Love in the Rinse Cycle

So yesterday,I decided to haul-ass to Lavada Queen, the one self-service laundromat in town that I know about. I was pissed with my laundry person, for continually delivering my clothes a week late and didn't feel like letting him have my money this week. Unfortunately I had a pile of dirty clothes and nothing to wear to show for my pissy, hissy fit. Jet recommended LQ, so I went.

Why, you ask? Aside from the pleasure of depriving my laundry person of my money, I just wanted to see what it was like to do my own laundry in the big city. At a laundromat. Fine, fine, I'm a sucker for buttons and I like pushing them. I also wanted to do the whole do-rag in the hair, trashy novella in hand, waiting for the rinse cycle to get completed thing. And yes, sometimes I like to think that my life is a movie, complete with a soundtrack and everyone is watching. So I wanted to give the watchers a sense of being real.

(I can see Illi rolling his eyeballs in NYC right now.)

Upon arrival, I had to ring a bell, which brought the pretty, fifty-something owner to me. She asked if I had detergent. I said yes. Asked if I had fabric softener. It's too strong a smell for me, so I opted out. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and felt like a complete idiot. Then the help (the owner had disappeared by this time around) just fiddled around, while I stood gaping. They didn't give me time to read the instructions! I wanted to push my own buttons, dammit! It's all so fascinating. A token! And you make it go in the machine. And the machine goes bloop, bloop, bloop.

God, I am soooo third-world.

Anyway, I grabbed a two year-old issue of the Philippine Tatler and waited until the washer was done. I got to push the button this time, loading it into the dryer.

It's a good two hours of my life I'll never get back, and I'm not sure the whole experience was worth the money it took, but I had fun anyway. And I hope the watchers did too. As much fun as you can have waiting for laundry to dry.

I never did get to do the do-rag thing though.