Holiday Rush

I work in retail and let me tell you, it is crazy busy this time of year.

It’s interesting, though, because I hate shopping and I hate crowds, so if I were to try to get some presents bought in my store right now it would be a terrible terrible nightmare for me. But for some (lucky) reason, working in the rush there doesn’t bother me at all.  Probably because I don’t have to deal with the stress of finding the specific item I’m looking for while maneuvering my cart through aisles and around other customers, and waiting in long long lines to finally get out of the store.

And a bonus of the holiday rush is that I’ve been getting pretty good hours, which brings me to my next point: TODAY IS AN OLD DRAWINGS DAY!  I’ve been working a lot and trying to figure out Christmas presents and just generally ignoring my blog.  So old, random pictures it is!

It doesn’t snow here.  It rains, but that’s not the same.  I want eventually to live somewhere where it snows, and where it has trees that take autumn seriously.  I like real seasons.

I went to college in Los Angeles, and my first year there it “snowed” one day.  It was more like very small hail, but everyone got super excited and started running around outside in their bathing suits.  Some people tried to make snow angels, but that just made it melt faster and they were shouted at for ruining winter, so they stopped.

I don’t know anything about dance.  I took ballet and tap and some jazz as a little kid, but I was never very good at any of it (there are some pretty funny video tapes of my dance recitals where everyone else is grinning their Performance Smiles and I’m scowling in concentration as I lag one beat behind).  So probably what the lady in this drawing is doing isn’t any kind of real dance move at all, and so  I apologize to any Real Dancers in the audience.  I was just playing with reflection.

One time in dance class the teacher asked us all how many beats you counted before starting over again and I expected everyone to know the answer so I shouted out “EEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIGGGHHHHTT” in that elongated sing-song way that you do when you expect to be speaking along with a class.  But apparently I was the only one who knew the answer, and so I just ended up whale-speaking the number at the teacher by myself.  There was a kind of awkward pause and then she said, “Yes...very good, Kendra...eight,” and moved on.

This is an uncompleted picture that I just found in my folder of drawings.  Yes, you are correct: it is a picture of me sniffing crayons.  I’m pretty sure it was meant to illustrate my addiction to art supplies, but it somehow got lost and forgotten.  SO HERE IT IS NOW because I think it’s funny.

Okay, that’s all.  BUT:

 Next week I’ll probably not be posting anything because I expect to be exhausted.  The minute I get out of work Christmas Eve, I’m starting my long long drive home to SoCal, which is going to be long longer because it’ll probably be raining like crazy and also the roads will be filled with all the other holiday crazies who are hunched over their steering wheels with “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” blasting on repeat. Then I’ll have Christmas Day at home, and I’ll be spending the 26th driving back up through rain and traffic so I’m able to show up on time for work the next day (unless my manager manages to work the schedule like she’s trying to do to give me next Monday off too, which would be awesome, in which case I’ll be making my mad journey on the 27th instead of the 26th.  But I’m still not going to be posting anything next week, SO THERE).  Just thought I’d warn you, since I tried to sneakily miss last week without saying anything and a few people surprisingly called me out on it.

Which was rather flattering.

Anyway, have a good pre-Christmas week and try not to go nuts if you still have shopping to get done!

OKAY BYE.

The Day of Laundry

What a debacle it is doing laundry in an apartment building.

The very first matter of business is, of course, quarters.

Quarters quarters quarters.

Quarters : Apartment Dwellers :: Acorns : Squirrels

They are a thing to be hoarded.  When I moved up here and found out how expensive laundry is, I began planning out purchases specifically so I would get quarters back for change.

“I could buy a soda!  No, I don’t really need a soda--I’d like to keep my teeth a while longer.  BUT if I buy that soda with two dollar bills, I would get THREE quarters back and that’s almost a load of laundry!  SOLD!”

(...three quarters is NOT almost a load of laundry.  It is exactly half of one wash cycle.  WHY IS LIFE SO EXPENSIVE!?)

After a month or so of seeking out quarters everywhere and feeling a rush of joy every time I spotted one in a handful of change, one of my roommates informed me that you can buy quarters at the grocery store.

WHAT!?  You can buy money?  What will they think of next?

Well, this made laundry less of a treasure hunt, but it was way more practical and so I went over to the grocery store and bought myself ten dollars in quarters.

The next week my building announced that they were moving over to card-reading laundry machines.

And so I have a sad sad sock-full of quarters sitting in my room, their dreams of providing me with clean clothes dashed to the ground.  Hopefully they will soon accept their new fate of providing me with lots of soda from the vending machine at work.

What can I say, Quarters?  Sometimes life throws lemons your way, and when that happens, you just have to make me a Dr. Pepper.

Anyway, our new laundry cards provided a new problem because the office only gave out one card per apartment.  I live with three other people, so figuring out how we’d make sure we were all paying for our own laundry was a bit of a hassle.

My best plan was a somewhat complicated "Laundry Jar" that would hold money from which a person could take when he or she loaded money onto our card, and to which a person would pay when he or she did a load of laundry.  I was trying to iron out the details of my plan (namely, how to start the jar) when one of my roommates swooped in and simply wrote “BALANCE ON CARD” and all of our names up on the fridge.

Pure genius.

So now we’ve solved the whole paying-for-laundry problem, but there still lingers the whole getting-all-my-laundry-from-my-apartment-to-the-laundry-room-across-the-complex problem.

Yes, I could and should just carry it over.  The distance between the two points of interest is very walkable.  But add an overflowing hamper of laundry and a giant jug of laundry detergent and it becomes a struggle.  A struggle that I would struggle through if it weren’t for two incidents which have served to allow me to justify my extreme laziness:

1.  The first time I did laundry here, I grabbed my hamper, gathered my accumulated quarters, and snatched the laundry room key down from its hook in the kitchen.

I carefully maneuvered my way down the stairs and shuffled along the sidewalk and through the parking lot to the laundry room, opened the door, dragged my stuff inside, and realized that I had forgotten my laundry detergent.

So I gathered up all of my stuff again (in hindsight, I have no idea why I didn’t just leave my laundry in that room.  I was going to be gone ten minutes tops and the laundry room was completely empty).  For whatever reason, I decided that it would be best to lug my heavy laundry basket all the way back to my apartment.

So I dragged my stuff back through the parking lot, down the street, up the stairs, and into my apartment.  I set down my laundry, set down my keys, set down my quarters, and got my giant bottle of detergent.

I grabbed my laundry, grabbed my detergent, grabbed my quarters, and headed back down the stairs, back up the street, back through the parking lot, and to the laundry room door.

Which I couldn’t open.

Because I had forgotten my keys.

Why I had even taken them out of my pocket at my apartment in the first place, I don’t know.  But now I didn’t even have the option of leaving my laundry by the washing machines, so I hefted my laundry back into my arms and trudged back across the parking lot, down the street, and up the stairs.

Then I dropped my laundry on the floor for later and watched some TV instead.

2.  The next time I did laundry was right after they installed the fancy new card-reading machines that enable my soda habit.

I did the whole routine, careful to remember both detergent and keys, gathered my laundry, and made the treacherous journey to the laundry machines.

Where there was a big white van and a bunch of maintenance people milling around.

I approached with my dirty clothes and detergent and asked, “Are the machines working?”

To which they said, “NO.  AWAY WITH YOU, FIEND.”

(It might actually have been “No, sorry, give us about half an hour and everything should be up and running again" but we'll never know for sure because the records were destroyed in a freak refrigerator fire.)

So I lugged my heavy laundry back to my apartment, gave them an hour, just in case, and then drove all my laundry over.

And that is how I became the terrible, lazy person who drives her laundry the .1 mile from her apartment to the laundry machines (Yes, I clocked it.  In my car.  Today.  While being a terrible, lazy person and driving my laundry .1 miles to the machines).

I’m sorry, Universe.  BUT YOU DROVE ME TO THIS DRIVING BY TAUNTING ME WITH UNSUCCESSFUL LAUNDRY DAYS.

Oh, whoops.  I have to go.  My laundry is done and I want to get it out of the dryer while it’s still toasty.

Not tasty.

Toasty.

Although toast is tasty.

And toasty.

Please don’t eat my laundry.

Okay bye.