The cleansing of the laundry should not be attempted as I am, but it must be done. I’ve let it go too long, and if not now, never. So down the stairs to the room with the machines, down the stairs I go. I end up at the sole laundering space in my house, an area that’s shared with a couple of other suites. As can occur, especially on a Sunday, there is someone else’s dried laundry in the dryer and someone else’s wet clothes in the washer, both cycles complete. Neither of the loads has an accompanying basket, other than my own, which is full of dirty clothes ready to be washed. Also, there are no decent surfaces besides the machines themselves. So I move the dry clothes to the top of the front-loading dryer where they just were, while putting the wet ones in the top-loading washer into the dryer, so that I am able to put mine in the washing machine. This whole process should go smoothly, if everyone involved is paying attention to their cycles. But that is rarely the case. When I come down an hour later to do the switch-over for my clothes, both other loads are still there, just as I’d left them.
It takes me an extended period of time and a significant amount of brain power successfully to make the swap, considering I neglectfully brought my basket back upstairs an hour previous. I have constructed my own puzzle, inserting myself into the role of farmer, trying to get the fox and the rabbit and the lettuce across the river. I have no idea how the movements are to go, but I must try. Eventually I put all my clothes onto the open dryer door before closing the washer lid and moving the other person’s dryer clothes there. But socks are flying everywhere, I keep dropping pieces of clothing, it’s all getting all mixed up Pete Tong-style, and I can’t figure out who owns what based on dampness alone. At once, the lights go out, the bills unpaid. I grab what I can, owner irrelevant. Another challenge failed, I trudge upwards, each step reinforcing my inability to learn the things I already know.
