Hey - I got my way! i wanted a new template, and now, I have a new template. Please let me know about any problems or difficulties, including any mis-categorized links or if I neglected to bring anyone over from the Boring Blog.

I'm currently HUGELY grouchy. Despite my happy new template. I am doing laundry, around editing of the template and parenting teh children.

But the children are out of control. Out Of Control. No. OUT OF CONTROL. I was initially pleased that they were otherwise occupied while I was fussing with the blog. They were designing "binder covers" for their notebooks for school using some Microsoft program. Thing One seems to be quite apt at figuring out how to do funky things with minimal tools. Then, my sister was chatting with me via Google Talk, and mentioned that Thing Two had sent her a message on Sunday. So I told the girls that my sister was on line. So they went and chatted with her, but then they switched to the voice function on Google Talk, and I think that's when things started to get crazy. CRAZY.

Then I went down to the laundry room (on the trip that started the smoldering in my chest), and when I returned, they honestly were BOUNCING around the room. No, wait. FIrst they ran down stairs to the laundry room, 2 little streaks of voice and energy, "we sent you voice messages ...meep .... e-mail ..... phone .... sound" AGH! I came back to the apartment (still angry), and there was more hyperactivity, and EIGHT messages in my gmail box --- voice messages. Huh?

So I told them to brush their teeth and go to bed. But they wanted the chocolate I bought at Trader Joe's today with the promise of sharing after dinner. So they continued with their hyperactivity, including Thing Two's over use of "cooooooo-ellle!" (i.e., "cool" in a very annoying lilting way).

Finally, I got them toward bed, but only with the strictness kicked up a few notches - requirements of SILENCE and of room cleaning and grouchiness on my part.

Beloved, I believe, was laughing at me. He took a moment between the chocolate and the mommy grouchies to show them a leaf bug he temporarily captured for their viewing pleasure. It was very cool looking. They then let it go.

Now. the Laundry.

We have 16 units in this apartment. Several of them with kids residing within. I would say at least half of the apartments contain families.

there are two washers and two dryers. They are normal capacity. Sometimes, to say the least, it gets crowded down there.

tomorrow, THIS family is going away. We are going to friends' summer home in the Berkshires. I have not done laundry since, um, I was at my parents' house on August 5-6. Now, granted, the kids weren't back until the 12th, so it wasn't the laundry of 4 people that was mounting, but rather of two, and MY laundry was largely drycleaning. So it wasn't really so horrible. I'd say I had 6 loads to do.

While my clothes were in the washer, another mom had clothes in the dryer, but she'd overfilled her washers, and so she needed to do a second round in the dryer. No problem. She's very nice, we chatted while we waited for the machines to shift around, and all was pleasant. Someone else had come down, and put their clothes "in line" after mine.

My clothes went into the washer and started their cycle while the dryers (the ONLY TWO dryers) still had approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes left. The washers take 20 minutes.

When I went back down to just re-set my internal timer (i.e., I was soooo engrossed in copying links to my new template, I lost complete track of time), I found all my clothes had been taken from the washers and plopped on TOP of the dryers, which had approximately 40 minutes left on them. The washers were almost done - that other person's clothes. One pair of Thing Two's wet shorts were on the FLOOR of the laundry room.

WHY would someone do this? It is not going to get their laundry done any sooner. All they're doing is being RUDE. Unless they plan to go down there and stalk the machines so they can put their clothes in the dryer before mine, there's just NO POINT in taking my clothes out of the washers.

IF I was one of hte MANY people in this building who find it perfectly appropriate to put their clothes in the washer at 8 a.m., and then go upstairs, take a shower, load the kids into the stroller, walk to the library, walk to the grocery store, play at the park, and at some time around 3 p.m. come back to put their clothes in the dryer, I could UNDERSTAND my clothes being put on top of the washers. But this was not the case. I was not being negligent. I am NEVER negligent with my laundry. I KNOW that there are people waiting for me. I KNOW that we SHARE these appliances.

I came back upstairs and told Beloved (with a raised voice and a little bit too much passion) that the NEXT time we move, it will be to a place where we have our OWN machines, b/c I am SICK AND TIRED of RUDE people mussing with my clothes!!!

A few minutes later, the nice, responsible, considerate, respectful mom whose clothes were in the dryer knocked on my door to say, "come down in 10 minutes, my clothes are gonna be done early, and I'm afraid someone's trying to cut in front of you."

At least there are some nice people. grrrr. arggh.

posted by Zuska @ 9:19 PM

3 Comments:

At Wednesday, August 16, 2006 9:53:00 PM, E. McPan said…

I likey! It's so light. It feels kind of spring-ish, which is fine by me. I feel kind of minty after looking at it. I mean that in a good way.
At Thursday, August 17, 2006 11:46:00 AM, She says said…

Nice template! (never mind that the template you dissed is mine as well...! JK) It looks much more individual and "grown up" than the old one. I like it.

As for the laundry thing -- I complete agree. I've had the very competitive and rude experience of doing laundry in NYC laundrymats, and there are few things I get more anxious about than competing for dryers.

I had my own obnoxious laundry experience yesterday, but it involved the building maintenance people deciding to hose down (not just wash, but spray the hose) the laundry room. Every surface was wet, and the floor was covered with half an inch of icky water as they cleaned. I literally had to hold all of my laundry as I took it out of the dryer because there was no dry surface to put it on. No easy task. Good thing I only did two loads! And I couldn't wait until they were done cleaning lest I be faced with ironing (had interview clothes in there).

Anyway... BTW, where did you find the template?
At Thursday, August 17, 2006 3:31:00 PM, Anonymous said…

It's great!

On the laundry thing... very annoying and rude and all that. But is it possible that someone just wanted to wash, and was planning to line dry their stuff?

But still. >:(