Well, it's been both a pleasant and a productive Saturday. Besides swimming laps up at SPAC (yes, the walk all the way up and back is a hassle, but I'm quite pleased that I've finally found a form of exercise that agrees with me), doing dishes and straightening up,
finally getting the books up on Half.com that I'd been meaning to list for a while, and trying and succeeding at cooking myself a salmon dinner (they've got frozen salmon steaks at Whole Foods that are actually reasonably priced!), I finally got a load of laundry done.
That's not as easy as it may sound. The building I'm in this summer doesn't have laundry machines, and it's not like there's a laundromat easily accessible in downtown Evanston, at least not one I know of. I don't know anyone who lives close enough who has laundry in their building I might use. I was going to go with my roommate and do laundry in her friend's apartment building two weekends ago, but somehow it never came to pass. Then, I had the brilliant idea to simply bring my laundry up to 2026 Maple, let myself into the basement, and do it there.
However, I was too busy last weekend to get laundry done, and so by this past week, I was down to the very last pieces of clothing I could get my hands on, and doing a wash became desperate. Luckily, Saturday finally arrived, and so I stuck my laundry bag into a suitcase, grabbed a good book, and wheeled it 12 minutes away to good old 2026.
It was only after I had put the clothes in the washer and poured in my sample single-load packet of detergent that I tried to start the wash-- and
it wouldn't work. I panicked, checked all the settings. They all seemed to be fine. "Pull to start, push to stop." I pulled and pushed and pushed and pulled on the dial. The pointer on the dial was pointing directly at the "Cycle Over" indicator. I tried to turn it to the beginning of the cycle. It clicked as though it were moving, but the arrow pointed at the same spot.
Is it just the arrow that's defective? I thought. Push, pull. Nope. I threw all of my strength into pushing and turning, climbing to sit on top of the washer to get better leverage. The arrow stubbornly refused to budge. What could I do? My dirty, detergent-covered laundry was sitting in the washer, and I had no idea where I could bring it, and I
needed these clothes. And furthermore, this seemed to indicate that we would have no working washing machine in our building all year next year. This sucked!
It was at this point that I suddenly, in frustration, tried to turn the dial clockwise. It merrily spun around to the proper setting, and when I pulled, I heard the familiar sound of water pouring in as the washer began to do its work. I stared at the washing machine for a while, and tried to come to terms with the fact that because you turn the dial on the washer at home counter-clockwise, it had taken me 10 minutes of frustration to even think of trying the other direction.
Then I sat down in the basement, pulled out
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn(which I am loving so far), and rested from my ordeal.
