Steady's car is now working again. He did eventually get it to the dealership (not until after I'd given up and just gone to work). From what he tells me about what the dealership said, it seems that a magical fairy somewhere under the hood had copped an attitude, was fired and a new fairy was hired. He wasn't exactly clear.
On Tuesday, I celebrated the anniversary of my conception by loading a fucking lot of clothing into the plastic wheeled container and hauling it into my car.
We do have a full sized washer and dryer here and it does work just fine. It just... the laundry was out of control. And it was out of control because there are lots of things in this apartment that are so much better than switching the wash.
So, I gathered it all up (Steady helped) and carted it into the car (Steady helped) and headed off for where the internet told me there would be a laundrymat. That, however was entirely false.
Okay, well, this is a decent sized city, there's a rather large university here, surely to goodness I can find a damned laundry mat fairly easily.
No.
If I wanted to find Jesus in a strip mall, no problem! Fake Nails, easy-peasy! Chinese Buffet, on every corner! Dry cleaning, well, you can't build a strip mall without a dry cleaner!
What's that? You want to enroll in a high school contained entirely in a strip mall? Let me tell you, there are plenty to choose from. I even found a strip mall courthouse of some sort. They're building a Burger King in the parking lot.
It was like a bad joke.
I called Steady. He was still at the bookstore and unable to help me. I called Stalker Guy.
"How are you?" "Slightly misplaced." "You don't want me to google something for you again, do you?" "Actually... it would be fantastic if you would." "What do you need?" "I need a damned laundry mat. You know, a room full of wash machines."
He gave me a couple of options. None of which appeared to be a room full of wash machines and none of which were open.
Then I found one, but it was closed.
This was when I just gave up and called 411. The operator seemed entertained. "I want a laundry mat. Just the plain, old, conventional store front with a big room of washers and dryers. A laundry mat. One that's open."
She gave me three and then connected me to one. It was open! And closer to my apartment than the one I'd set out for!
Thirteen loads. In case you were wondering. Thirteen loads of laundry. Two hours. I managed to load everything just right so I only got one chapter of my book read between loading, switching, pulling out the dry stuff, restarting the dryers, folding, &c.
It was a major success. It will be an even bigger success when the big trunk of clean clothes gets out of the doorway.
Goodness help me, my mother and her best friend are coming here. This weekend. Her friend is staying one night, Mom is staying two or three. Apparently, something about having spent three nights in her own bed since June 1 is starting to get to her and she's ready to be finished with her journey.
Relish! is going really well for us. The grocery list is really helpful, the recipes are slightly out of my league (in that they don't just say "throw ingredients into wok, cook until it looks like dinner."), and the meals are... not always fantastic, but do keep coming out totally edible.
The portions are totally too much for two people. Which... they do say they feed four.
That isn't exactly a rave review. We like structure. We are not good at creating it for ourselves. This is structure delivered to my e mail box once a week. "Buy this. Cook it this way. Eat. You're welcome."
And now we're eating different things all the time. And we're not doing it in restaurants. It's really quite exciting.
