someone else does my laundry and i hate it

Okay, doing laundry can be a pain, but I like it. I like the smells and the dryer sheets and the forced inaction while it whirls and the burying your face in the fresh warm clothes and the folding and the organizing. But I can't do it myself anymore.

Other people have done my laundry before, like Harris when I was really young and my mom for years. And in Rwanda I hired Epiphanie to do it because I did it once by hand in the bathtub and trust me, once by hand was enough. Ow.

Now I have been rendered incapable of doing my own laundry by the heaviness of the bag and the number of stairs and the length of the two blocks between here and the laundromat. My hands just hurt too much. I can't carry things in my hands like that. It kills the golf elbow.

(Speaking of which, I have completely neglected to post a photo of what my arm braces look like. It's coming, sometime soon. And it is NOT SEXY. Not at all. Do not expect anything exciting. I look, frankly, gimpy. And I can't do all the stuff in water aerobics because the arm exercises exacerbate the pain and this woman a few weeks ago looked at me with great sympathy and said, "Do you have a disability?" YES, obviously! I can't move my arms! I can't do my own laundry! But it's not always so obvious. I feel like a dork when, apparently perfectly healthy, I have to wait for the elevator at the airport because I can't carry my suitcase up the stairs. I always used to be the strong one bounding up the stairs. Stupid law school, breaking my nerves. Anyway.)

So I called a laundry place that does pickup and delivery and they came to pick it up Friday and I asked the guy when it would be back and he said "Tomorrow after four" and I believed him, naturally, so I made sure I was at home at four. But then it didn't come, so at about 5:15 I tried to call, only to discover that they close at 5 on Saturday and are closed Sunday. My clothes are held hostage at the laundromat until Monday. Not only that, but my school ID was in the pocket of my sweatshirt, so I have been begging profusely to get into things like the library, rather than just scanning the little plastic thing and buzzing on through. Lesson to self: do your own laundry. Except I can't. Really. Gimpy arms. You never realize how much you use your hands until you don't have them. Some days I try to use them and then they hurt so much that I want to gnaw them off above the elbows. Lovely visual image, I know.