Wednesday at the Washateria

After a glorious Tuesday afternoon and evening of reading and relaxation I awoke this morning and realized that the first outside of the house task on the list today is laundry. I've been up for almost three hours and I'm still searching for the motivation to pull it together and get this done.

It's not that I mind doing laundry; I strive to maintain a fairly clean, neat house (the product of my anal-retentive nature and several roommate situations where I was a witness to unimaginable levels of sloth and slovenly living)and actually derive a great deal of satisfaction in maintaining an orderly abode. I'm spoiled when it comes to laundry, because the last few places I lived had facilities in the house/condo, so I could wash to my heart's content at any hour of the day or night. There is a washer and dryer in the garage of my current accommodation, but my landlord is out of town and already a bit disenchanted with me since I'm leaving in two weeks. The closest alternative is the laundromat down the street.

I don't mind laundromats; having spent many years in big cities before moving to FL, weekly trips to the washateria were part of my routine. The laundromat can provide a fertile ground for people watching, as it's one place that tends to be the great equalizer: doesn't matter what age/gender/race categories you occupy, everyone has to wash clothes, and those of us who choose to complete the task ourselves have a limited number of destinations to use. The laundromat by my place is clean and cheap and the dryers are nice and hot. I'm put off by the loud TV that plays bad Lifetime movies and the attendant who smokes and nurses a 40 as he shuffles around to check on the progress of loads that people have dropped off. I could venture out of the hood to a different laundromat, but that seems wasteful and counterproductive as this one is a five minute walk from the house.

So breakfast is done, and the last of the coffee's been consumed. Looks like it's time for me to suck it up, grab my quarters and head out for the next installment in the adventure series "Life at the Laundromat".