I Can't Believe I Did it Again

   Yesterday after supper I put a load of laundry in the washing machine. Our biggest load of laundry tends to be whites. I put in the load, started the machine up added detergent and some non chlorine bleach and left it.
   When the load was done I went downstairs to put it in the dryer. Then I saw it. It was staring at me.
    It was a gel ink pen.
    What the heck was a gel ink pen doing in the washing machine? Then I realized where it came from. I had put a lab coat in with the load. The gel ink pen must have been in the pocket. I was furious with myself.
    This has happened before. Less than a year ago I left pens in my lab coat and washed them. Many items in the load had ink stains. I managed to save the underwear and other whites, but I ruined my favourite lab coat. As it was also my last good lab coat, I wound up having to buy several more. Since then I have been pretty careful about making sure then pens were out of my pockets. I'm guessing that was I so concerned about making sure that I got all my things out of the pharmacy, that the pens in my pocket never crossed my mind.
    I was  mad at myself because I hate making the same mistake twice. I like to think that I'm smart enough that I don't have to keep making the same mistakes over and over again before I learn. Now I was going to have to painstakingly go through each garment and check it for pens marks. Then I would have to go through the equally painstaking chore of cleaning the ink off with rubbing alcohol.
  The one thing that was good about this time is that at least I had caught the pen while it was in the washer. The last time I hadn't noticed it and the clothes and then pen went through the dryer as well. It's a much bigger mess.
  I carefully checked each garment before I put it in the dryer. I only found three items of clothing that had pen marks on them. I also found a second pen. The soiled garments went on a rack to dry. The rest went into the dryer.
  It wasn't too bad. I could clean those three no problem.
  This morning I bought some rubbing alcohol, got a roll of paper towel and prepared to get to work. The first item up was a T-shirt of C's. I started on the biggest spot. It was clear pretty early on that this may not work. The stain was too big and too deep. I thought about soaking it, but I didn't have enough alcohol. I set the stain to soak in a small bowl and tried another garment. This only had light stains which came out easily. I started to work on the third garment, but quickly saw that the stains were too extensive as well.
  Time for plan B. I decided to try Oxyclean. I had some left over from when I tried to salvage my lab coat. It hadn't worked, but maybe that was because the stain had gone though the dryer. It certainly couldn't hurt. Worst case scenario, it would not work and I'd wind up disposing of the items anyway.
  They are downstairs soaking right now. I'm going to check them on Monday. If the stains are gone then I will wash them and be very grateful. If not I'll have to put them in the garbage.
  Either way I hope I don't do this again. Twice is enough......