An ill-fated trip to the laundromat.

Two weeks into cohabitation, the world is fine. Well, aside from our Internet provider being the sole jerk of our utility experience. On that note, SERIOUSLY? P.I.C. attempted to sign up for this service a week before we moved. It has been botched every single way it could be botched, including in an hour and a half phone conversation this morning rendering P.I.C. over an hour late to work and none-too-pleased. It also screwed up other plans that made me near tears.

Shaking it off. Shaking it off. Shaking it...

OH! There is one other event that has occurred in our lives since we moved in together. Our first trip to the laundromat. We do have one washer and one dryer in our building, but when you have a household in which both parties own and wear a lot of clothes, sharing one washer and dryer on laundry night just doesn't cut it. Fortunately, or so we thought, we live about a half of a block from a laundromat. I have been to laundromats in the past and found them a rather good place to get laundry done. Yes, it is annoying to leave the comfort of your own home, but getting five loads of laundry done in less than two hours is worth it sometimes.

So earlier this week, we packed up our three weeks or so worth of laundry and drove through the alley for laundry night. We were pleased when we first walked into the place. There were tons of washing machines and tons of dryers. We both proceed to load up our clothes and let the washers go for it. Here is my inner monologue at first, "Clean clothes, here we come! Oh boy, FREE dryers. Can't wait to save my quarters THERE. Oh, and there's Glee on the television. Even better! Time for me to siiiing."

But then, during a commercial break, I began to take stock of my surroundings. The entire wall of thirty-four dryers was chugging away. Upon further inspection, it was one family using the entire bunch of dryers. The dryers would run for ten minutes, then you had to go push the button again. For my entire wash cycle, I watched the dryers turn off, then one of the mom's three accompanying children go push them all on again without checking whether the clothes were dry. Over. And over. And over again. The brow became furrowed and I started to get crabby.

Then I noticed a crazy lady that muttered to herself then repeatedly filled an empty laundry soap container with water and proceeded to dumb container after container of water into her currently-running washing machine. Creepy. Each time she walked back with her water, she'd mutter something like, "They need more water. water. water." I later realized that there were more dryers in the place, so I investigated this situation. Turns out, there were two more families (with at least three children each) that were doing massive amounts of laundry. They had entire tables full of folded clothes. The kids were running around, pushing each other in the laundry carts, eating Cheetos and being unruly. The crabbiness started moving throughout my entire body. When my washer stopped, I was able to sneak into one of the thirty-four dryers on the wall. But the rest of them occupied by that one family? They kept on plugging along.

This was my view:

Hmmm, is it possible to be occupying more dryers? Lemme see if I can swing it. I bet I can get this blond girl's head to spin in Exorcist-like circles. She looks mad.

You can see the offensive party up there. Her kids were on the opposite table folding MORE laundry. You see those dryers? I had one of them occupied. Just one.

P.I.C. and I were approaching the point of no return, i.e. the point where Fabulously Awkward is neither fabulous, nor awkward, but simply ragey, when the tamale guy showed up. Y'all don't know who the tamale guy is? Well, here's a photo.



Hey you. You look hungry and drunk. You wanna tamale?

 Usually, the tamale guy only shows up to bars late in the evening to capitalize on the drunkards' need for food. Apparently, this particular zoo of a laundromat is on his list of places to stop. Fine. We were hungry and knew that cooking dinner at home was no longer an option. We ate tamales for dinner and washed them down with a Diet Coke from the vending machine. FINE. YOU WIN, LAUNDROMAT! I busied myself with taking photographs of the offenders and looking at them with all the venom I could muster. Even the children received nasty glares. (Yeah. STOP PUSHING THE BUTTONS! YOUR PILLOW AND TWO TINY T-SHIRTS WERE DRY THREE BUTTON PUSHES AGO. I HATE YOU, SMALL CHILD.)

At one point, P.I.C. looked at me with rage in his eyes (bless his heart, cuz he so rarely gets ragey, and when he gets as angry as me sometimes, I know I'm not being irrational for once) and says, "I am ready to take our sh*t and bring it back to the other laundromat and PAY to dry them." Well, we decided that the time spent doing that would be a waste so we opted to just sneak into the dryers when we were able.

It took us two and a half hours to do our laundry. It should have taken half that time. Our conclusion at the end of the night was to never, ever go back to that laundromat again. Sadly, I suspect it might happen. It's close, and I don't do laundry regularly. Prepare for more rage-filled rantings about the laundromat. It's only a matter of time before they spew forth from my fingertips.

For now I will go back to blocking out the entire episode save for the tamale guy. The tamales were the highlight of the evening. Oh yeah, and the singalong I staged to JOURNEY night on Glee. (Does anyone else thing of J.D. from Scrubs and his love of Journey when you hear it? I sure do. He knew a great cover band named the "Love 'em, Touch 'em, Squeeze 'ems," "Book them now, thank me later." Classic.)