Yesterday I finally went to wash my bedding. I've been meaning to take my comforter, quilt, blanket and mattress pad to the laundromat for months and months (Sam spilled a vanilla latte on the quilt an embarrassingly long time ago, and I'd only spot-cleaned it in a half-hearted way). Our home washer and dryer are very very small, so even twin blankets, etc., don't fit. I'd only been in a laundromat once before, I think, and I hadn't liked it, and was dreading this whole thing. I brought five dollar bills because I had heard that there was a change machine, but when I got there I couldn't figure out how to make it work and there wasn't an attendant. There were a couple of ladies there, but they only spoke Spanish. I walked around the local businesses, trying to get enough quarters, but finally had to drive to the bank. I was really mad that this had happened to me, and upset that after I'd been virtuous enough to go the laundromat, my virtue hadn't been rewarded but rather, even more effort had been required. But I got the quarters easily and deposited a check that I should've taken care of earlier. I got back to the laundromat, plugged my quarters, soap, and bedding in, and started to become aware of how lovely and peaceful the place was. The washers were big, pretty stainless steel front-loading ones, with glass doors, so I could watch my blankets swish around (I had four machines in a row running). There were just a couple of hispanic ladies there, with some very well-behaved children. It was very quiet, and the sun flooded through the glass walls (it was in an old-fashioned strip mall with the glass front wall, and I think part of a glass back wall). There'd been a variety of things that I hadn't really noticed or understood, but as I sat and watched the other people, I saw how the things worked. There were wheeled laundry carts at the exact right height for the washers, and they had tall bars so that you could push them standing up (the wheels ran very smoothly, too, which was delightful). There was a bar across the top that you could throw laundry over. There was also an old wrought iron and dark yellow/light avacado colored laundry table, nice and clean and big and easy to fold laundry on. The chairs faced the dryers, so I had to twist around and look over my shoulder to watch the laundry in the washer, which I regretted until I switched my blankets to the dryers. These were really big, and stacked two high, with glass fronts. I filled a 2 by 2 square of them. Then I sat down, and alternated between reading bits of my book and watching the bedding in the dryers. Blankets in really big dryers are remarkably soothing to watch. Each blanket tumbled in a different way which seemed to express its particular personality. I ended up watching and musing almost the whole time, and time seemed to slow down or not exist the way that it does when you homeschool and have no particular schedule that forces you to over- and under-value time and regret that the present is not the past or the future. I left with a strong feeling of wanting to return soon, and delight that it had all happened. While the idyll lasted I could see that I'd been a spoiled princess over the quarters, but that it was okay--I didn't have to be a spoiled princess now.
I came back to regular life tired and did a bunch of house-work and became ubertired, so I lost a lot of the peaceful delight, but I know I can go back to it--if not in reality, then in memory.
