Laundry Love

So I'm writing to you from the laundromat that sits half a block away from my apartment between a Chinese restaurant and another laundromat while this little girl sitting next to me carefully tears each page of a magazine to tiny shreds and then runs joyfully to the trash can to throw them away. And then she repeats the whole process. I think she may intend to do this for the remainder of this fine Thursday evening. While she is annoying me in a very serious way here at the laundromat, the thought occurs to me that I could really use those sweet shredding-and-disposing skills around my apartment. I wonder if this five year old needs part time employment for the holiday season. I could even pay in cookies. Or, since I believe this might please her even more than cookies, her compensation package could include a generous helping of my own personal reserve of unopened junk mail for her shredding pleasure.

Now, while I wholeheartedly have committed to unabashedly giving into my spinsterhood, I don't make a habit of spending such a fine Thursday night in my glitter velour track pants. No, I generally do more exciting things like eating cereal for dinner while watching the Thursday night lineup on NBC. However, tonight is special. Tomorrow morning I fly out for my first vacation since January to- where else?- my parents' house.

Of course there is such a thing as a "Staycation," but I'm doing myself one better. I am in such dire need of sleep that not even my crack-den of a one bedroom will do. I must commune with my homeland (and, of course, my home food). And you can expect updates from my spinsterly getaway such as the following:

(Before I write this next part, I must comment on the fact that the child is now, in fact, standing right next to me and staring straight at the side of my face as I fully ignore what I imagine,in a quieter locale, would be the sound of her small young breaths and the opening and closing of her eyelid.)

1. A very ghetto flea market.
2. Shopping for real estate just because it's exciting to imagine what my life would be like in someone else's house.
3. Eating those carrots from the Japanese place that has my picture on its wall. (I'm not even being hyperbolic here. There is actually a photo of me.)
4. Pestering my mother's cats who both remember and hate me. I've asked her to warn them to gird their loins. I somehow doubt they'll remember until the very last minute. It hurts my feelings they don't love me as much as I love them.

Well, I know you must be very sad, but my dry cycle's nearly over, and I must devote my efforts for the rest of my tenure this evening to casting dirty looks in the way of the child who is now continuously if irregularly banging her chair against the window my back now shares with hers. She has gone outside, you see, with what would seem to be the sheer objective of garnering my hateful glances. So, of course, I must oblige.