It's 7:30 and I'm trying to make myself study again. That wouldn't be bad, if I hadn't been doing stuff since 9 this morning. Oh, sure I took a 2.5 hour TV break, but considering I'm getting about 3 out of 10 questions right on the PMBR questions now, my time would probably be better spent doing questions and reading outlines than waxing poetic on stupid crap.
Know what I really hate doing? Folding laundry. I don't mind WASHING the clothes, I just hate the folding. Washing and drying is fine, but once the clothes come out of the dryer, I've lost interest with laundry, and have flitted off to some way more important activity, like obsessing about being on the South Beach diet, even though I'm skinnier now than I've been since I was a senior in High School, or fretting about the fact that I have no job, and doing little to nothing to remedy the situation, or...as of late, catatonically staring at the Food Network/Cartoon Network, and pretending like I don't have to learn every law ever passed in existence ever...the last thing that I want to do by the time the dryer finishes is FOLD the clothing...I've NEVER liked folding clothes. Were it not for clothes...and books, and an ironing board, and shoes and books and books and books and books and a powerstrip, my room would be clean. Ugh. Folding clothing. I have to fold a load of whites, and a load of darks, and I desperately need to wash underwear tonight, because I'm out, unless I start ganking "I Boogied my Buns Off At Molly's Bat-Mitzvah November 22, 1997!" boxers out of the white pile... No, really. I have three pairs of boxers that say that. I steal things at Bar Mitzvahs. And anyway, the little 6 year-old girls at that bat mitzvah didn't need them anyway. I was the one who needed Bat-Mitzvah Boxers! I refuse to let you make me feel bad. Shut up. Anyway, we're getting off topic. ..
In college, because I lived in the Jappy dorm, with all the JAPS, and none of us could be bothered to take time out of our busy schedules binge drinking and other...thing..s...we had this service called Lazybones. Oh. Lazybones. HOW I MISS YOU.
Mummy and Daddy would pay about 200 bucks per year, to have a laundry service do 10 lbs of clothing per week. We would load up our laundry bags and tote them downstairs to the Towers' Lobby on Tuesday mornings, where we would hurl the bags into a laundry bin. Thursday, around lunch time, neat little square packages of brown paper, with our names and room numbers would appear in front of our mailboxes. All we had to do was bring up our 10 lbs of laundry per week and put it away. I'm ashamed to admit that putting away the clothing often proved too time-consuming for me...
Oh, Lazybones. Where have you gone?
Those of you that read this that went to UW (Hey, Dan.) can appreciate how amazing...AMAZING Lazybones was. And, not only would they do your laundry for you, they'd do your drycleaning, AND, get this, when the school year ended, they would COME AND FOR AN ADDITIONAL FEE PACK UP YOUR ROOM IN 20x20x20 boxes, AND STORE THEM OVER THE SUMMER, AND DELIVER THEM TO YOUR NEW PLACE!!! Oh, I'm getting verklempt.
1L Year, before I bought my faaaaaaaaaaaaabulous condo, that has later turned out to be the bane of my existence (Replacing leaky water heater, a/c going bust during finals 1L year, roof leaking last summer...sporadic washer/dryer troubles...plumbing problems...the list goes on...) I had to do my laundry at a Laundromat.
Wow.
The worst places to spend your hot, sultry Miamuh evenings is in a Calle Ocho laundromat, with your Elements book. There was one outdoor one on Red Road that was like 1/4 mile from my lil' Gables guesthouse apartment, but after a while I started to feel like I lived on Honduras, washing my clothes under fluorescent lights at 11 p.m., with craneflies buzzing around the flickering bulbs, the Spanish Oldies station blaring, and sad, faded, hunched people mechanically pumping their quarters into the washing machines, so I stopped going to that one. Oh, I also stopped going there because whenever I would dry ANYTHING, the force of the CLOTHING, you know, tumbling, would open the dryer doors, and they would stop, and you couldn't make them go again, as you watched your time tick by as you repeatedly slammed the dryer doors to no avail, cursing loudly in English, knowing well that you weren't offending anyone, because no one understood a motherfucking word that came out of your mouth.
Then I transferred to my other laundry place. This one was on Calle Ocho, across from some seedy-looking "Entertainment Dance-Hall Villa-Fiesta Fantastico Ay Papi!" place that may have been a restaurant. During my clothing tenure at what I believe is now called like "Jilly's Coin Wash" I watched that hall get rehabilitated and re-open, only to find it in its former dilapidated state the last time I made it down C/8. Anyhoo, Jilly's or Maria's or Mario's or Mariloly's Coin Wash was also a sad place. There was a TV bolted to the wall where over-mascara'd queens sobbed and pleaded on the 'novelas, and I would sit there, praising myself for finding a cheaper laundromat, spending only .75 cents per load, instead of 1.25. With every quarter I plunked into the machines, I would pat myself on the back for saving .50. The walls were done in attractive paneling, and there was a big yellow and red sign on the wall talking about something laundry-oriented. Maybe warning people that robbing the washing machines was some sort of criminal offense. Who knows. The entire place reeked of sticky, crusted detergent that had been slowly baking in the constant 93-degree heat of the laundromat since 1982. That, and poverty.
Once a hot Cuban guy tried to pick me up there. I feigned cluelessness at his Spanish flirting, because I was sweating my balls off, and the last place I was going to meet a potential suitor was in a Miami laundromat. New York? Perhaps. Miami? No way. It was a pity I never saw him again there, though. Maybe we could have made some stilted conversation...who am I kidding, at that time I was really really really good in Spanish, we could have run to Rey's Pizza down the street for some heavy eye-contact and an icy drink...whoo... Had I not been such a sweaty, uncomfortable and stilted kid at the time, I should have gone for it...if nothing else, he was hot, and it could have made for a good porno-style hookup... but I digress.
Anyhoo, rather than fold my laundry at the laundromat, I would always stuff it back into my hampers, vowing to fold it when I got home. Did I? HA! As I went through the process of buying my place, I told myself that anything was better than going to the laundromat, and I'd never again have an excuse not to fold my clothes. I could wash whenever I wanted, and then fold at my own convenience!
Do I fold my clothes now? Hell no. I just keep piling them up in the odd Target-interpretation of a half-papasan/half-folding chair in my room, and when they finally crowd the corner in front of my balcony door so much that I'm embarrassed by my slovenly habits, I fold the clothes.
This was great like 1.5 years ago when the "wrinkly!" look was in. I'd go out somewhere, completely rumpled, and someone would be like, "Nice job, schmucko, I see you wadded up your clothing and threw it in the corner of my closet!" and then another one of my more fashion-conscious friends would jump to my defense and say, "No way! That's how everything is being sold nowadays! Those wrinkles are intentional Wrinkles...so hot right now!" Of course they weren't intentional, but I figured, "Hey, as long as the style right now is to have wrinkly clothing, I'm gonna rock this trend!"
Sadly, now the wrinkles have passed from fashion, and I actually have a shirt or two in my closet that has gone the way of diagonal stripes...and the vertical stripe...and I'm saddened. Because 1) I'm still to fucking lazy to fold my laundry, and 2) all the clothes in my closet are on the cusp of dating me "So a year ago..." and 3) my life is that of a 1L again: work in the morning, work at night, cautious nights out on Southbeach because I can't afford physically or financially to be out until 10:00 a.m. in the V.I.P. section of Club Space chomping on gum, rockin' my sunglasses, and loving every electronic note blasting out of the way-too-loud sound system. And with that, back to Co-tenants contribution....
