There's nothing that makes me happier than sitting down with a new book, a fresh cup of coffee, a cat in my lap, and the knowledge that I've just finished the laundry and I don't have to do it for another week. Doing the laundry has become a nightmarish experience for me because we don't have our own washer and dryer. Suddenly, after years of pleasantly popping down to the basement to throw in a load of clothes when I feel like it, I have to venture out to the hideous Laundromat o' Hell. I can't even just go. I have to plan. I have to think about how much needs to be done versus how horrible it's going to be. And then I have to find quarters.
That's inconvenient, but it's sort of okay. I mean, nothing to go ballistic about. But then I get to the LoH, and there's an entire room full of chatty big-haired matrons, wannabe country music stars strumming their guitars while the dryers whirl around, clots of noisy teenagers playing the video games, and (this is the part that kills me) people sitting around waiting for their laundry and smoking. Smoking! It's insane! It's unclean! And no one but me thinks it's weird. Smoke gets all over my clean clothes, and I have to go outside to breathe, and I can't get used to it, okay? I know Tennessee is a prime tobacco-growing region and all, but jeesh.
I generally come home incoherently frothing at the mouth over some lameass goober who insisted on telling me why Merle ain't never gonna be replaced by them new guys, or the dork who kept putting quarters into my dryer's slot by mistake and then wanting to put his clothes in with mine, or the psychotic maniac who dared to park me in because he couldn't be bothered to use an actual parking spot. It takes me up to an hour to recover. It makes me hate leaving the house, frankly. Because, hey, all those people at the laundromat drove there. I don't want to be on the road with them, too.
But I'm home now, safe from the freaks at the laundromat, ready to slip back into the engrossing new Tad Williams book which I bought with my Christmas money. I like Williams a lot, but his stuff always reminds me of someone else, sometimes Tolkien, sometimes Neal Stephenson. He can really tell a story, though. I'd kill to do half as well. Um, not kill. I'd shout at a hapless store clerk to do half as well. So there.