1:42 pm | 21 July 2003 | DO NOT TWIST OR WRING

I'm going to be a horrible ingrate now and bitch about my mother doing my laundry.

(Holds up hand) I know--i should stop right here. The fact that my mother seems to delight in doing my laundry when i come home for a visit is a privilege, an honor, and just real, real nice. But the niceness of it all is severely impaired since my mother seems to suffer from some weird kind of dyslexia--upon checking the tag that says LINE DRY ONLY, she apparently reads the words BY ALL MEANS, PUT THIS IN THE HELL-HOT DRYER, MARGE, and does accordingly. For real. When i get jeans back from my mom--despite repeated beggings & pleadings to not dry them AT ALL--they have to all be broken in/stretched out again by means of the wonky cowboy walk, swinging legs out too widely and squatting once in a while, like a mating dance for retarded sailors.

"But why don't you just do it yourself?" you may be thinking. I'd like to, but the woman is insane. I go home, unload the clothes, sort them (sorta--i'm lazy) and put a load in the washer, smiling beatifically as i settle down in front of the television for a weekend of slacking. I figure a wash cycle takes around 20 minutes, right? I'll just check the load after this episode of Trading Spaces. But: NO. At every opportunity my mother darts ratlike into the laundry room, intent on grabbing fistfuls of knit woolens and tossing them gleefully into the brand-new dryer. The dryer in my building's basement is a weak and reedy one, releasing but a few feeble gasps of air per 50�-cycle, but the beast my mom's got has a direct hose to Hell itself. Its delicates setting is capable of such intense heat that were one to load Andre the Giant into it, a half-hour later i'd be unsurprised to see a member of the Lollipop Guild emerge in his place. The regular setting pretty much leaves flame-broiled char strips on my trousers.

I'd do laundry at home, but beyond the exorbitant prices, it's a horrifying experience for several reasons. One: the washer & dryer are in a weird subbasement chamber with such a low ceiling that i have to duck the whole time i'm in there, which adds to the "Look at me, doing freaky troll things in my freaky cavern" aspect of the situation. Secondly, the violently weird fellow who lives downstairs (with whom i have only ever had one conversation--i hindsight i think it was about football but at the time i was thinking Buccaneers=pirates, so he was probably confused further by it, since he is all "how do you think the Buccaneers will do this afternoon" and i was like "well, plundering and pillaging, how can you go wrong? Argh! Ha ha!") is ALWAYS watching TV. Two in the afternoon, four in the morning, the teevee is blaring. And 90% of the time he's watching porn--bad--but then the other 10% of the time he's got something totally random [like a selection from the Rogers & Hammerstein catalogue] on, which makes it waaaayyy worse. Every time i go down there mentally steeled for grunts & moans only to be informed that i'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair!, i nearly have a nervous breakdown.

So i'll keep bringing the laundry home, grateful that too-short pants seem to be some kind of hipster statement, and resign myself to tugging at the hems and waistbands of Aguilera-sized tops whose tags are so shrunken and melted that the words HAND WASH COOL DRIP DRY almost look like they say THANK YOU. clm.