You know, I've been doing laundry for a long time now. I always thought I was pretty good at it -- I mean, as good as a person can be with laundry. But lately, I've been questioning my abilities. I'm starting to think I'm so-so (dare I say merely mediocre?) at this clothes-washing thing.

Pretty much, if it's a clothing item, it gets washed in cold. I've been this way for as long as I can remember -- don't forget, I'm very tall and I can't afford my pants or my sleeves to shrink up at all, so I wash in cold. A lot of my stuff, I hang-dry, because, as I said, I cannot afford shrinkage or I walk around looking like none of my clothes fit.

I remember in high school, man, it was hard to find clothes for tall people like me. I wanted so desperately to have cool clothes (thank GOD cropped pants were in then is all I can say), and so often, I was reduced to pulling my jeans out of the washing machine, standing on the bottom hems and tugging the waistband up as hard as I could, trying to eke out a few more millimeters in length. It worked, sorta. Either that, or I really did look like I was waiting for a flood and I just don't remember. The "pulled" jeans would be hung on a laundry line in the basement to dry. I still hang-dry my jeans and pants today, although I've found it a lot easier to locate long hem lengths as I've gotten older, so I no longer have to do the "pulling routine."

Back to my current laundry problems. There is nothing wrong with my clothes, since I hang dry a lot of them. But lately, I think either Mike is growing longer arms, or I've gotten bad at doing his laundry. At least three shirts have shrunk in the last few months. I dry anything I put in the dryer on the low/delicates setting, so it's not like my dryer is that hot. And like I said earlier, I wash everything in cold water. I cannot for the life of me figure out why this is happening all of a sudden. Is the man like Stretch Armstrong? Or are some of his shirts suddenly developing a shrinking mind of their own? I have no clue. I've stopped drying those particular shirts in the dryer and have done a modified "pulling" routine on the sleeves (using both hands, with no standing on the garment necessary). Then I hang-dry them.

Poor Mike must think I'm doing something funny to his clothes all of a sudden. Either that, or I'm married to Stretch Armstrong after all. But only in the arms.