The Time of the Season For Laundry

Terrence was singing that it was the time of the season for laundry, and he was correct, it definitely was. Since we bought our house in September, we have not had a washer and dryer hooked up here, and it has been an epic pain in the ass. You know when your dog pees on something, you wash up a really disgusting spill, or your want your sheets to be fresh? Normally you would run it down to the washer and dryer and poof, everything was clean again. Not for me as of late. That favorite pair of jeans would have to be worn at a later date. A date with the laundromat, and the other piles of awful would be tossed aside in a corner to fester and be ignored by me.

The first few times I went to the laundromat, I was on a straight up mission. Get in, get food, get back, dry, go home to do schoolwork, get back, fold, get out. Last night, after getting home from work and being preternaturally happy on only five hours of sleep the night prior, I was ready to get this washing party started rather than collapsing on the bed to take a nap first. We got to our regular haunt, and I started to stuff clothing into the washing machine that was ready to eat my $3 in quarters. The walls of this laundromat are epically amazing. It is a desert backdrop that has been painted by an artist, with many rock formations looming in the background. In the beautifully clear blue sky, there are two washers with wings flying across in a happy daze, eager to make it to their location.

This time I am looking around at everyone that is there, and I note that there is a homeless man washing all of his belongings. That saddens me a bit, the fact that the moment his socks come out of the dryer, he will be sitting down to put them on under some dirty work boots, not take them home to rest them in his drawer, or curse one when he can't find its partner. A confused looking lady comes up to me and asks how much it is to run the washers. I must look like a veteran now, and I am as I tell her the price. I observe the other patrons and get to wondering as to why each and every one of them doesn't have a washer and a dryer. I know why I don't. I bought an old house that needs about $700 worth of electrical work done on it so that it won't blow a fuse every time I turn on a hairdryer while someone is watching television. I also need outlets put in to house an electrical dryer.

I leave for Bajio to get a very filling dinner, and come back to get my clothing out of the washer and put them into the dryer. I am bored now, my iTouch is on lockdown from all the wifi that is requiring passwords, and I have tapped the Hangman well dry. One can only feel so smart by guessing the word "lime" so many times. I walk over to Alchemy coffee and get a latte. I ask for soy milk, and he foams it heavy at the top. Generally I am not a huge soy fan, but for some reason it makes that latte pop. I sit on one of the velvet couches that they have in there and sip my coffee, just enjoying the atmosphere. Generally coffee shops are offputting to me, so many young kids trying to write poetry where people can see them, or milling around talking about how hard life is at the ripe age of 18. This place is full of adults and crazy women talking about Persian conspiracies. After I few more sips and a need for a cigarette. I leave. Smoke. Walk to the laundromat.

As I go to my dryer, a shaky old man who has no teeth and tufts of gray hair is removing clothing from his dryer. He says, "These machines sure don't dry very well do they?" I use that voice. The one I hate. It always reserved for old people and children, paired with the high pitched nice tone I learned to use at phone jobs. It isn't intentional, I can't stop myself sometimes. I lean in and say "Oh did you put the heat on high?" He looks at me, that look of "I am old therefore not retarded" and says nicely, "Yes, I did, the machines...they don't dry that well." I said "Hm that's weird, as I pulled out my hot dry clothing. He told me to enjoy doing the rest of my laundry.

For some reason, I started to pull out my items to fold, and I realized I was standing right in front of a huge window in front of a shop.I can assure you, nothing sets off "my underwear isn't good enough" alarms like standing in front of a laundromat window and having to fold each and every pair in front of it. And there were so many pairs! It felt weird, soul baring, having to carefully extract each article of clothing from a basket in front of a room of strangers and carefully fold it into neat little piles. The old guy passed me again. He started to speak to a large woman. She was talking to him about his cancer. And how he looked great considering he had throat cancer. And that he still had his baby face and sparkling blue eyes. I looked out of the corner of my eye, and I saw him in a different light. I could see that the things she was telling him were true. It made me happy to hear him say that he didn't make it 70 years on this world for nothing, and that he was happy to have beat cancer.

I think last night, I found my new favorite people watching spot.

Vote Up!

Help me get a new kitchen by voting for me! I have been harassing my assing off here to get everyone to hook it up, it is so easy, you can vote every day, and if I win I promise to make you cookies of your choice. I am in dire need of an awesome new kitchen.

Food For Awesome Thought

I grew up with four brothers and a set of parents that were busily working full-time to help support us in the future. Needless to say, we were basically left to our own devices to concoct any sort of mad scientist meal from the ingredients that we had kicking around in the kitchen. While I mastered the many culinary skills of cracking an egg inside a bowl of ramen to cook, pouring cereal for lunch, or placing impeccably cut hotdog rounds and placing them lovingly atop a bed of macaroni and cheese to serve up to my hungry siblings, I never quite learned how to actually cook real food, and it haunted me well into my adult life.
My friends found it humorous that late into my 20s that I was eating like a 15 year old boy with no adult supervision, so I made a concentrated effort to learn to cook real foods. It started out haltingly. At first I would thumb through home magazines picking out quaint looking recipes that I could dream of gracing my kitchen table with. Many kitchens ended up filled with smoke, and many chickens sat sadly on the baking pan covered in ham and only cooked halfway through while I rushed out to get some Chinese takeout. But one day after many efforts it just clicked, and meals started coming together for me. Having been in such a large family, and it only being my husband and myself now, out of sheer instinct, I was soon cooking up curries, stews, taco bakes, and strudels for a slew of imaginary people that were not going to get fed.
As we trudged our way through the massive amount of leftovers, I realized that we should not just be enjoying all of this wonderful food for ourselves that I have been cooking. So I would invite a few friends over at a time for dinner. We would have wonderful conversation, they would pitch in on meals, and even the confident ones would dig in and help out with the cooking. Cooking for me now has become so much more than just placing a meal on the table and mindlessly chewing it down because of the mere fact that I am hungry. It has become a bonding experience, time for good conversation, and a way to be able to interact with people in a way that is so much different than just talking about work.
When you are cutting up vegetables and throwing them into a steamer, or when you are trying to learn how to cook a turkey for the first time, things get expressed and shared on a whole different level of interaction as opposed to say, just sitting down to a bag of fast food and tuning out to watch television. I live for being able to see the joy, or even sometimes false joy at times I’m sure, on people’s faces as they take that first bite of something I have prepared and knowing that we all took some part in creating that moment.
I get a sense of solace and calm whenever I bake some sweets for people that I know will appreciate them. There is also a feeling of accomplishment that comes from being able to whip something up from scratch and then see the look of surprise on my husband’s face when I bring some cookies into a room for him. I know most people would think that it’s just cooking, it can’t be that big of a deal, but I have been able to make it into so much more. In these busy times of being in school, working, and not being able to interact with my friends and loved ones as much as I would like to, we have made food into something that we can all fit into our hectic lifestyles, because hey, everyone could always use a nice home cooked meal, and it isn’t a guilty pleasure that you have to rationalize.

Food For Awesome Thought

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Smarmy

I know this is totally pretentious and assholey of me, so much that I just made up the word assholey, but I have been privy to some terrible blogs lately. It's not that I think I am this profound beacon of wisdom that spouts out wonderful things from the mountaintops. God knows the last time I was even in the mountains, hiking would actually be good for me, and the only thing I do that is good for me anymore is think about working out.

But these blogs. Oh my blog. I have noticed a pattern that follows along with them. It is a young girl that is blatantly beautiful, and she is spewing on and on about how terrible and complicated how life is, how her body isn't doing what she wants it to do any longer and how everything would just work itself out perfectly if she could just find that perfect combination of mustache and flannel to love her the way she needs to be loved.

Women can be idiots. Being one, I can testify to this without being called a misogynist. They get these ideas in their head that life is supposed to be a carbon copy of a romantic comedy, and this fellow that is slightly clumsy but attractive is supposed to chase after them like some sort of hungry puppy dog slobbering over their every move that they make. It such a contrived notion, that I would think if these women were indeed the intelligent and beautiful beings that they fancied themselves, they wouldn't be in this blogging pickle of sorrow and sadness, spouting terrible poetry, pining after something that they can never have. Have you ever seen the most BEAUTIFUL woman in the world and asked yourself, "Gee why is she single?" If you ask that and then proceed to pursue her, I might tell you to run for the fucking woods and never come out. Because my friend, she is crazy and wrought so much with crazy that you will find yourself in some sort of tangled up mindfuck craze and never be able to fully tear yourself out.

She will blog about you, I can guarantee it. And she will put in all these vaguely dark things about you along with your picture, every douchey thing you said to her when you happened to get off a bad day of work and anything that has been taken out of context. You will become her obsession, and her girl power minions will follow suit, holding up protest signs with your name attached to them, ready to burn you at the stake. Now, I am not saying that every beautiful woman is this way. I have many gorgeous and sane friends, but I think you know that type I am talking about. You can see the crazy popping in and out of their eyes. They are able to mask it for a moment, but once you catch the first inkling of it, heed my advice and go far far away.

These women, the think themselves as some sort of Jane Austins of the 20th century. Writing flowery poetry and speaking of how much they enjoy sex and being naked and walking through cemeteries and crying, they are always openly weeping and blogging about it while they do so. They create this persona of themselves as some sort of 50s housewife but independent and full of spitfire at the same time. Yet they are the most co-dependent people I have ever happened across. They thrive on the attention of another female's jealousy, get high off of a man pursuing them and the freak out when he doesn't fawn in the manner that she fantasized about he night before. They talk about what raging wine lushes they are and how they are proud of that and how amazing masturbation is. It is just bragging rights. It is just trying to impress the hoi-polloi with tales by hyping themselves up. It is the reason that blogging could get a bad rap. They coin the term "What are you going to blooog about it now?"

I'm not saying that I am this cold robot without thoughts and feelings, that I don't like to down the booze and pine at times. But when those moments strike, those true deep and dark moments, you will never find them publicly gracing the computer screen of a blog. Like my friend said the other day when I was sharing excerpts from these little ditties, "When the locks start coming off of journals?" I may be old fashioned spouting motherly advice, but damnit, there is a time and place for those things to come out, and you will never see me posting why I hurt inside or a fight that I got into with my husband unless it is in form of a hilarious anecdote.

In the meantime though, you can bet your ass I will keep wasting my precious time sifting through these people baring it all on the internet, because for me it has become like reality t.v. but in blog form.