Category Archives: Musings from the laundromat
Musings from the Laundromat: Moments, and how you can go home again
Checked the mail yesterday and came face to face, or rather, hood to face with a majestic peacock.
I hear him all the time and in 6 years, he’s eluded me.
We regarded each other for a moment or two, then I slowly drove around him to complete my task.
Those few moments though – kept a smile on my lips all the way home.
It is in the moments. I know that. I also know I forget sometimes.
Laundry lady just came all the way over to tell me the coffee was ready. The coffee she makes for me. There’s a moment.
Glaucoma man is here and has already chatted to me twice, excited to share his weekly news. Another moment.
These people who I share one day a week with who have made such a task as rising early on a Sunday to do chores a pleasure.
Another moment was turning on my ipad after stuffing the washing machines and being surprised by the fact that the WIFI is actually working today. (Obviously).
It hasn’t been working here for a while – to the point that I just stopped bringing my keyboard and pad. I didn’t get to tell you about my trip, which I had planned to do last weekend. I didn’t get to tell you how I successfully flew. Not just flew, but mustered the courage to peer out of the window.
I didn’t get to tell you how amazing it was to see my friends and marvel at the changes to a coast I used to call home.
They say “You can never go home.” But ‘they’ are wrong.
Because it felt like ‘home’ … From the moment I stepped off the plane and felt the immediate comfort and ease of hugging someone special.
It felt like home when I saw friends that I love, friends I hadn’t seen in over a decade. Held them tight – met children I had watched pregnancy announcements about and birth pictures on Facebook.
If felt like home on the water silently cruising the Elkhorn Slough thanks to my dear friend and Captain, Brian.
I laughed remembering how our dogs used to ‘escape’ our 3 and a half acres of romping room to seek out the slough mud – how my brothers and I had to fetch them and bring them back.
We always returned with the escapees excited and reeking of that mud, while we were exhausted climbing the final hill to home.
Home and memories.
And perhaps new beginnings.
I’m returning on the 22nd of this month. I overcame my fear of flying. And I want to make more memories. To treasure.
Musings from the Laundromat: Birthdays and Awnings edition
Laundry Lady: I don’t know what I’m going to do after work.
Me: Oh? Why?
Laundry Lady: It’s my birthday.
Me: Happy Birthday!!! I wish you had told me last week.
And I do. I would have brought her a card and flowers. She’s just so sweet that I still might have to. I can run by the shop after laundry and come back.
Laundry Lady: Well …
And a smile played across her face.
Me: I’m glad you were born.
Laundry Lady: Thank you
It’s almost like a little reunion here today … Guess who else had a birthday, 81st to be exact?
Glaucoma Man. He’s back.
And in true Glaucoma Man fashion, as soon as I started typing he stopped by to chat. His timing has always been impeccable.
He’s excited about a new trailer his sister bought him. One with an awning and, I quote: “I could even take a bubble bath if I wanted to, it has a tub!”
Me: Oh that’s exciting!
Glaucoma Man: My one now doesn’t even have a shower … I’ve been living like a bum.
I didn’t know that.
I assume the park that houses the trailers must have a communal bathing area though, because he’s always well-kept.
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It’s grey and drizzling outside – perfect for a lazy Sunday, but I’m sure as Laundry Lady looks out the window as she’s stuck at work on her birthday the grey might elicit a different feeling.
And for Glaucoma Man, while he doesn’t have a lazy Sunday ahead, I’m sure he’s grateful for the break in the heat so he can work on trying to start and move his 25 year old home that’s currently sporting a near flat tire.
I wonder also what the man to my right is thinking. He’s sat facing a washing machine and lost in thought.
Another man paces without a smile on his face. Another white-haired man is stood guarding his wash.
And I sit and see them all – and wish I knew what was going through their minds.
I’m lucky some of them feel they can open up and share with me. Because, really, I am a good ear and so very curious about people.
And what is it they think of me? I’m the girl in the corner typing. The girl with a faint smile on my lips as I anticipate my upcoming trip to the coast.
The girl who doesn’t speak much, but who is thinking of flowers and returning, of my old friend getting an awning and a tub.
Musings from the Laundromat: Shameless, Pokemon GO & Flight Fear edition.
“I missed you last week!”
That was nice to hear so early in the morning.
It came from my laundry lady. I explained that I had spent last Sunday in the midst of a Netflix binge.
I got hooked on Shameless (U.S. Version) and spent the entire weekend either watching that, or pausing it to speak on the phone with someone special.
Nothing was cleaned – and my son was out-of-town, so I felt pretty much zero guilt.
In fact, I didn’t even go grocery shopping the week and a half he was gone. (Great way to diet – the whole ‘cupboard is bare’ method.)
OK, so some of my hermit mode had to do with my increasingly annoying social anxiety.
We went yesterday and I still felt awkward ‘peopling’. Managed to do it though with him in tow.
Friday we also left the safety of my yard and hunted for Pokemon. Good thing one happened to be in the vacant lot across from us as the further we got from my home, the more anxious I became. The payoff was actually finding one and getting to ‘pet’ it for a photo.
Yes, I look awkward, no my legs don’t usually bend like that, but when your son is saying “lower, lower … Mom, lower”, you contort to facilitate such a photo op.
Back to anxiety.
So! I have an impending flight coming up next month sometime.
I say that so casually, though, even typing it has made my palms start to sweat a little.
I have a MORBID fear of heights – and an even worse fear of flying.
I have no idea how I’m going to make it ON the plane, let alone remain on it with any degree of sanity.
But it’s a worthwhile trip.
I have friends I haven’t seen in over 13 years and that someone I speak with on the phone will be at the airport to collect me.
What a great way to see each other after all this time. Me, shaking, pale, heart pounding, blurred vision. I suppose though, that’s how I would feel even if I wasn’t just on a metal cylindrical airborne object miles above the ground.
And what a great story it would be for the laundromat if I survive the trip no?
And now to finish the coffee I’ve given up, that my laundry lady STILL makes me … And finish the laundry so I can return to Shameless.
Musings from the laundromat: Change edition
“If you need change, I can’t give it to you.”
Apropos.
My laundry lady went on to say, “The girl last night locked the vault.”
Made me start thinking about how much I DO need change. And not the break a twenty kind.
But I’m working on that. Vaults be damned.
I guess this is kind of a change … Sure not ginger ale.
And, thanks to our recent monsoon shenanigans, there are all these fun plants wrapped around mundane objects, really found this beautiful.
So, there’s a couple of changes.
But not the ones I had in mind.
There comes a day when you wake up, look around you and realize, “I am approaching 50 and I haven’t much to look forward to.”
There comes a day when you wake up and repeat your day like a pattern and loathe it.
I’m there.
I have an unchecked lottery ticket in my purse. A dream of what my life could be and health issues I want mended.
I have a bonkers sense of hope, and a realistic feeling of being ‘stuck’.
Those things coupled become completely frustrating.
It’s like ticking off days on a calendar, only, it’s the countdown to the end.
So, what do I want to change, and how to go about it?
I’ll know more about that soon.
Mostly though, I stay in the moment and appreciate my life.
But I can’t keep doing my pattern forever. I need more for myself.
I am capable of change, and open to it.
Now I just need to check that lottery ticket I suppose.
Musings from the Laundromat: Looking Forward edition.
It’s a beautiful morning.
I showered, tended to my dog and less than half an hour I sit at my laundromat table with almost dry hair. Got to love the desert – nature’s hair dryer.
OK, sometimes I love the desert.
But there are many other times that I feel too far away from something or someone.
(Side note: I’ve yet to tell the laundry lady that I’ve stopped drinking coffee, and after her smile and our little chat she put on a pot for me.
How do I tell her I don’t want it when she only makes it for me?
I don’t. I will be having a cup. Because it makes her feel good to make it for me.)
______________________________
My head has been in the clouds for the past week or so. It’s been hard to focus on the things I used to focus on.
Which, is a good thing, because left to my own devices and imagination, I’m usually not walking down quaint pathways, but dead-end alleys in my head.
Negative ‘what if’s’ have been brightened to hopeful ones.
I’m looking forward instead of backward and that is also a good thing, because I’m not the most graceful of creatures and tend to trip up when I’m not focused on today or tomorrow, but rather, yesterday.
“Do you think it’s because we’re older? That we know what we want sooner?”
“Yes. We already know what works and what doesn’t in our lives. We’re more confident and have experiences to draw upon.”
A conversation I had with someone I love.
______________________________
And now I sit, sipping the coffee I’ve given up, and one of my favorite songs, Killer Queen, plays in the background on the radio.
And there is a faint smile on my lips as I type.
And there is a calmness in my heart.
And there is much on my mind – but I’ll keep that to myself – for now.
Debauchery Soup 