A Rainbow in the Dryer

"What could this be?" you ask. Well, let me tell you. Crayons in the dryer. Yep, crayons. A red one and an orange one to be precise. They were left in one artistic little 2-year-old's pocket. I opened the dryer today to take out a load of the kids' laundry, and was greeted by a rainbow. The inside of the dryer looked like someone tie-dyed it. The crayon was actually melted into the metal. It doesn't show up as well as I'd like, but here's an idea of what it looked like.

Of course, the entire load of laundry was covered in crayon, too. I really didn't think that any of it would come out, since it was dried in. Lucky for me, if you google Crayons in the Dryer, you come up with this wonderful page of people who have posted ways they have gotten crayons out of clothes and off of their dryer. For the dryer, I used ceramic cook top cleaner. It took about an hour, but it did get it all off. I put the clothes back in the washer, filled it with hot water, detergent, OxyClean, and Goo-Gone and let them soak for about 2 hours before I put it going. Amazingly, the crayon came out of everything except for a couple of socks and the mattress pad for the crib! I can tell you that I will check Carter's pockets religiously from here on out!

As I was scrubbing my dryer, which is not an easy task, I was thinking to myself, "This is not funny. I can't believe I'm having to do this." Sometimes I can find humor in situations like this quickly, but today I had a hard time. Before I started cleaning the dryer, I asked Seth if this was a sufficient reason to ditch our current washer and dryer and splurge for the awesome front load, enormous capacity washer and dryer that I covet so much. He said it was not. This did not help me find the humor. Then he had to leave for a meeting while I was left scrubbing and taking care of two kids, and on top of that, all three of us have colds. Still no humor. Then I started scrubbing the dryer, and Carter took my roll of paper towels and tossed it in the washer full of water and clothes to "help" me. This was getting less and less funny by the minute. But as I continued to clean, I had to lean further and further into the dryer. It was at this point, I felt two little hands, drumming on my rear end. That's when I realized how funny this must look, and I had a little chuckle. Not a belly laugh. Just a chuckle. Some days you're doing good to just find the chuckle.