Postcards from New Zealand: Day Ten

Today I stayed home alone with the intent of doing some laundry, or as they call it here, washing. I had just put the first load into the machine (as per our hosts' instructions, on "quick wash") when I realized that there was no dryer, and I would have to use the clothesline out in the chicken yard, which looks something like a twirling television antenna, on a massive scale. The "quick wash" was still going after two hours, when I gave up and instigated a force quit. By now, the blue sky had been swept over with a tropical storm, so I had to hang the clothes indoors while the second load washed. By the end of that (another force quit, this time after only 30 minutes or so), the sun was out again, and I hung all the clothes outside. There weren't enough pins, and a stiff breeze kept blowing our shirts out into the piles of dried corn husk, where the chickens pecked at them with mild interest. Aldo came home and we went to the park, practicing line drills as the sun set. In the dark, the sky broke again, and the rain came, hard. We ran home, but not until after we had finished our drills. In the dark, in the rain, in the nude, Aldo stood under the swinging antenna, pulling down our soaked laundry, while six chicken eyes, and hopefully no neighbors' eyes, watched.