On the mending pile of futility.

Of course, the truly depressing thing about Elly's never really having much of a life is that she's a full and active participant in her own demise. As by way of example, let's examine her belief that children's clothes should last longer than they actually do. It would be one thing if we were dealing with a normal person who is miffed that she did a poor job of guessing just how much her kids would grow year to year. That way, she'd be like a lot of mothers out there who have visions of winged dollars flying out of their purses. The problem is that she seems to believe that her children were deliberately growing larger than they should have to make her life worse because they hate her. Her means of counterattack was and is rather stupid. As we've seen, Elly told them to toss their stuff on the mending pile in the hopes of restoring them to usability. The problem is that when they grew out of the duds, Elly had to toss them anyhow. The end result is that she felt worse than she should have about something that wasn't really an issue.