Four Loads and a Very Good Reason to Go to Bed Early

My neighbor's washing machine died on Friday. She mentioned it in passing, the way people mention things when they're not actually asking for help, and I said 'I can help you haul it downstairs Sunday' before I'd really finished the thought. That's the whole origin story.

Sunday came. It was four loads. Her kid had a lot of small socks. I'm not complaining about the small socks, they were genuinely cute, little ones with cartoon characters on them, but I am noting, for the record, that four loads is a lot when you're working with two coin-op machines that run on quarters and take forty minutes each. I was down there from noon until almost four. I folded things on the laminate table and listened to the dryer hum and thought about absolutely nothing, which was maybe the most restful part of the whole week.

Sunday in the laundry room.

The part I keep thinking about is the walk down the hallway with the last basket.

Trip three of four.

I was tired in the specific way you get tired when you've been helpful for a long time, not bad-tired, just fully used-up in a satisfying way. She made me take a piece of pumpkin bread home, the kind with the crinkly sugar on top, and I ate it standing at my kitchen counter at four fifteen in the afternoon and it was maybe one of the better things I've eaten this month.

I've been thinking a lot lately, the gap year stuff, the blog stuff, the general October brain fog that sets in around the third week, and none of that thinking went anywhere useful this week. But four loads of laundry? That went somewhere. Sometimes that's the thing.