Adventures in Laudromatting

I try to make the best out of everything and I was tested by that today when I realized I just really, really could not put laundry off any longer.

Laundry for most is just a minor inconvenience.  Up until two years ago, it was the same for me.  You pop it in the washer and go about your business.  It buzzes and you switch it to the dryer.  Big deal.  You can be cooking dinner, sitting on the couch watching this week's Walking Dead from the DVR, even getting ready for a night on the town.

But not when you don't have a washer and dryer in your home.

Now, I can't bitch too much about this because when I took my apartment, I knew this would be the case.  I actually *owned* a washer and dryer before I moved here and ended up giving them to my dear friends who helped move me in.  (If you saw my place, you know why that's a really big deal.  It was a bitch to move into -- they deserved more than a washer and dryer.  Which is why they got a futon too.) :-)  I had to decide whether the conveniences of living here was worth that annoyance.

Very cheap rent.  No security deposit or lease. All utilities included except electricity. Extremely responsive landlords who not only come immediately when you mention a minor annoyance like a dripping faucet, but look around and replace all your burned out light bulbs at their own expense while they're there.  In the heart of the city.  Walking distance to pretty much anywhere I want to go (including a couple laundromats) and off-street parking for the car that sits every weekend because I don't have to drive it anywhere.   So not having laundry? Small price to pay.

Though sometimes it gets annoying as hell anyway. 

So I tell myself those things above.  That all those benefits far outweigh the fact that I might have to schlep a basket or two to my car before work in the morning so I can stop at the laundromat on the way home. Because, let's face it: when you're home, you're home.  Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.  Sometimes I need a new reason or two to appreciate that going to the laundromat is really not such a big deal and I should just deal with it.

It still, in all my years, never ceases to amaze me that when I put something like that out into the universe, it responds in a way that makes me get over my annoyance and actually enjoy the experience.

In the past couple months, after begrudgingly making time to do this necessity, a few things gradually became clear.

1)  When I'm at home, I don't do some the things I truly love because there's always something else I "need to do."  Whether it's scrubbing the toilet or stripping the bedclothes or a number of any other household tasks that call out to me to be serviced instead of just curling up on the couch for a night with my book or writing a letter to a friend.  Going to the laundromat actually gives me that time! I can actually kick back for an hour and lose myself in a story or conversation without the guilt that I should be mopping the kitchen floor instead.

It reminds me of my first year out of college when I lived in Milwaukee, didn't own a car and had to take the bus to my job (as an Estee Lauder counter manager at a mall -- but oh, that's a story for another day!).  I actually treasured riding the bus for the very reason that I could just curl up against the window and read my book.  I guess I made the best out of that situation way back then too.

2) I've become part of the neighborhood.  Where I live, most of the apartments are actually old houses turned into multi-living units as opposed to big apartment conglomerates that have the facilities on site.  It also means a lot of the folks who live here live in their own homes on the streets too.   I can count a few times now when a neighbor was walking down the street past the laundromat I was in (curled up on a comfy chair, reading my book of course), recognized my car and so popped in, bought me a Coke from the vending machine (actually a Cheerwine --Southerners know what this is) and just shot the shit for a while.  That can't happen when you're sitting on your own couch waiting for the buzz, right?

3) I actually CAN multi-task even away from home. I have two laundromats I frequent. The choice du jour usually depends on its location.  One I go to just to chill.  The other is next door to a grocery store, my gym, bars and eateries. There have been times where I've browsed stores in the wash cycle, then actually did my grocery shopping after popping it into the dryer.  Come back just in time to empty and fold my clothes and all errands are done at the same time.  Granted, I can only do the grocery thing in the colder months (can't be letting the moose track ice cream melt in the trunk while I fold afterall), but the gym part works out perfectly.

4) I meet new people and have great conversations.  About a month or so ago, I had the pleasure of chatting with a few different folks on the same night.  We were all there doing the necessary chore and making the best of it.  I talked with a lovely woman named Amy who lived down the block from the laundromat: turned out we were going to the same festival at the city park (a few blocks walking-distance for both of us) so we shared stories of the last time we went to the event.  A gentleman there overheard us and told us he was actually a guitarist in a band who would be performing there.  Turns out we had both heard of his band before so our twosome became a threesome.  An older gentleman, sitting off to the side and working on his laptop most of the evening, approached us later as he was leaving with his now-clean basket of wears [sic] and mentioned he enjoyed overhearing our conversation and laughter, especially since he had been the first there, knew we were all strangers initially, and enjoyed just overhearing it all happen.

In a world where people can easily talk to strangers behind a computer screen or phone, there's something special about actually being able to do it in person. I daresay it's even becoming a skill.

So when I schlepped my clothing basket to the car before work this morning and I remembered it was there halfway through the day and almost dreaded having to actually do that task before finally being able to be home?  I fortunately remembered these actual blessings that came with the inconvenience.  And so I didn't mind it at all.

And now I'm writing this down, lest I ever complain again and need a reminder: you can always try to make the best out of everything, Stacy. Because when you approach it that way? It more often than not actually becomes a very amazing thing.

A Little Pain, a Big Lesson

I am in a ridiculous amount of pain.

I nearly sliced my entire right index finger's knuckle off last night when a glass I was washing broke in my hand and a sharp, curved piece jammed itself deep into my hand.  Thankfully, it lodged against some muscle or tissue or something instead of going straight through.  When I finally got it stop bleeding, I was left with a half-circle gash around the top end of my knuckle, a cut deeper than any I've experienced in many years, and being as it was right on the bend, it kept breaking open and bleeding and clotting back up and breaking open and bleeding and, well, you get the picture.

I'd actually SHOW you the picture but I don't think you'd want to see it.

Eventually I managed to bandage it up and hoped my overnight sleep would give it that enough motionless time to seal back up for good.  It did.  What I hadn't counted on this morning though was the excruciating pain and numbness: the excruciating pain of two flaps of skin stretched to their almost-ripping point to try to seal up a gash in their fabric and the tingly numbness that now exists in half of that hand...until I do something stupid like try to use it.   Which I have been doing all morning.

As I'm right-handed, what were once the simplest tasks are now ridiculous. 

Shampooing my hair took 4x as long with just one hand.  I'm pretty sure there's still soap in the back.  Holding a hairdryer was out of the question completely.  The hard boiled eggs I made yesterday for this morning's breakfast?  Still in the fridge: no way can I peel them.  Driving to work was interesting. I didn't even have the ability to turn the key in my ignition:  had to reach across and do it with my left hand (same with the parking break release) -- which is terribly awkward and feels like you're doing something bad to your ignition switch.  And even now, so used to typing a billion words a minute two-hand typing, I'm at a loss with my right hand.  I'm still typing all well and good with the left and hunting and pecking with my ring finger on my right (it's the first on that hand that's not completely numb).  And let's not even go into how long it takes to use the bathroom today, okay?

And that's just the little things.

Because then I realized: wow. These ARE the little things.  Little inconveniences I have to put up with now...and for a temporary amount of time even (or so I hope!).  I've never broken a bone or anything so I really haven't ever been in a situation like this much, even temporarily.  And, Lordy, it is frustrating!  And I'm not making light of my frustrations.  This sucks and I have a right to be frustrated.  But it's also got me to thinking about others.  What about those folks who not-so-temporarilly have to adjust?  Our hundreds of military personnel coming home from war missing limbs or dexterity in them?  People of poor tragic accidents like that of Aimee Copeland, who lost both hands completely to flesh-eating bacteria?  How do they do it?  Or even folks with debilitating conditions, extreme arthritis or joint pain they've had so long they cannot remember their last pain-free day?  How do these folks do it?

I guess I always believed what people say: you just do. If you have to, you just find a way.  And although I understand that, I don't think I even realized how difficult that actually IS until today.  The simplest, everyday tasks are a struggle for me today.  What if I had to accomplish something BIG?  And what if this wasn't just a temporary inconvenience?

Yeah, I don't think I'll be taking the little things like being able to brush my own teeth or push an elevator button for granted again.

Drop a dime in the Jukebox and Let It Play.

Tonight on my drive home from work in cold, rainy Atlanta traffic, I was able to keep sane by the music I could play on my radio.  Because my car is still fairly new and SiriusXM has real competition now from companies like Pandora and other free streaming sources, I still have an extended offer through them that probably would have ended a year ago if not for all that.  So I flipped around on their offerings.

I do use their service: it's coming into the car afterall.  But with my local morning station (that I actually like!), my iPod jack and CD player, it's not necessarily a...er, necessity.  I usually flip back and forth with a push of a dashboard button and when it's not on a talk radio or  a sports station, it's on an 80s channel. Sometimes 90s. Sometimes more recent mixes.  But every now and again I drop back to my love of the old 70s songs: some America singing about a California highway and deserts with their lives underground. Or S&G telling me we're all our own island.  But I haven't done that recently until today.

Today, in the crazy Atlanta rain and traffic and trying to find peace, I had to skip the happy slappy 80s. Angst of the 90s was so not an option either. So I ventured back and realized though I missKodachrome (I'm pretty sure I was the last class in my high school they actually taught us how to develop our own 33mm film), I already knew how to leave my lover in more than 50 ways. Skip the 70s for once, too. I went back one more click on the dial to the 60s.

And there I got engrossed in Turtles. And California Dream[ed]. But that's not the point of this blog. In listening to these songs, I started thinking about what it would be like to own a bar in a college town.  To have lived in that town, established a good life and business there and because of it, have seen many generations of college students come through, stay for a few years and then leave again. What must that be like?

I remember the first time I found some of my favorite "classic groups" back in my formative years in college.  Pink Floyd. Grateful Dead. Old school Nitty Gritty Dirt Band recording "Mr. Bo Jangles" in 1970.  The soundtrack to the movie "1969." Any and every song written in the 60s or on an early 70s Eagles' album. I felt like I was so cool, so unique, not the typical girl who listened to The Smashing Pumpkins or Nirvana or whatever was coming out at the time.  Of course I listened to those too: I just didn't play them on the jukebox.  Because I was the girl who didn't do that.  I thought I was cool, right?

No.  Gosh no! :-)

Because those proprietors had seen it before, time after time. And will. Time after time.

They see students like me come in, come back out (rarely any intention of staying forever. At least not at my school), always being the constant but with their clientele feeling they're unique and special and being the firsts to experience things that they had already seen generations experience before me and my friends.  In my day, "Come on Eileen" was new. Today, it's on the jukebox for the kids there now to feel they're being cool to know it!  Just like I did when I would push a button on the machine to play "Fishing in the Dark" or "December 1963 (Oh What a Night!)".

I wonder how it is for those local establishments sometimes.  To see the same crowd for a couple of years, knowing they're going to move on somewhere else and another crowd will take that place.  Is it sad for them? To see these generations come in, grow up, move on? Or does it make them smile instead, confident in their own selves and their own lives and giggling at us behind closed doors perhaps?

Before today, I never really thought about it: the difference between being a local in a college town or being a short-time member. I went there knowing I would leave. How does it feel for folks who are there, always there, see all that and probably --most likely--are happy they aren't their clientele and actually know who they are?  And know that some of those punks coming in and out in a handful of years know absolutely nothing about Real Life like they did....and we thought we did?

But still treated us well. Dang, we were obnoxious.  Looking back? We really were.

It kind of makes me want to move to a small town, po-dunk college town and open a bar, it does.  And send all the establishments I frequented when I was a silly college girl a Thank You Card for putting up with me and my friends when we were there. :)