Today's Adventure: Laundry

Listen, I know that France is not a third-world country, but living here always makes me feel like I've stepped back in time about sixty years. While they're quite fond of les gadgets (but also paranoid, as in the news story I saw last night about how sending text messages on iPhones causes them to explode), this technology doesn't extend to daily household living. In other words, my house phone has a freaking cord, there's no dishwasher, and washing clothes is a two-day procedure. (I begin to understand why they wear things a few times before doing laundry.)

My washing machine scares me: it loads through the top into a cylinder that looks like a cross between a gerbil wheel and a cheese grater. You have to fasten it closed, essentially double-locking it, then shut the lid on it, then turn the dials. The cycle itself took approximately six hours to complete (an exaggeration, but only slightly), and when it was done my clothes were still soaking wet. Being the intrepid laundress I am, I risked resealing the gerbil wheel and turning the dial back to the spin cycle, at which point water poured into the cylinder. This was not what I'd hoped for. So I was left to inch the dial forward several times to coax the gerbil into spinning just a little more water out of my clothes.

Afterwards I took the load of laundry in clumps into the drying space (a sort of attic on the back of the apartment) and proceeded to map out how best to get everything on the drying rack. It's science, pure and simple. I checked on the clothes a couple of hours later-- what can I say, I'm a hopeless optimist-- and realized I needed to put towels on the floor to absorb the small pond that was flowing across the linoleum.

If things work out well, it'll all be dry tomorrow and the second, more horrible phase, can commence: ironing. Sigh. Okay, here's the thing, I own an iron and I've even used it on occasion (that occasion being the selection of a new pope), but my preferred method of de-wrinkling a garment is to toss it in the dryer for 10 minutes and have a beer. So much for that. I might end up buying my entire wardrobe at the flea market's polyester palace after all.