Laundromat Magazines and Penthouse Suites

First you need to understand this town. We're small, very small and poor and backward. Perhaps backward is harsh, let's just say there's a pervasive and comfortable inertia that exists here. That's why I was so surprised to walk into our local laundromat and find all new and shiny computerized Maytag washers and dryers. It had been at least six years ago that I'd used this facility and back then it looked a scare, ragged carpet wherever there WAS carpet, dinge and grime enveloped you the minute you entered-- to the point you felt like wearing plastic grocery bags on your feet the whole time you had to be there--which was LONG because the dryers pretty much charged you a fortune for cool air--but you just knew there wasn't enough bleach in your arsenal to combat the military of germs that had set up their base there.

So, here we are, near the end of 2006, some six or seven years later, and our circumstances have brought about the need to once again do our laundry at the laundromat. I'm happy to say that the improvements made on the place (some inertia break-through has occured) make it a lot more pleasant place to perform the task of keeping our clothing in a somewhat clean state. So, anyway, yesterday was laundry day and I didn't bring any reading material with me. I mean it's hard enough to get all the quarters, detergent, wet bleach, dry bleach, dryer sheets, hangers, plastic bags, purse, water bottle (I get so thirsty in there!) plus all the trash bags of dirty clothes together that I ended up cussing 'Shit, I forgot to bring a book with me'. So I pick up this magazine (there's a vast array of all sorts of churchy or religious pamphlets and magazines to chose from) called "The Liguorian", http://www.liguorian.org/ which says it is 'The Catholic Compass in a Changing World'. Well, I thumbed through it, read an article or two, read a fiction piece, and I have to say, I was quite impressed with the quality of the magazine on the whole.

I don't know what that has to do with the price of petrol or stopping the war in Iraq, but I guess that's what this particular blog is about, just reports on whatever inane or far-out, either one, stuff I run into during the course of my consecutive days breathing on this planet. And I just figured it was time for a new blog entry.

So what else to say? God, sometimes life is strange. We're moved into the top portion of this old building we own on Main Street. I've taken to calling it the Penthouse Suite, and it couldn't be farther from that at the moment. In time we hope to fix it up all nice and modern and sleek and smart, but right now it closely resembles a NYC tenantment slum (minus the fire escapes) or a floor out of The Projects in Chicago. We've owned the building for a few years but had lived elsewhere, in a rental house that was fairly comfortable, but to save money we've decided to install ourselves on the upper floor of our fairly dilapidated building. Half of the 5000 sq feet, the downstairs, is zoned 'commercial', where we have had our businesses going all along, and the upstairs half is zoned 'residential'. Well now it has residents. John and me and our three cats, Ozzy, Sparky and the new feline family member, a kitten named Mojo. We're actually only living in the last third of the top floor, for now, because the windows in the front need major repair/replacement and trying to heat all of it in the winter would be ridiculous, so we've cordoned off what I'm guessing amounts to about 750 sq feet, 3 rooms, plus we've temporarily walled in a closet-sized hallway bathroom, which makes it a total of 4 rooms.

So we do have walls and windows (they'll need to be weather-proofed come winter) and we have a sub-floor that I've put a couple rugs down on, and we have a toilet that flushes, a tiny shower (only cold water right now--and we tried taking a shower in it but it was TOO cold for me) and a bathroom sink. We ripped up the nasty, skanky carpet that was in that bathroom and now we have this layer of foam from the underside of the carpet that even acetone and scrapeing isn't taking up too well, but we chink away at the hard cement-like layer so we can put down some tile--right now it looks like wonderboard or white plywood plastered with this stubborn layer of cement. We have electricity and our refrigerator is plugged in and working fine, but the oven/stove can't work until we run a 220 line. We have cable t.v., computers on DSL, so that's very good, and we have running water, just not running "hot" water, but John thinks he may have that going by this weekend. I hope so. To be able to take a hot shower at home will be nice. For the last few weeks we've taken our showers down at the Acorn (truckstop) or at family members' homes, and as I already reported, we do our laundry at the local laundromat.

Last night I boiled a dozen eggs in the crockpot. Worked like a charm. We'll have fish sticks tonight, cooked in our little stand alone convection oven. We're doing allright. This weekend the projects are getting some hot water going to the shower and putting down that cheap stick on tile on the bathroom floor. This bathroom is temporary so I don't care if the tile is good--just clean. We'll be renovating (who knows when exactly) a decent sized room in the middle of the floor to someday be our real bathroom and laundry room. We've totally designed our tricked out future Loft/Penthouse suite, now to be able to turn that design into a reality. I expect it will take 3 years looking at our income. One good thing for John...NO YARDWORK...not that he did much of it before because he hates it so much.

So, Home Sweet Home is a little less than sweet, but we have lived in much worse conditions and trite but true, we have our health--for which I never cease to be grateful.