Laundering Without Malice

Of late, I've been doing laundry about once a week - if I still lived in a building with its own laundry room, this would probably not be a big deal, but since I live in New York now - and in an 8-unit non-condo building at that - I have to walk a ways. The laundromat I usually patronize is about 2 blocks away, across a busy street, but - and these are two crucial points - it's usually relatively quiet, and it's a mere block from both a good coffee place and the grocery store, so I can usually combine my trips with other errands. Which is all probably worth the 25 cents I save on each load by not going to the laundromat that I can reach without crossing 4 lanes of traffic (or any street at all), but which is a) crowded and b) not convenient for other errands.

SO.

Last week I lost $3.50 after one of the washers somehow forgot that I had just fed it a full load's worth of quarters and the woman working said, somewhat disbelievingly, "what do you want me to do? give you $3.50?" and proceeded to show me that it was impossible that what had just happen was even possible (because I put my own $3.50 into the same machine under similar conditions - the door was open - in retrospect, I'm SURE that the problem was, in fact, that I didn't notice that the door was open for a solid 2 minutes after inserting my money and having the washer not start - though at the time, I just felt defeated - not that I had any chance of winning to begin with) - her reply to everything I said was "impossible. impossible." I know that the profit margin is low, no one really has that much control over a washer unless they're a licensed plumber, and that her English isn't fantastic, so I didn't throw a tantrum, though I did feel extra frustrated for feeling like I was being accused of trying to rip her off - which seems like the least lucrative scam I can think of, particularly given the low likelihood of anyone giving you money back (this happened to me in London with a broken machine and 3 pounds and a machine that wouldn't start. I ended up reporting the problem over the phone to American kid at the service call center but never did get my money - and that was in a building with a large maintenance staff and some sort of corporate overseers in charge of washer upkeep).

But maybe it's been tried before?

There was that DC judge who sued the dry cleaner over those pants. . .

Anyway - today, I went back - things were fine - except the guy with the beard who was eating pizza in one of the chairs by the door - I had yet to eat anything substantial and it was probably 85 with 90% humidity so the beard looked pretty amazingly uncomfortable. It also took him a solid 10 minutes to eat a slice. The mixed horror - tomato sauce, melted cheese, major humidity, laundry detergent, facial hair - and reminder of the breakfast I was waiting to eat until I went home post-washer to put my non-dryer items on the drying rack was almost too much. Luckily, however, I had coffee to dull both my thoughts on mixing scents and my hunger pangs.

So then I went home and had some food and was ok. I hugged my air conditioner for a while to cool off, did some mild puttering, hung up the clothes, decided against cup of coffee #3, made my bed, and went to retrieve the dryer loads - with, I might add, perfect timing, as both ended within 1 minute of my stepping into the laundromat. (There are a lot of signs warning you not to leave your clothes unattended, but I have trouble imagining anyone glimpsing my torn, stained wardrobe or circa 2005 Ikea sheets and finding anything worth stealing. That said, after what happened next, I may have incured enough loathing on the part of the laundromat staff to sit around next time, just in case they're vindictive, since I already know they have bleach access).

After unloading my clothes, I did a second round of checking for lost socks and tapped closed each door. One closed. The other fell off of its top hinge and the force of the weight bent the bottom screw. A guy who looked eerily like someone I knew of, but did not know personally, in high school was pulling his own cart full of clothes past the machine at the time and picked up the screw whose act of liberation from its duties as a hinge-holder, and tried to tell the same woman from the previous incident what had happened and why her efforts to re-affix the door were futile (the bent bottom screw, which substantially displaced the door's alignment). She and another of the laundromat employees tried to fix the door. It clearly wasn't going anywhere. They didn't have a screwdrive. I stood there, helplessly trying to offer any kind of assistance or apology while they ignored me - except for the one withering glance that made me quite sure that I was remembered from last time - and, feeling completely useless and frustrated once more with my inability to communicate anything remotely helpful to anyone (including myself), took my laundry home.

I'm not sure if I can ever go back.

On one hand: I know it isn't really my fault - I didn't ask the door to do anything that isn't in its job description this week, and I didn't ask the washer to do anything extra - and in the end, at least on that one, I sucked it up and took the $3.50 hit. But, particularly with this incident, I felt responsible for making someone's job harder -and partly because of the frustration of being unable to communicate (it does seem reasonable that if you don't understand when you feel like you should, you end up being extra-defensive), and partly because of the involvement of often fickle machinery, and that's never a good feeling. Even when I know it isn't entirely reasonable (and that I may make this woman's day by giving myself as a scapegoat on top of the rolls and rolls of quarters I feed the machines every week). . .

A Sign from the Other Side?

I just saw a thunderstorm come and go - from blue sky to roiling clouds and back - all in the course of "Wanna be Starting Something" by Michael Jackson. Which I think was a coincidence, but you never know. . .

Learning a New Language Takes a While

I think this is New York traffic for "Park" since it is nearish to an entrance to Prospect Park, but I remain a bit unclear on what it is trying to convey to drivers, since the teeter-totters are not, as far as I can tell, either on wheels - though one can imagine how nicely parallel-parked they might end up - nor anywhere near the road. Much more useful would be lane markings on the sidewalk so double-wide strollers can find a place of their own and not end up right in the middle of the sidewalk although if I had a double-wide, that's probably where I'd end up too -at least, on my way to send my children to play in traffic/on the teeter totter.

Lost in Translation?

My journalism class interviewe the guy who wrote the Hipster Handbook last night. Since a good portion of the class is foreign, and also unfamiliar with Williamsburg - neither by reputation nor experience, we spent a bit of the time ahead of his arrival talking about what a hipster is. Which, of course, brought out only the most sketchy shorthand - skinny jeans, cool but not cool in the brand name way - a classmate asked me if they were like David Beckham and I could only say that they're kind of the opposite of David Beckham. Except that Beckham has a child named Brooklyn, so maybe this isn't true.

On one level, there was something illustrative about this - and maybe even something that will be useful for the 800 words I write about this guy for our assignment for Tuesday - hipsters, for as much as a certain segment of society (that I unquestionably belong to) has thought about them, felt familiar enough with what they are to use hipster in moderately derogatory terms, the definition - like so many categories of people (like, as I learned in grad school, "women") - is slippery, inexact and pretty tied to a certain cultural moment and perhaps, a few geographic places. Though I can't say that there aren't hipsters in, say, Brazil or France.

On another level - I wondered if maybe no one had done the research to find out what this guy wrote about - he did literally write the book on the topic - so it isn't too hard to find more information about what he is known for writing about by . . . reading what he's written. But, assuming that people tried to do research, but were still kind of baffled - I think we get to the point that always comes up when you do anything in the social sciences - it's hard to know anything about cultural phenomenon that are so obviously outside of your daily experience. And seeking out more information doesn't necessarily mean you win some thorough understanding - if anything, knowing only a little means that you get a full opinion about whether something - and this I think is particularly true of cultural markers that you can wear - is good or bad - whether it's neon spandex or the hijab - and then it's hard to dislodge, even if you realize that you're really interested in whatever you're learning about and try to do the hard work of getting a fuller, more complicated understanding. And for this, I was extremely grateful to the writer, since he was really clear about his own opinion - and about his perspective - which is sort of gently amused with a little bit of a class-conscious bite.

In the end, I have no idea if this translated to people who weren't familiar to begin with, but I think there was a chance that he did. And maybe a chance that social science - even (or maybe particularly) jokey, made up social science - has some value for daily life after all. . .

Haunted by the Vegetable Albatross

I couldn't sleep last night - I think I was haunted by the second, less than well-advised beer I had at 10:30 - because, apparently, I've become my mother. Or maybe it was the rise in humidity that started around 11. But it wasn't pretty. I read a lot. I realized that I needed to revise something in the summary I had sent out at 4. I did a little anxious spin around my life choices. Somehow, none of these things were relaxing. So I gave up on trying to sleep at 6 and went to spinning class - which, because of some sort of short in the cd player/speakers that had to do with all of the rain we had in June - ended up being to a soundtrack of Play by Moby - a cd I haven't listened to since probably my first year in college and, though I once knew it well, I have long since forgotten almost entirely (except for the track that I choreographed a synchronized swimming return to - that one I remember all too well). Then I did some grocery shopping because I was out of yogurt. I ended up going to 3 stores and buying 3 different white cheeses. And getting a lecture about how the coming bad weather is due to the hole that the space shuttle poked in the ozone. And how I should smile more. I replied with a couple of "hmm"s.

Moving on - I came home, thinking maybe I could finally get some sleep. Except that I couldn't - for some reason the only comfortable position I could find was with my head on my hands - which, amazingly, made my hands fall asleep. It wasn't pretty. I strategized about what to do with my fridge full of ingredients - vegetables, fresh herbs and now, dairy products. After about an hour, I decided I couldn't take it anymore and had to make some bok choy with garlic scapes, lemon thyme and lentils. I feel a little better now, but I still have a whole lot of the herbs left - plus parsley, broccoli and a zucchini. I know there's a stir fry in my future. I have a feeling it will be over-seasoned. I only hope I get a nap in before I feel compelled to work on it.

No Way Out

I went to a party on Friday that was based around an all you can eat/drink sushi/sake, wine and beer deal, accompanied by karaoke - all in a rented, single-party room. It was the kind of situation that one knows, going in, is headed for disaster - going in, I assumed that one drinks too much, makes a fool out of his/herself at karaoke and regrets the inadequacy of the sushi as a sponge. I didn't eat dinner before I went to the party, so when the warm sake appeared in clear, cafeteria-style jugs in the over-air conditioned room, I ended up overcompensating on the sushi front. Equally poor choice, but in a totally different, delayed way. And I learned a valuable lesson: 2 hours of karaoke is actually not that much when you arrive from the still daylit-world at 7 pm with a sense that poor combinations are bound to happen, only to have your guard worn down by col tempura sweet potatoes, pre-opened bottles of Saporro (that you feel guilty wasting) and the sudden, late discovery of "Let's Go Crazy" by Prince among the listed songs.

That said, I think this trifecta of inevitable poor choices and I are done for a good while to come.