Aimster Struggles With Her Laundry

Let me begin by saying that I am well aware that I have failed in the keeping of this blog.  With all honesty, I expected no less of myself.  Or perhaps I should say I expected no more of myself.  I have never been one for keeping up with writing.  My childhood bedroom is filled with dozens of notebooks that are the beginnings of hundreds of novels.  Rarely did I make it past the first chapter.

But, dear reader, you deserve better.  I have not stopped having adventures, nor have I stopped being Aimster.  In fact, more people call me Aimster now than when I began this blog.  So I really have no good reason to stop documenting said adventures.  And tonight, an incident so ridiculous befell my personhood that I felt I had no choice but to do what I always do when something embarrassing happens to me and share it with the world.  God bless the Interweb.

As most of you reading this probably already know, I went to the most excellent University of Southern California.  Tomorrow is game day.  And that is where my story begins.

I have but two USC shirts and one of them is currently on loan to a dear friend who needed to wear it to UCLA on college spirit day.  I was overjoyed to help with such a noble endeavor.  My other USC shirt was still dirty from the last game I attended.  And tomorrow I'm headed back to the beloved Coliseum, so I needed to wash that sucker.  Hence, upon coming home from work I headed into the laundry room of my apartment.

Here's where the fun starts.  On the door of the laundry room there was a sign that said, "Wet Floor".  I walked in very carefully, as I have a great penchant for slipping on the driest of floors, so a wet floor is more dangerous to my feet than a spindle is to Sleeping Beauty's finger (side note:  I am totally watching that movie while I write this - love me some Disney).  Strangely, the floor was not really wet at all.

I went to the laundry machines.  One of them has been out of order for some time now.  It has a note that read:

The next one also had a note:

The final machine too had a note.  It read as follows:

Great, I thought.  This machine only might be broken.  I will just use this one.  So I loaded my clothes and poured a nice dose of detergent on top.  I put in my three shiny quarters and pushed in the coin slot.  And that's when the real trouble ensued:  nothing happened.

Puzzled, I looked closer upon the machine.  And then I realized:  it wasn't even plugged in.  At this point I felt I had two options:  1) Plug in the machine and risk the wrath of my building if it leaks all over.  2) Not use the machine.  Thinking that I wasn't sure how a broken washing machine might affect my precious clothes, I felt it safer to stop.

But then another dilemma arose.  Half of my clothes were now covered in detergent.  I had to get that stuff out.  But how?

So I traversed back upstairs to my apartment and retrieved a plastic bag.  I put all the detergent-soaked clothes inside and headed to my shower.  The idea seemed simple at first.  I only had to rinse out the detergent spots in the stream of the shower.

If only things had stayed that easy.

To begin with, when I aimed the shower head at the detergent ridden areas of clothing, the water preferred to rebound back in powerful little spurts that sent mini storms of water all over my bathroom.  I was getting water everywhere.  Furthermore, although the water stream was strong enough to bounce aplenty, it didn't seem to be penetrating my clothing enough to really get the detergent out.  It was time to change tactics.  I put in the drain plug and ran the bathwater.  Everything seemed to be going quite nicely in the tub.  The water was soapy and grossly dark.  I began to ponder how dirty a creature I am.  I did sweat a lot at that last USC game.

I now realized that washing my clothes in the bath was quite like taking a bath.  Everything is getting rinsed, but everything is also sitting in its own filth.  I could see no solution other than using the shower again to rinse out the soapy water.  Only this time something would have to be different.

I stripped off all my clothes; tied my hair into a bun; retrieved some string, scissors, and hangers; and hopped in the shower with my sopping wet clothes.  I tied one end of the string to the shower head pipe.  But there was no good place to tie the other end.  I finally settled on the rack Orongejello and I hang our towels upon.  It's supposed to be an over-the-door rack, but instead we have it perched upon a bar that the last tenant used for a shower curtain, even though our shower has two glass doors and doesn't need a curtain at all.  I put some hangers on the string and was all set.  I started retrieving pieces of clothing off the floor of the tub.  The shower was running on cold, full blast.  I soaked every piece of clothing through and through.  I hung each item on my makeshift clothing line as I went along.

So here's a jolly fun fact.  When clothes get wet, they get heavy.  I am pretty sure my cozy little cardigan, after being soaked more than a kiddo in the front row a of Shamu's splash zone, weighed a good hundred pounds.  So the more clothes I added to my clothing line, the slacker it got, until finally the over-the-door towel bar couldn't hold the weight any more and took a dramatic slide that also pulled the shower door shut.

In case this situation doesn't seem absurd enough to you, please remind yourself that I am standing, naked in my shower, hair in a sloppy bun, holding a million pound cardigan, trying not to get tangled in a piece of string haphazardly hanging over my sloppy bun, attempting to not really get hit by any water because it's cold, yet thrusting my hands into the water to rinse the billion pound cardigan, while my shower door slams shut on me and my clothesline takes a dramatic plunge towards the depths of the tub basin.  Oh, and the shower door hits my head on its journey forward.  Thankfully, it really only grazed the side.

Have I mentioned that my skin doesn't really seem to like straight up detergent and is turning bright red in glorious patches?

And did you forget that I am washing my clothes in the shower, all because some stupid apartment manager doesn't seem to know how to make an actual "Out of Order" sign?

Well, joke's on you, apartment manger, because I used a crapload of water getting my clothes cleaned and our utility bill doesn't include that.

Here's some pictures of my clothes hanger, just for fun:

That about sums up most of this (mis)adventure.  Luckily the driers aren't broken so I was able to dry my clothes in a 21st century manner (who knows how long it takes a trillion pound cardigan to dry on its own).  The last little detail:  I wanted to type this up on the couch, but Orongejello was away with both his laptops, so I typed this entire tale on my 1960's cursive typewriter.  Now I just have to transcode it (which I have, since you're reading it).

Fight On!
Aimster