Due to the many hours I’m logging looking through oodles of boxes filled with old family photos, and the fact that there is just way too much fun to be had with all the walks and little boys and long talks and reading real books… I’m pulling out the archives, peeps.

I STILL get a hard time about this incident, from both real life friends and bloggie peeps alike. I think it’ll go down in history. Is it really THAT weird? Come on, I’m sure some of you have a few crazy I-have-no-brain-left stories to beat this one…

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.

It will come as no surprise to most of you that I have completely lost my marbles. I’m just not “with it.” I’ve known this to be true for quite some time, but something about a second move within five months, being the mama of a toddler, wife of a Marine, carrying an itsy bitsy one-on-the-way, and about a million other odds, ends and tidbits just served to confirm the fact.

For example.

Last week we made a trip to the laundromat. Now, mind you, I’d only once been to a laundromat–almost two years ago, before Troy was born–and all I washed were two big fleece blankets that wouldn’t fit in my washer and had been on a cross-country camping trip. That one was on a military base, and the only civilian laundromats I’d seen (in tiny desert towns) were… well… not anyplace I’d want to go alone. BUT, being that we’d been sold a used washer and dryer set that ended up needing a few adjustments before we could do our laundry (which could be another blog post in and of itself, ahem), and it had been two weeks since we moved, the laundromat called. Since John was still off from work last week, we loaded up a few baskets of laundry, supplies, Troy, along with a couple toys for him and headed toward the nearest building with coin washers for our use.

We were greeted by a friendly attendant, an immaculately clean and relatively empty facility and the fresh scent of clean clothes. I set to work filling several washers, dropping coins cheerily into the machines, adding soap, closing the lids… and waiting. Ah, the novelty of it all.

Troy hadn’t fallen asleep in the car, as we’d been hoping, hoping, hoping he’d do, but he was fascinated with the dryer windows, as a few more customers had come in to change their laundry from the washer to dryer. While we waited for our clothes to be cleaned and dried, then folded each load, Troy made friends with the nice lady attendant and the owner, who came in for a while, and then with a little girl who spoke very little English… but neither does Troy, so what did it matter to them? I chatted with both the attendant and the owner and we all laughed over and over at the things that crack up a toddler. While Troy played with the little girl, John and I smiled and gestured to her mama, wishing we could understand one anther, but enjoying watching our children have such a grand time of it. In between the starting the washers and transferring the clothes to the dryer, Troy and I even went into a drug store nearby to see if they had one-hour photo processing for a disposable camera we’ve had sitting around for, oh, a year or two. They didn’t. But the cashier did look at me a little funny. We even went to McDonald’s across the shopping center and got some lunch (always healthy, yes we are!).

The point of all of this is to make you understand that we were at the laundromat for several hours. And we were other places beside that. Walking around. In public. We talked to a number of people. We were seen by even more people.

Why does that matter?

Because when we pulled into the driveway, I looked down, intending to slip on the flip-flops I’d discarded once we’d hopped into the car. I looked twice. I glanced around the floor under my seat, hoping to see another pair of flip flops I’d left in the truck. There weren’t any other sandals beside the ones I had just put back on my feet.

This is what I saw:

I told John to look at my feet. He looked at me to determine his own reaction. It was a good thing my startled look held a certain degree of amusement, because he couldn’t hold it in. He smiled. I giggled. We started laughing. We started cracking up. Laughing our heads off.

I don’t remember the last time we laughed that hard. Any stomach muscles this pregnant belly has left were sore from it. We couldn’t even move… we were both doubled over in our seats.

Seriously, wearing two different shoes isn’t as funny as you’d think from our reaction. But after the pressure and leetle bit o’ stress we’d put on ourselves with the move and everything going on… we just couldn’t help it. We laughed till we both had tears in our eyes.

But when I walked into the house, I shook my head at just how out of it I must have been, because my brown flip-flop has an almost non-existent sole–a quarter-inch at most–while the turquoise one is at least 3/4 in. thick. I felt it as soon as I stepped out of the truck at home… how I’d not realized it earlier is… well, I was gonna say a mystery to me, but I know just how scattered my brain has been.

And yet, I don’t know what is more ridiculous… me wearing two different shoes in public for several hours, the two of us holding our sides and cracking up in the driveway, or the fact that two hours later John stopped me to show me that I still hadn’t taken off the mismatched sandals.

I’m hoping that while we finish unpacking, I find a little container somewhere in the garage with the marking of “Ashleigh’s Lost Marbles.” I could use ‘em about now.

Originally posted 8/14/07