The Laundry Room Shuffle

Here we are a traveling and experiencing something that we are blessed to not have to do in our regular life. Share a public laundry-room. Even now, we are blessed that we have the option of using this facility without having to pay for the washing and drying itself, save for the detergent. I am witnessing an interesting phenomena. The leavers and the stayers. I am a stayer and I am glad to be. When I came into the laundry room, there were no people in here, however 2 of the 4 washing machines were in use. When I say “in use” I mean one of them is broken and the other has someone’s abandoned laundry in it. Seeing as how there was no one else, I grabbed up the remaining 2 washing machines and got started on my vigil. Then enters Chatty McChatterson (whom I have given this name because I cannot remember how she introduced herself to me but I AM enjoying her company) and finds that there are no available machines. This is where I insert a ‘facebook quiz’ type question. Are you a person who, empties the machine of abandoned clothes and refills it with your own, leaving the wet clothes in a pile on the next machine over? Or do you check the time and come back in a little while to see if the machine has been cleared? Or do you give up all together and go back to your room with your dirty chonies? I won’t ask you all the random facebook questions to determine your answer to this survery such as, “What color is your hair?” “Where did you attend school?” and “Do you like green tea or black tea?” I’ll just leave you to answer the direct questions. Mrs. McChatterson is a ‘take the wet clothes out and pile them onto the neighboring machine’. I am a ‘come back and check in a little while’ (in the wet department that is). So this is what she did. That was over an hour ago, and the pile has since been moved to another neighboring machine and still sits abandoned. Now, my first load wash finished and I was able to snag a free dryer and start another load of wash in the machine I freed up. When my second load of wash finished, it was my turn to decide. Dryers are a wee bit different. Do you, empty the dryer onto a neighboring machine and leave the clothes to get into a wrinkly pile? What if they are still damp? Do you remove the dry clothes, get your load in and then fold the abandoned clothes and leave them neatly on top of said machine? It was my turn to have to make this decision. Thankfully, the clothes in the dryer I wanted were all–the-way dry, and they had been there over an hour taking up valuable dryer space. So I pulled them out, put mine in, and folded the abandoned clothes neatly on top of the machine. When Chatty’s washing machine was finished, she set about finding herself a dryer. And once again, here is one stopped for at least 30 minutes. She claimed it. She talked about it first of course, “oh the people are probably going to be upset about this, but they’ve been done….” She took this particular pile of clothes and put them on a folding ledge or something for the person to come and claim when they decided they cared about their laundry. Well, Mrs. I-only-care-about-my-own-dirty-chonies came in to find her pile of abandoned dryer clothes sitting on the ledge and she was none too happy. Chatty McChatterson says to Dirty Chonies, “Oh – they had been finished for some time, so I put them up there.” Dirty Chonies was clearly unhappy about this situation, “Are they even DRY??” Chatty responded, “MMhm.” And then, “Are they still damp? I will remove my stuff so you can put them back in. It’s just that all the machines were full…” Ms. Chonies actually made Chatty empty her things out of the dryer so she could put hers back in. And she didn’t even say thank you. Then later she even suggested that there are OTHER laundry rooms here. Yes there are 5 laundry rooms in this building of lodging which houses at least 100 rooms. FAMILY rooms. I am learning that it is not my job to always correct people who are clearly (in my opinion) in the wrong. Dirty Chonies is being much more diligent about her laundry (to include throwing some of her clothes in MY DRYER WITH MY CLOTHES) (They are gone now.) However she is still being unbelievably rude to poor Chatty McChatterson. Tell me this, when you are utilizing a community, free, laundry facility – do you have the right to monotonize the machines while not tending to them??

DIY - Why?

The next time you have the inclination to Do It Yourself, throw out your palm and yell, "Get thee behind me Satan!!" Just kidding. If Satan wants to help you lay tile - you should let him. He's probably better at it than you. Nah. Just kidding. But seriously. We wives at home were discussing what we were going to do when our men came home from war. One said, "We're going to Greece." One said, "We're going Mexico." I said, "We're going to Lowe's." And THAT my friends is what we did. No cruising for us. Unless you count cruising the aisles of the local Lowe's with the big blue cart. The possibilities are endless and the sites are different around every corner. Some day I'd like to take my camera there just so you can experience the beauty of it with me. Trying to order kitchen cabinets with your man fresh back from war - not the best activity. However, if you get smart and send him to oogle tools while YOU work out the cabinets. Now THAT's inspired. So - poor Suzanne has been looking for something new to read and here it is. Hubby returned on Saturday. Sunday we attended both services at church and hubby was honored. At first service our 12 year old daughter sang, "I'm Proud To Be An American". *sniff* Monday evening, many many women descended upon our home. Hubby took the kids out to dinner and a movie, and I had the entire western hemisphere over for dinner. Minus the men. The funnest part of the night - in my opinion - was when we had about 14 women and 2 toddlers crammed into my dining room, and our incoming president banged the cowbell and yelled, "Musical Chairs! Time to pick up your plates and find a new seat." I stood in the doorway and laughed HARD and took pictures. Who knew she would actually MAKE them move when I suggested it flippantly??

The timing of my husband's return happened to coincide with the week that our local chapter of PWOC was having a trainer in to train us on next year's theme and how to lead women. Our trainer Melinda is a good friend of mine who was stationed here a few years ago (and got to leave) and is also a blogging maniac - you've read her stuff before here. She blogged about her time here which is really cool, cause that means I am free to fast forward. Anyway, she stayed with us while she was here and we had a great time! I titled the time - Driving Miss Melinda. That was good junk. On Wednesday morning, I had the Praise Team over for one last hurrah. My husband grilled up steaks and other delicious meats - and once again - the Western Hemisphere was here. There were SIXTEEN children here! And do you know, that is not ALL of our children?? Lordy Mercy. Anyway, this was a wonderful time for us to be together. I gave them the appreciation gifts I had worked on for them and we sang a few songs too. Including the new PWOC theme song - THE MORE I SEEK YOU (I'll post the video later). It was really cool to have Melinda add another beautiful tenor sound to our group. I also received a couple of special gifts. Then it was time to send the team on their various ways, and to send Melinda back on home. We sang together our farewell song THE LORD BLESS YOU AND KEEP YOU. I'll try to post the video of that sometime too. After dinner - the demolition started! And we have been going non-stop (well, except to shop) ever since. I will probably be scarce for a while still as the projects that we are working on, we are trying to complete before my husband has to go back to work on the 9th. These include - completely re-doing the laundry room. Tiling and wall re-configuration in the music/craft room. Completely and I mean COMPLETELY re-doing the kitchen. This will be the final goodbye to the 70's faux brick flooring. The last vestiges of it will be replaced with ceramic tile. All clean and bright and simple. Ahhh. Here's a sampling of the work thus far. OF COURSE I will be doing collages when the dust clears and the man is away. Until then ~ think twice about DIY. I'm kidding. It's FUN! Okay - I'm half kidding.