Laundry
Monday, March 20, 2006, 6:00 PM

As in ... dirty clothes, my friend.

Okay, so the building in which I live has two nifty laundry rooms. Seven washers, seven dryers, a snack machine, a soda pop machine, and! And they also sell little packets of detergent. It smells great in there, by the way. Like Bounce, you might say.

Anybody who knows me knows how I hate doing laundry. Actually, it's not the doing it part that I groan about. It's the putting it away part. Of course, if I had about three pounds less of clothing around, I wouldn't loathe the putting it away part so much. But I can't bear to part with much more stuff. I just can't. It's like throwing away pieces of my life and it hurts too damn much.

That fouldie-oldie green vest that's unraveling at the front? It's been with me for about 15 years. It was there with Doug, that guy I had the embarrassingly awful crush over, it was there with me the time I took a spill on the dance floor, it was there with me when I went pee in a men's restroom. I can't just throw it away. I can't give it to Goodwill, either, because the thing's unraveling and no one's going to want it.

And then there are the monogrammed sweaters. Andi. Who'd want a nubby sweater with the word Andi on it? That sweater was there with me for Mark, Jeff and Meeee-chelle, my bell. And Kurt. And George. Oh, and Jim, too. My late high school years, my early I know it all and then some early adult years. I barfed in the magenta sweater. Jeff patted the shoulder of the navy blue sweater after Mark gave me the heave-ho. Michelle and I wrote love letters to our boyfriends while I wore those sweaters. And Jim asked me to sit on the friggen handle bars of his bike while I wore one of the sweaters.

Anyway, back to the here and now and the laundry room down the hall. It's rush hour at the soap-n-suds. So here I am, typing on the computer. Isn't that what everyone does?

So, uh. Dang. I was going to say something ... oh! The layout of my apartment building is a perfect setting for a fictional story of a single girl in LA. There are windy, twisty halls that it would be easy to get lost in that lead to different courtyards as you wade throughout. I went wandering yesterday and got lost for about sixty seconds, then beat it to the floor level and back to the pool so I could find my place again. At night, it could be pretty scary ... like if this building was in the heart of anyplace but the ever-hopping LA. Always something going on here.

But there are so many apartments. So many people here. A lot of guys. Surely all of them can't be gay. And we all must do our laundry. Of course, that makes for a poor meeting--over the laundry table. Yick. But it does have possibilities and my brain is percolating over them. Has been ever since I saw this place.

What does this have to do with laundry? Nothing and everything. And now it's time for me to go see if a washer has opened up. (No, I did not do my laundry yesterday. Doing my taxes was bad enough. I owe Indiana! For the first time ever, I owe Indiana taxes! Mary! Kat! Do you owe taxes to the state you left? This doesn't make any damn sense to me.)

Anyway, all temperature cheer to you.
11 Did the Unhingey Jiggy Engage in Unhingenosity
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