wash, spin, tumble dry

things started to change back in the fall when the families started asking about christmas. what do you want? and because we live far away and most folks on both sides don't really get to see us much, don't know how we live our wild lives, we try to be helpful. we try to be creative. but then this year the sweetie said, "what we would like, what we would really like more than anything else in the whole world, is to be able to do our laundry in our own home."

and i know what you're saying, but unless you live in a city like this one, unless you look down the road of your future and see yourself at seventy dragging a twenty pound bag of laundry four or five or six blocks down the street where the woman who does the pound laundry will ask you if you want all the loads done together and then, whatever answer you give her, will shove every last article of clothing your whole family has worn the past week into a tiny machine and she will press start without looking to see whether the machine is set on cold, hot or make everything shrink to barbie doll size, you do not know the hunger for the ability to do your own laundry.

and before you get all high and mighty, saying you'd go down to that laundromat with your quarters in your pocket and the new bottle of detergent you will inevitably leave behind and you would sort out all your whites and your colors and your delicates, you just settle down and listen. you could do all that, press the buttons on the machines corresponding to temperatures and agitation speed, but you could also explain to a two year old child how to pilot a plane. you'd put the words out there, but you shouldn't expect the kid to get that plane off the ground. the machines at the laundromat, any laundromat, are so old they do not remember anymore what delicate means. nor are they really sure what temperature warm is, so they tend to go for broke. all hot, all cotton/sturdy, all the time. it is one thing to hate a stranger for the rust stains on your towels and the fact that your favorite skirt will now fit your dog. it is another thing to have to look at your own face in the mirror every day as you dry your hair with a rusty towel and know you shoved those towels into that washer. you didn't stick around long enough to see if "air dry" is siphoning its air of some dirty vents in hell.

the family, both sides, takes this very seriously and we find ourselves, after the holidays, staring at a handful of plastic cards of varying amounts that, in the end, add up to a washing machine and a dryer. no kidding. but we aren't impulsive. we are wily. we spend our time online and in stores, reading manuals, turning dials and pushing buttons, opening and closing doors. finally, nearly six months later, we stroll into the large store where the cards work and we saunter up to the desk where the appliance sellers lurk. i glance at the "next day delivery" signs and can feel the drool pooling in my mouth. turns out you have to select an item that's in stock in order to get next day delivery. otherwise it's six to infinity weeks. also turns out there's only one complete set (that's one washer, one dryer) in the entire store. one. the sweetie and i look out over the vast plains of the appliance section, thirty or forty machines just lying there, waiting, but not in stock. they are all the same to me. so many dials and buttons i cannot tell one from another. they are all glossy and shiny and terrifying. we decide to take the one set in stock. this means i have to forgo the lovely blue paint job i'd been gazing at online but i am ready to sacrifice such a small thing for the hugeness of laundry by week's end.

the appliance saleswoman tallies everything up, adds on our dryer vent tube which i make a mental note to wear around the house while talking in a robot voice at least once a day until i do my first load of laundry. then she says, "okay, do you want that the sixteenth or the thirtieth?" and i do not know what she means because there are maybe forty signs all around the place screaming about next day delivery. turns out this particular store has two days. tuesday. friday. all other days are not days and therefore do not count when you are counting the days to your appliances. the sixteenth, according to this thinking, is actually two days away. she explains something about a backup in the trucks or something causing that extra day delay. the sweetie is diplomatic and, although it will mean taking a day away from work for him, we agree to the sixteenth. i am thinking, in my head, about a washing machine on wheels that i am driving through the store at high speed, slowing only to kick each and every appliance salesmonster in the store.

but the laundry fairies don't just show up and attach your machines to your house and fly away. okay, they do if your house is already set up for laundry, but the only remnants of the laundry hookups left in this house are two pipes that burst a few years ago, sending incredibly cold water spraying onto the back of the fridge and then on me when i pulled the fridge away from the wall to find out what was going on back there. so we hire a plumber. and we hire an electrician. the electrician comes over and sets things up as much as he can, but has to wait for the plumber to finish before he can do the final electrical. the plumber, evidently so fantastic at plumbing he is in constant demand, had so many emergencies he is unable to make a tuesday appointment, nor is he able to make it any other time during the week (emergency after emergency, i guess). and when we don't hear from the plumber after the second appointment (also second week) has come and gone (see, we're in brooklyn during the week and don't have a clue whether he's managed to stop by and do anything), i get on the phone with my best teacher voice and say i am absolutely sure he is finished so the electrician can stop over friday to do the last few things, but i would really appreciate a call to let me know for sure so i won't send the electrician over there when he still can't do any work. i get a very nice call a few hours later from this plumber saying he's finished and will stop by saturday so we can pay him. he does not stop by, nor has he called. perhaps he is just too busy with emergencies.

so the sweetie calls the electrician (i don't usually call because i find these guys take a giant shaggy man more seriously than they do me and although it pisses me off, i just want to do my laundry right now) and we don't hear back until saturday. he'll be there between three and four. fine. we get home just before three and we wait. and we wait. and a little before six he calls. a little before six! he just got too busy but he'll come over tomorrow. he shows up and does the final electrical then tells us after he's finished he's charging us extra for working on sunday and i'm figuring he wouldn't have been working on sunday if he'd answered his phone. still, i just want to do my laundry and this won't cost me that much more than doing laundry in brooklyn anyway.

i am loading the washer before the electrician is out of the house. i can tell you this. on the washer there is a big round dial with a bunch of choices and lights all around it. there are three buttons side by side, each with a menu above and little lighted areas telling what you're selecting. there are several other buttons scattered across the face of the machine, including a separate start button and power button (when did they stop being the same button?). there is a digital timer to tell me when my clothes will be done (it is not very honest and sometimes backtracks or skips ahead). the place where the detergent goes slides out for detergent entry but slides even further out so i can put the whole thing in my dishwasher and wash it. what have we been missing at the laundromat where thousands of other people each week pour their filthy horrible non high energy detergent into the same machines where we wash our own most precious clothing? but it is the max extract button i love most. i love it because it squeezes out my clothes so fiercely they are nearly dry, laughing at the timer on the dryer when i toss them in. i also love it because i could have used a "max extract" button back when max was deep into dying and was trying to prove it by bleeding on every skirt i owned. there are so many choices, so many buttons to push, and i am a bit bewildered but the scariest part is the machine will make some of those choices for you when you put the clothes in. i get to select one button. i choose normal because i don't know what sort of disaster might happen if i choose anything else. i stand in the kitchen, staring at the washer. the sweetie suggests i get a chair if i'm planning to watch the entire forty minutes. i do not get a chair and i do not stand there the whole time. i do find a million reasons to walk into the kitchen, though, and each time i do i watch the clothes flopping around behind the glass.

we put the clothes from the washer right up into the dryer and i cannot believe how easy it is to do that when they're right there like that instead of on opposite sides of a store. the sweetie says we should probably get ourselves a laundry basket and i think of all the glamorous varieties of laundry baskets out there. you heard me right. i think of all the glamorous varieties of laundry baskets out there. when the little bell dings, we take the clothes in armfuls to the dining room table and fold them. somehow, even on a hot day, warm laundry feels good.