Melina: On my way home

Ma always taught me to clean my room before I leave for a trip. So that's my project for tonight. I had a laundry emergency, which is to say I procrastinated doing my own laundry until it was too late, and I had to pay for my friendly local laundromat to do the laundry for me. I won't tell you how much it costs to get this done, but on the bright side, they fold each item of clothing into a perfect rectangle, and then compact the rectangles together into a perfect cube for you to carry home.

The young guys who work there are not necessarily so thrilled about the work, but they do take obvious pride in how perfect and compact they can make their laundry cubes. They have taken the process that you or I might call "putting the laundry into a plastic bag" and transformed it into something more like "manual shrinkwrapping." I sometimes see an older one inducting a younger one into the fine art - pointing out some errant sleeve or demonstrating his exact strategy for squishing the cube as tightly as possible.

Because when your clothes are folded very tiny, they fit better into your very tiny closet.

Sigh.

--Melina

P.S. My dad is having Thanksgiving at the beach. It's going to be great, but I better not be the one riding three hours in the car with a raw turkey in my lap (though I'm sure the dog would be happy to volunteer for the job).

P.P.S. Mom, you took down those trip wires, right? You know the ones I'm talking about.

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