Wednesday is Wash Day

I've moved.  A lot.  I've lived in some really nice places and some far from memorable places.  Just over a year ago, I had a sizeable house in an upper-class neighborhood, with a husband, my darling daughter, my dog, cats, backyard chickens and other assorted animals depending on my daughter's whims.  It's all still very much alive in my mind.  And yet, it's all gone, and I doubt that I will have anything remotely like it again.

For now, it will suffice to say I've downsized.  As of two weeks ago, I live in a rented condo.  It's more like an apartment. It's definitely simplified living.  It's very comfortable, and it suits my needs and perhaps, more importantly, my budget.  It's not an upper-class neighborhood.  Quite the contrary. It is probably one of the more concentrated multi-family dwellings of ethnically and socio-economically diverse folks in this community.  There are undergraduate and graduate students, elderly, single, gay, white, latino, black, mixed, single-income, disability.  If it's possible in this community, it's probably in this particular complex. Well, except for white, married families.

And, overall, this is a good thing.  I feel that most of the time.  Sometimes, I have to repeat that to myself very loudly.

This blog will be a reflection of my experiences.

And today is Wednesday, and I think Wednesday will henceforth be wash day.  My unit does not have its own washer/dryer.  There is an on-site laundromat, but for some reason, I want to go to the nearest commercial laundromat.  I've never really minded laundromats.  They certainly concentrate the task of doing laundry.  I'm not sure if it's a cheaper or more environmentally-friendly option.  I have always appreciated that laundromats provided me the opportunity to mix with a segment of the population I rarely interacted with.  Except now I live with them, and I think they view me with more suspicion than I certainly feel for them.

It reminds me of a summer in high school when I traveled with 20 other kids and four chaperones from the San Francisco Bay area to Mendenhall, Mississippi.  We traveled by train to work in this racially-stressed community for a short-term missions trip.  At some point, we needed to do laundry, and so a small group of us collected dirty clothes for all two dozen of us and headed to the nearest laundromat.  This particular facility was clearly on the "black side" of town, and we were treated with jaunts from both sides.  It was a stark introduction to Southern racism for our affluent, white little troop.

Today, while waiting for my own laundry, I was working on my laptop, but stopped and got up to open the door to help an older woman out with her huge load of clean laundry. She looked surprised, and then, launched into a string of "thank you's." I simply replied, "I'm happy to help."