Birthday Week!: Mical Edition

It's time to launch Birthday Week! This is the week that about 50% of my family was born, so it's an important one. Today, kicking the whole thing off is my grandma, Mical. What does she get? A completely random blog entry....

Today I washed my teddy bear.

It is sunny and warm out and I figure he has as good a chance as any for actually *drying* today. I've tried washing him once before, the first year I moved to London. He had started to smell and, well, that was at least as gross as it sounds. I washed him in the sink of my dorm room and the water turned a disgusting, dark brown. I was discouraged. Also, he took many many days to try. I was further discouraged.

So I did what any normal person would do and ignored the problem for another three years. Until today! Today I fixed the problem! Today it occurred to me that while the water may turn a truly vile dark brown colour, filled with grime that does not bear thinking about, I could continue to wash him. Today it occurred to me that this wasn't a one sink full of water kind of a job.

Twelve. It was a twelve sinks full kind of a job. And my hands and wrists hurt from squeezing that much water out of essentially a fragile sponge. But by the 12th sink full? The water was running clear. Thank goodness.

Gross.

Also, can I just say that 25+ years of anthropomorphising Soft Bear makes it VERY difficult to push his head down into a sink full of water? I had to consciously keep reminding myself that I was not being evil, that teddy bears do not need to breathe, that his eyes weren't accusing me from underneath the water, that, really, it was good for him to be washed and he would thank me later even if at this current moment he couldn't understand why I was doing this to him, that when I pulled him, sodden with water, out of the sink that the reason I was holding him like a baby and supporting his head was because the fabric was fragile. Yes.  That's why.

I fear I may have revealed too much here today.