A Western Morning?

There are two things that are not secret on this blog:
1. I am often frustrated with my apartment building.
2. I have wished to live in the Old West.

Today, these two things combined for an unusual morning.

There’s a laundry machine in the basement of this apartment building. Usually it works, although sometimes it refuses to go through the spin cycle, and the clothes get thrown into the dryer soaking wet.

This morning, it worked but didn’t drain properly. By the time I went down to put the third load in the machine, a river had formed on the cement floor of the laundry room.

I thought about washing my third load anyways, since the machine was working… but by the time I had the clothes and the detergent in the machine, I thought otherwise. Really, I shouldn’t flood the basement for my laundry.

But I really wanted these clothes. I should have just taken it all to the laundromat to begin with… but now for one load, it just didn’t seem worth it. And now these clothes had detergent on them… what to do?

I washed them in the bathtub.

Honestly, it took about as much time as it would have to drive them to the Laundromat. In a yogi squat next to the tub, I washed, rinsed, and wrung a load of laundry—wringing them, mind you, better than the malfunctioning machine in the basement. Each shirt or pants took on a different hue under the water—my yoga pants felt like black leather, and my green capris like the roasted green pepper CS had me skin last week. After each piece was wrung, I deftly tossed it over my shoulder into the laundry basket.

Some of the clothes will go on the balcony, others into the dryer in the basement. (Okay, I admit—the dryer is not western. But my balcony is not big enough for all my laundry!)

As I washed, I imagined the laundry in a bucket or one of those huge wash basins in the old west. And then I giggled. (One load is not the same as all my laundry all the time.)

To complete the western morning, I made banana bread from scratch—which included making buttermilk. To top it off, I’m letting the sun steep some tea. Mmm.

Sometimes, my life really does look like the west. Now, if I pulled out the violin instead of playing music through my computer, that might complete the picture.