laundry.

Monday I had a Mexican Day. Mexican Day is what my immigrant Mexican kitchen laborer friends call Monday. Their one day off, their descanso. The one day when they sleep as late as possible to make up for all the sleep they didn't get because they were working six doubles in a row. The day they wash all their clothes at the laundromat, buy and cook all their food for the week and Western Union much of their hard earned dinero back home. I don't work six doubles a week; I trade my extra sleep for a titillating Algebra class. And I skip the Western Union and just go to the Wells Fargo and cry.

My friend Daniel is from Guanajuato and has a really odd opinion of my life as an American woman. He thinks that because I'm white I go to a lavish, secret, spa-like laundromat where only rich, white people like me go.

The laundromat I've been going to for a year and a half is on William Cannon. It occupies space in yet another Feng Shui nightmare, nearly defunct strip mall with a super ghetto-looking beauty school, a rent-to-own furniture store, a nail salon and a CVS Pharmacy where I once bought condoms and the cashier actually said: "Looks like some one's going to have fun tonight!"

I chose my laundromat for two reasons: 1. its proximity to a bar and 2. the absence of children. When it rains, the drop-ceiling panels leak murky liquid the color of expectorated bronchitis phlegm and then fall in chunks onto the floor. Today when I arrived and with frantic grace began sorting and cramming my clothes into the machines, the old guy who runs the place asked: "Where ya been?" I eloquently responded, "Huh?" Then he said, "I haven't seen you in a while, did you go out of town or somethin'?" And I start thinking, this guy is wack. I schlep my filthy, restaurant-stinkin' laundry in here every friggin' week. He must have me confused with the other white girl who washes her clothes here and then I remember: HOUSE SITTING! Yes! For three joyful weeks I washed my clothes in one of those magical machines, a quarterless clothes cleaning device in a house with a solid roof. Spa-like indeed! "Yeah," I finally answered, "I did go out of town." and he responded, "Well next time, don't stay away so long!"

Sometimes it's nice to be noticed.