9 p.m. and no clean pants...

One of the things that rots about living in an apt.complex filled with too many people & only a single washer & dryer on each floor is the weekend. Since 3:30p I’ve been waiting for the damned washing machine to be free so I can do my load of jeans and the black slacks I most often wear to work. When I first checked it (a SpeedQueen with a minute-by-minute, digital countdown timer on the face) someone’d just started a load. The amount of time it takes to do any load of wash is 35min., and it’d only counted down to 27. A load in the dryer had just started as well, which takes about an hour. Cursing briefly for not having checked sooner, I returned to the apt., figuring I’d wait the hour, then check it again.

I did, the smell of warm laundry and dispersed dryer sheet wafting out when I opened the door, and I found the laundered clothes simply sitting in their respective machines, waiting quietly for their owner to either retrieve them or switch them out of their spin-cycle holding cell. Thinking, “Hey, sometimes I don’t get to machines immediately after they stop. I’ll come back in about half an hour and see if at least the washing machine’s empty,” I left the laundry closet again and returned to the apt.

Still no change half an hour later. The same clothes were sitting there, had not moved, had not been touched.

After that (now about 5:30p) I checked the room pretty much every hour on the hour, hoping that SOMEONE would come and take care of their business, freeing up the one damned machine I need to at least start things off in the vain hope of wearing clean pants to work.

Around 8p I heard someone unlock & open the laundry room door, then leave again after a minute or two. (It’s a loud & rather distinctive noise.) Immediately after hearing an apt.door close, I snatched up my ready laundry card and the key to the laundry closet & practically sprinted out the door. Sure enough, the lid on the washing machine was now closed & the status read “INSERT CARD”. Fantastic! Without further thought I shoved my laundry card in the slot, turned around & ran back into the apt.to get my basket & detergent. Walked back into the room, lifted the washing machine lid...AND THERE WERE CLOTHES IN THERE. Not only could I not use the machine, I’d now also just given over a dollar for the next person’s use should it turn out they find it open before I do.

It is now 9p. STILL.NOTHING. ::sighs:: I was really trying to take care of this early enough in the day that I could get a proper night’s sleep & go into work a little early tomorrow in order to get a head start, but that’s not going to happen if I’m up late waiting for some nitwit to saunter out of their door @ 11:30p, just before *they* get to go to bed, and I get to start my load sometime around midnight.

Damnation. I wish I knew Spanish so I could abuse gratuitous amounts of office supplies making signs threatening the return of the dead and attacks by El Chupa Cabra if you don’t take your freakin’ laundry out within at least a couple hours of when it’s done. Perhaps this should be a new project.

More later.

~E.

Oh, Hell & damnation...

Y’know, when I think of doing something rather important (i.e. remembering that I need to create a new car kit that includes things like jumper cables, spare bulbs, etc.) I should really take care of it right then else I forget, thereby damning myself to eventually getting stuck in a particular situation, away from people I know, w/out the proper means of extraction.

...like accidentally leaving the dome light on in my car, thereby killing the battery, and being unable to jump my car from Petunia’s (who was JUST.HERE) b/c I wasn’t smart enough to pick up the damned cables two weeks ago.

Normally, upon realizing I’d just been astoundingly foolish, I would just dial AAA or some such b/c I kinda hate all over asking others for help re:things I can simply do myself. However, it just recently expired. Procrastinated renewing a couple weeks ago (d-d-d-DUMB) and now can’t in the next few days b/c o/transitions re:my current bank account. (I have, apparently, worked very hard in the past couple weeks to make seemingly small, very poor decisions, just so I could be a moron today!)

If there was a drawing of my current situation, and I had to spot & mark all the silly things I did to set the scene like a badly written slapstick, I would get a BIG, Kindergarten-sized, super-fat red crayon, I would circle the whole thing, and I’d color it in.

::sighs:: Okay, I’m off to figure something out, though if anyone feels like popping out to Vienna to jump my car b/c I’m a nitwit to visit, do let me know. Ha!

Guh. More later.

~E.