Hot Undergarments

In preparation for a trip to the ZOO, the kids were cleaning their bedroom, and I was in the kitchen preparing a lunch for the next day's outing. I passed through my bedroom to the toy closet, while putting away some things that had been left in the kitchen, when on my way out the bedroom door, I smelt something hot.

I walked around the room sniffing, and looking to see if the kids had found an iron or some other heating gadget to plug in and turn on. Finding nothing, I had everyone line up at the front door and ran out to get my husband. I am a firm believer of better safe than sorry, so lining them up was my safety precaution for the unlikely scenario of my bedroom bursting into flames.

Upon reaching my husband, I blurted out "There's something hot burning in the bedroom it smells like metal come on!" without a breath; after which I motioned for him to follow me as I ran back inside. He was on the phone and didn't take very kindly to my interruption.

After entering the house I turned, checking to be sure he was right behind me. Glaring at me, he asked his friend "could you hold on just a minute, I guess there's something burning in my house." The kids, the husband, and I all crept down the hall and gathered around my bedroom door looking in. After a moment, my oldest son pointed at the ceiling and yelled out, "It's the underwear on the chandelier!" Which was followed by rolling laughter from everyone in the house including myself.

I hope my husband explained to his friend on the other end of the phone how those underwear got there.

Let me do so, for you, now. Although this is the chandelier that hangs above my bed, don't be so quick to assume they were flung their amidst some steamy passionate event. Remember we have 7 children who's bedroom is directly across the hall from ours.

No, it happened as follows: Earlier in the day, one of the children had knocked the clean laundry - that was on my bed waiting to be folded - off onto the ground. When I walked down the hall and noticed this, I instructed them to pick it back up and place it on the bed so I could fold it later. Evidently the child was in a hurry, because instead of nicely setting the items back onto my bed, they quickly flung all of the items over their head - not looking to see where each one was to land.

Come to think of, it I have a faint recollection of another child reporting to me in the kitchen that their sibling had thrown my underwear on the chandelier while cleaning up. A minor detail that I quickly forgot.


Since we keep the lights out during the day to conserve energy, I hadn't noticed the hot smell earlier. But now an hour or so after dark those clean undies (actually it was my bra) had become very hot, and not the kind of hot you would normally refer to female undergarments as being.

So all in all, yes my undergarments had been flung to the chandelier above my bed. And the kids broadcast that information to a friend from church on the other end of the line. Unfortunately this was not the occurrence of some steamy romance, but a child's halfhearted attempt to clean up right.






Despite the hot undergarment ordeal, we still made it happily to the zoo the following morning.





Yes Life is All Surreal. When 7 kids are involved it can seem a little more dreamy than it is.

MJB