I really don't mind most of it. And I really like the place we're in now. We're upstairs in a unit of four total, so there's an unmarried (I think divorced?) guy below us; occasionally his teenaged son visits. The other upstairs is a widower in his 70s, who is very nice and always says hi when he sees us walking out to our cars. And below him is a young mom with a little girl maybe a year and a half old. Sometimes the baby cries, sometimes the young mom's friends come over and smoke out on the back porch and we can smell it through our open window. Sometimes the widower sits on his back porch and talks for hours to a friend or relative that's come to visit. Mr. Downstairs is pretty quiet, though very polite. And his teenaged son is very nice too, always says hi when he sees us and doesn't play any loud music or anything. We have perfectly decent neighbours, and if we can occasionally hear Mr. Next Door vacuuming, or Young Mom yakking on her cell phone outside at 11pm, oh well.
One part of apartment living I will not miss when we eventually get our own place, however, is sharing a laundry room. We have one washer and dryer for the four of us, which really isn't bad. The place we were at before this had two washers and two dryers for 18 units in the building, which was pretty obnoxious, especially since one dryer was broken half the time. But here, it's rare that someone's doing laundry when I get ready to do it.
However, a few days ago I really had to wash a few things before I went to work in the afternoon, but Young Mom was doing laundry. No problem, I still had a few hours. I checked back in half an hour and her clothes were done in the washer but still in it. So what did I do? I unloaded all the wet clothes and set them on top of the dryer, then loaded all my own stuff in. Not very many people get to say they've had the experience of handling their neighbours' underwear, but I can now say I have had that privilege. Her boyfriend's underwear, her bras, as well as a bunch of shirts and baby clothes. At least they were clean.
Next time I come back in the laundry room, my wet stuff is sitting on top of the dryer and hers is in it, and she's loaded another bunch of laundry into the washer. It's fair now, since she's taken out my clean bed sheets as well as my underwear and Matt's. Okay. So I come back in ten minutes or so and her stuff's out of the dryer. I put mine in, and even wave to her as she pulls back into her parking space behind the building; apparently she's run out to the store or something for a minute. I feel so close to her now that we've handled each others' unmentionables. *Sigh*
Oh, and Carrington? I'd like a large iced chai latte, I think. :) How about Monday the 4th of August, when I'm back from the Ren faire?
2 comments:
Living in a dorm and then apartments, I must say that I truly truly am greedy when it comes to laundry. I want my own washer and dryer and do my clothes whenever I want to. Last spring semester, I waited a whole day for some damn idiot to get this freaking clothes out of the washer. It was so annoying and time consuming to keep coming down to check if he had moved his clothes only to find out that he hadn't. Arrrgg!
Well, at least you're both polite about moving the laundry!
The semester I was in a dorm, our building didn't have washers or dryers (since it was scheduled for demolition and all), and we had to use the ones at the building next to us. Kind of inconvenient, but not a big deal. But there were a lot of people in that building, and not enough washers and dryers, much less for the extra 20 people living in our building. So people would just take your stuff out of the washer or dryer before it was done, leave it sopping wet on top of the machine, and put their stuff in instead! Like, really, just interrupt the middle of the cycle. Isn't that crazy?? At least they weren't coin-operated or anything, so it didn't cost extra to have to start all over, except in time.
So, yeah. I've gotten to handle all sorts of people's intimates, but I tried very hard to stick around the laundry room the whole time I was washing to make sure that no one handled mine!
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