The Amazing Adventures of Cancer Boy at the Laundry

There are easily established facts about laundries. They are:

1. No business has more signs in it than a laundry;
2. No business with signs will have more with dire warnings on them than a laundry;
3. No laundry is ever empty;
4. Laundries are trashy;
5. Carrying your clothing to be washed into a laundry in a black trash bag is trashy;
6. No one is happy to be in a laundry--if they are happy, they are high.

Today, Charles left for San Jose where there's a meeting of the the Music Library Association. This is the annual meeting that I've been to a few times, and I'm sorry to miss this one. I'll won't have the traditional Ethiopian dinner with the kids I've seen for years at these events, though doing so this year would mean carrying a food processor into Little Abyssinia or whatever this year's name is and turning wat into tube-friendly glop.

I'm unsupervised for the first time as Cancer Boy--Scott won't be here until Thursday night. Yes! It's Party and Bullshit time! No? It's laundry time.

I'm parsing out some chores, none of which I find particularly pleasant to do, knowing that I have limited strength and endurance to accomplish the list. I have to not do piece work, but piece meal work through the stuff to be done--clean the shower, sort through the refrigerator, laundry, dog pie patrol, carpet cleaning--trust me, I won't get to half of it, and at a certain point I'll just laugh when I think I even have a list. But today, I'm at the laundry. And it's trashy.

I'm already tired. But in order to know where your stamina begins and ends, you have to engage it and find out. I usually don't do laundry--I made that Charles' problem because I loathe it so much. Most other housework is goal oriented--you wipe, it looks better. You spray, it smells better. Only laundry requires the use of a filthy public accommodation filled with crackheads who have TONS of t-shirts and 3 pair of pants. Only laundry--in public at least--smells so whorey, so Gain Gross, so uniquely chemical flower vomit.

I'm cycling through bedding new and old, some odd pieces that don't get done on a weekly basis, some misgivings from the foul rag and bone shop of my heart. First of them--someone will notice that I look like a camel (I do. I look a lot like the cartoon camel that tells little kids how cool those cigarettes are). I worry that I'll pass out while watching some dude shove tighty whiteys in the same machine as over-dyed black jeans. That today will be the day when my now semi-annual bowel movement demands to start--at the laundry.

I don't even want to wash clothes here, I'm certainly not doing the squat anywhere around here.

Why am I really here? Is it just to slam on trash (yes) and hate on dumb (yes)--well, actually, no. I'm here because I'm out of the house, doing something a normal guy might do were he off on a Monday. I'm remembering that there's normal to get back to by being it, not thinking of it like a far distant country I once visited. This time next Monday I'll be, probably, midway through the biggest surgery I hope I ever need. Normal means I'm facing it, scared of it, but wanting it to work in the worst possible way.

And normal means laundry.