Succumbing to what one says one would never do (and living with the shame)

A friend's mother used to iron her sheets (don't all mothers of a certain generation?) not because she was an ironing control freak but because as she used to claim "I can't sleep feeling all wrinkled." She meant it.

I love bedding. A friend talked me out of buying this wonderful, French-made silk, celladon-green duvet cover before Christmas. Remember, this was just the cover for a duvet. It was nearly a thousand bucks. I'd convinced myself I needed it. Luckily I didn't buy it and the same friend made me a silk-taffeta, celladon-green duvet cover for Christmas.

That begged new sheet sets to go with it. I found a lovely "dirty" yellow coloured set that matches wonderfully. Not the finest quality available, but the colour was perfect.

I've never had a set of sheets that so angrily refuse to assume anything but a "been packed for 15 years in a pressurized stuff sack" look. I wash on permanent press, take them out of the dryer early... Regardless they are amazingly wrinkled at a macro and micro level. It's egyptian cotton, good thickness (and let's face it thickness beats length any ol' day; ahem, but I digress) and high thread count (but under 300!! -- remember the colour was pefect).

SO, last night, very tired at about 1 a.m. after my on-line Chat with Korea I toddled off to bed only to find I hadn't made it up after stripping it for laundry earlier in the day. Good news in a sense as it was the turn of the new yellow sheets to be on the bed. The frumpy wrinkled mess that was the fresh smelling sheets glared at me.

Yes, it's true. At that hour I got out the iron. To do something I've often said I'd never do -- iron sheets. Not utterly crazy I ironed only the pillow cases and the top horizontal strip of the flat sheet -- the bit that one sees when the bed is made and the sheet folded down... Still didn't achieve that crisp look, but they were not gullied and valleyed with creases and with what if on my face would be called laugh lines.

I slept better. My head and upper chest at least feeling, oh, less wrinkled.

Another reason to continue the frantic search for a therapist.

steve
As a postscript, it is amazing that while I don't do a lot of ironing, I have been required to iron shirt most working days of the last 12 years or so, yet I never put a hot steaming iron to cotton to be enveloped in that smell (love the scent, hate the task as the Catholics would say) without thinking of my mother ironing. She did a lot of it. The spritzer and steam functions on her irons was either missing (not yet invented?) or, when those models made it to our home, were out of order, choked with the minerals of our town's water supply. Mother would fill her measuring cup with warm water and dip a potato brush into the water and with a few rapid wrist snaps flick sprays of the water onto the clothing, some water always hitting the hot surface of the iron, spitting and sighing with the heat.