Coin slots and vegetable medley.

I needed to do laundry the other day, so I threw a pile of clothes into a basket and headed to the laundry room directly below my apartment. I totally slammed the laundry room door by accident, by the way. I threw the clothes into the washer, put in my 75 cents, and headed to the Piedmont Grocery to pick up some veggies for dinner.

I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to picking vegetables or fruit. When I got to the market, I loaded up the easy stuff first – garlic, ginger, shallots (I went with shallots because they’re small, if I got an onion, I’d end up wasting half of it). And then I went for the frozen bag of vegetable “medley” because pre-cut carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and baby corn are easier to swallow than the Mexican version of KISS. (Okay, that was a little forced, but there really isn’t a smooth way to ease that horrible album cover into a conversation. Better to just hammer it in there.)

After the grocery store, I put away the stuff I bought and ran downstairs to move my clothes to the dryer. After loading my wet clothes in the machine, I noticed the coin mech to the dryer was jammed. Mother “F”!!! You have GOT to be kidding me. But there it was – the slot-loading, quarter-eating, coin mech was as broken as boken gets. I stood there and stared at it, hoping my Jedi mind tricks would miraculously unhinge whatever was jamming the slot – thus, making me the hero of the apartment complex and entitling me to a huge ceremony where Princess Leia awards me the medal of laundri-tude and then I turn and roar at the crowd to make them stand up and cheer. (I know, I know, Chewie didn't get a medal - but he should have.)

When that didn’t work, I had take my wet clothes out of the dryer, load them into a basket, and then drive down to the nearest laundromat. This totally sucked because I had rockstar parking right in front of my building, and I knew there was no way the karma of the parking gods would shine on me twice in one night – especially during the dinner rush on Piedmont Avenue. ...and in an even bigger gyp, drying your clothes for 45 minutes cost $1.25.