke up with a little extra motivation on this fine Friday morning. So, I decided to strip the kids’ beds and wash their sheets. A little jump start on the weekend chores? Perhaps.

Things were humming along as planned. Until now.

I just removed Grace’s sheets from the dryer and this lovely ice cream cone of a lip gloss hit the floor.

Well, nuts.

It’s purple.

And sparkly.

And unlike the picture, it was open.

Sigh.

I started pulling sheets out of the dryer.

Yep. Small purple, sparkly dots adorned each and every sheet and pillow case that I had just washed.

Suddenly, my original “I’m so clever!” idea to wash both the Fall / Winter and Spring / Summer sheet sets all together to freshen up her Spring / Summer set before I put them on her bed  seemed to scream “You fool!” Loudly. Very loudly.

So, I cozied up with my Resolve bottle and spent 30 minutes poring over every square inch of two sets of sheets in the hopes of obliterating any trace of purple and sparkles. And given the patterns, it was every bit as much of a good, fun time as you might imagine.

As fun as this real-world game of almost Where’s Waldo? proportions was, it also gave me plenty of time to think. And it finally hit me – why the heck is there a lip gloss in with her sheets? Is there a burning need for purple, sparkly, ice cream shaped and scented lip gloss in the middle of the night? Apparently so. Life according to Grace.