If Poirot met Marple

[muckefuck]

monshu and I got an odd surprise the first time we cooked a meal after coming back from Florida. I was here, typing at the computer, when I heard him roar from the kitchen, "Dammit! Do you know where the hot pads are?" We searched the kitchen and found them nowhere. They had been on the windowsill, but the cleaning ladies had come a few days earlier, and they have a habit of stacking or stowing anything that gets in their way. We first checked their favourite all-purpose hidey hole in that room, the cabinet under the sink. Not there and not in any of the other cabinets. Not in any drawers. Not in the pantry, not in the bathroom, not in any other room in the house. It was baffling.

Today I'm doing the laundry. Loading the washer, I see that the load size has been set to "Small" and the water temperature to "Warm/Cold". Now I always wash in cold and never a smaller load than "Medium" (and that rarely). For a moment I wondered if perhaps the neighbours who'd come in to fed the cat had washed something without a telling us. A stained mat or something? But just for a moment since it was only a few more minutes until the start of the World Cup Final. At halftime, I rushed to the laundry room to shift the load

...and found every one of our hot pads piled in the bottom of the clothes dryer. Yes, they were pretty filthy. But they've been filthy since we moved in. What was it about them that sent the ladies over the edge a week and a half ago?

New mystery: Where are the rest of the black pillowcases?

Comments

[anicca-anicca.livejournal.com]

I had to look up "hot pads". Google images tells me it's what I thought was called "oven mitts"?
(For the list, Topflappen. :-))

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

For me, it's only an "oven mitt" if you can actually slide it over your hand.

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

It's a "potholder" where I come from.

[anicca-anicca.livejournal.com]

I see. Makes sense.

[mollyc-q.livejournal.com]

The Pillow cases... Were they flirting with sheets from another set? Are your sheet sets all accounted for, if any are AWOL, have they perhaps run off together? Check the darkest corner of the linen closet, but muster yourself for a potentially scandalous discovery. Stripes, patterns, solids all wildly mixing....?

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

Obv. the black pillowcases were just...*black* with filth and needed to carted away by a hazmat team.