While Tony slaved away at 14-hour days at his company's conference in San Francisco, I decided to surprise him by doing the laundry. All of it. At the same time.
Understand, we have a washer-dryer in our penthouse urban paradise. It's small, meaning that I have to wash the bedclothes one sheet at a time, and so slow that a full cycle of regular clothing can take up to two and a half hours and still be damp at the end. The fact that this sort of arrangement is ubiquitous in Europe (at least according to our landlord) is small comfort. Though we manage to keep up well enough with our day to day needs, you can imagine how the nonessentials pile up. Add to that the magnificent wedding shower gift of new sheets and towels, and our situation had become dire.
So I rented a station wagon (!!!) from Zipcar and threw ginormous bundles of laundry down the stairwell. Linus, who had already suffered through the trauma of Tony's 4am departure, was convinced that I was packing up and leaving him forever and began a howling fit commensurate to his grief. (Nothing in this life is always sunshine and puppydogs. Not even puppydogs.)
It took 4 giant washing machines, three and a half hours, and one emergency trip to the ATM, but we finally have clean sheets again. Sometimes the suburban life is very appealing.
(Ed.: Sorry for the repost. Mobile uploading didn't go as I planned)
