#ROW80 1ST QTR POST 19 SUNDAY CHECK IN – LAUNDRY & LITTLE MOSQUE

Okay, so I had a somewhat half-assed rant and then I had what must have been a cleansing cry in the shower. Well, more of a squeak, and a few tears, but hey, that counts, doesn’t it? Anyway, I feel better, so I’ll take that. We finally got the laundry done yesterday. This is the most ridiculous thing, ever. To do the laundry, first, thing is call Alex. He says, yeah, he’ll help. He knows JC’s knees are in a bad way, so he’s our “muscle.” Next, bag up the clothes. Of course, I left quite a few socks in the closet, along with a couple of shirts. Deduct 2 points, right there.

Get the giant plastic box with the metal handle that hurts your hand. Transfer the Gain or Sunshine or whatever cheap shit you bought on sale at the Dollar Store and transfer some of it from the 878-ounce bottle to the 48-ounce bottle, which you will proceed to use up at the Laundromat, in a failed attempt to produce suds. This is some really cheap-ass shit and is probably going to make your skin itch and rot, but hey, it’s cheap!

The brightness of this bottle would power all of Central Tampa

Haul your 3 huge bags of clothes, along with your plastic bucket of soap, borax and fabric softener out to the curb and call the cab company. The laundry across the street closed several months ago and I’ll be damned if I’m taking all this shit on a bus. Sit outside, waiting for the cab. Crap, winter has come to Tampa and it’s a bitch. It’s 55 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind is blowing like a mother. Wait inside and stare at the bags, daring one of the homeless guys to steal my shit.

Cab comes. Run outside and jump in cab. Trip over cane and fall and skin hand. Deduct 2 points. Damn. I’m on the minus side on this. Alex won’t left me do anything. Alex and Cab Guy load up bags and box/soap and off we go. It’s a 2-minute ride and plus tip, we spend about 8 bucks. We get all this crap unloaded and roughly sort it into towels, whites and colored/darks. Then, I proceed to put towels, colored/darks in 1 giant washer and whites in smaller washer. Why waste money? We get them all going and race next door to the Dollar Store!

I love the Dollar Store! 2 shirts, underwear for me, some slippers for JC, chocolate for Alex, cat food and cat treats, hair tiebacks I’ve been looking for, for forever and hair detangler, now that my hair is growing out. All for under 35 buckaroos. Yay. No laundry soap; we still have about 700 ounces of that other crap.

Okay, time to see if it’s time to dry. It is. We go to the washer to get the whites. The buggy is Alex’s responsibility. Apparently, my job is to get in the way. I manage to get my head wedged between the buggy, the washer door and the wall. Deduct 2 points. Alex is like, “why don’t you go sit down, Mary?” I persist in trying to “help.” Things don’t go well. At one point, I bonk my head on that metal bar of the buggy; hard enough to see stars, but I didn’t tell Alex. He would have told me to sit down. Deduct 2 points.

I wish I'd thought of this; it would have been a shiny, fun ride!

We got to fold the clothes as they came out of the dryer, so that was good. A couple of the guys who had been in the homeless shelter when I was there were there as well, so we caught up. They’re no longer homeless and they’re doing well. A win. Add 8 points!

I had a whole bunch of socks that matched nothing. Orphans, divorced, migrants; who knows? When I got home, oh lookie! Here they are stuffed down in the back of the closet, as if they were playing some weird sock hide-and-go-seek. Deduct 2 points. It's a draw.

Maybe it's some kind of sock Gulag.

Alex and I wheeled the stuff outside where it was like Siberia, still with the wind a-howling. We had already called the cab and talked to JC a couple of times. The damned Chinese restaurant across the street must have just cooked up a batch of their superb dumplings. We were just about to ditch the cab and get food to take home for the 3 of us, when it showed up. Boo! Deduct 0 points. It’s my game. This cab driver didn’t seem to know right from left but was friendly enough. Thank God our old laundry is opening under new management soon. This is a chore and an expensive one.  

The Mercy Curling Team

Just very quickly, because I’ll write more about this later, but on Hulu+ there’s an original series called “Little Mosque” that is in it’s 6^th season. I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating; I lived among a Muslim community in Dearborn, Michigan, by happy circumstance. This people on this show are very much like the people who were my neighbors. They were welcoming and friendly and curious about the ways of westerners, much as I was curious about their ways. If you ever get a chance to watch this show, I encourage you to do so. It’s very funny and revealing regarding relationships and friendships between Muslims, Christians and Jews.