Laundry Room Blues

(This was-like most other posts so far-written before today.)

Things you think about while stuck in a laundry room

I have just escaped from being stuck in my laundry room. I trotted in there to do the last bit of my laundry, carefully closing the door behind me because the laundry room does not have a proper ceiling. I am a cat owner, and because I would like to keep my high-class drop-in ceiling cat free and to keep my cat spider, insulation, and snake free, I keep the door closed to the laundry room. With my basket of Tide-fresh garments balanced fashionably on my hip, I reached, naturally, for the door knob (which, I'll admit, has been giving me problems when it is being turned right). Twist left, nothing. Twist right, nothing. No. This is the kind of thing you read about in newspapers. See on the evening news. This doesn't really happen. People do not really die from being trapped in laundry rooms!

Here are the steps you will need to take in order to open the damnable door in case you are ever in the same situation:

1. Bang as if my husband will magically be home two-and-a-half hours early from work.
2. Scream. Fat lot of good that did.
3. Try to get the attention of the girl that lives up stairs. This being the girl that didn't remove the phone from her ear while I traipsed up to her porch to talk to her. Needless to say, that didn't work.
4. Bang again. This time, in frustration.
5. Look for something to trick the lock.
6. Pry a nail out of the wall.
7. Proceed to try to bend the door frame and/or the door enough to get the locking device away from the hole it fits into. (This would be a good time to know all of these technical terms.)
8. Swear. It didn't work.
9. Try again. It might work! You know, always try again.
10. Swear again. It did not, in fact, work.
11. Keep the nail.
12. Spy a fake sunflower on your dryer.
13. Ask yourself "Why on earth is this in here?"
14. Rip a leaf from the fake sunflower, take out the wirey part.
15. Slip the wirey part that was once a leaf through the crack in the door behind the locking thing and use the nail to guide it.
16. Try to pull the locky thing open.
17. Swear.
18. Try to pry the hinges apart without a hammer or any type of tool.
19. Swear.
20. Finish and fold your laundry. Might as well make use of the time.
21. Clean up all of the crazy Walmart bags that are littering the floor.
22. Make yourself comfortable on a towel as a guard against the ever-filthy floor and a bag of birdseed as a pillow.
23. Be glad you forgot that you had the birdseed and let the birds starve.
24. Sing every song you can think of.
25. Try to talk your cat (who loves your singing and is sticking her paws and whiskers under the door trying to get to you) into thrashing about on the counter knocking the screwdriver close to the door of death.
26. Pet her paws and tell her it is okay that she is too stupid to get her brilliant human out.
27. Lay back down on the floor and choke on dust that fell from the non-ceiling.
28. Try again to get the hinges apart.
29. Rejoice because one came out! Oh my God!
30. Try for another ten minutes and get a second one out! Things are looking up!!!
31. Try for about fifteen minutes and finally accept that you're not going to get the third one out, as that would just be too nice.
32. Thrash about, cry, yell, be a baby. Be frustrated.
33. Jam the hingey thing into the crack in the door and push with all of your blood cells that are just about to burst from your face.
34. Grunt.
35. Push.
36. Scream, laugh, yell for the cat! You're out!!!
37. Sit down to write about it because you're not using your English degrees anywhere else.

These are things you might think about while trapped in the laundry room for two hours:

None of our windows open. I am glad nothing is on fire, because I'd be screwed. Our landlord really didn't plan for any type of disaster.
Answer: Condemn the landlord not only for your faulty door (actually, doors. Three out of the four doors in our apartment give us problems.), but also the flooding that occurred two months ago, the snake and spiders that dwell in but do not help pay the rent for the apartment, the unfinished ceiling, ill disaster planning, and the mustiness.

Realize that living in the middle of nowhere might give you a lot of privacy, but that privacy just might kill you because no one will hear you scream.

You don't know all of the words to as many songs as you think you do.

This wouldn't be so bad if you had brought a book to pass the time.

Never. EVER...go ANYWHERE without your cell phone at your side. I won't. It will stay with me all the time.

You will realize that you are, in fact, one of those people that will go nuts unless they know what time it was. That is eventually made me try again to get the door open instead of just waiting (God knows how long) for Luke to get home from work.

Become thankful that you do not live alone (Advice: do not live alone.) because Who is going to think that you're stuck in your laundry room?

Realize that because you cannot get to the sink, you are more thirsty than you have ever been in your life. If all else fails, run the washer and drink the water from there.

There are pictures in the tile markings.

You can make up your own songs.

Where am I going to go to the bathroom?

Why is there a bar right in front of the window?

Why are the windows sealed?

How did that snake get inside with all of the windows sealed?

Understand how truly pathetic it is to be stuck in a laundry room.