10.18.00 - 11:24:48

This morning I could not find my usual lotion. I was forced to use the odd green lotion in a spray bottle that, one supposes, should make the slathering on of lotion easier, or more fun, or less taxing.

I for one rarely find the slathering on of lotion taxing, except when I'm late.

Which is, actually, all the time, even when I get up early, manage everything correctly, and have the presence of mind to grab my dry cleaning on the way out the door. The dry cleaning - there is another small episode in this life, semi-urban, someplace between New Jersey and Mad Max's thunderdome. But then again, aren't we all?

I bet those leather-bra, funky-hair, spiked-panty, tattoo'd ladies from any post-apocalyptic disaster movie never misplace their lotion, I'm just not sure I wanna know the ingredients.

Oy. The point of all this is that I smell odd to myself today. I keep walking somewhere and wondering about that strange scent lingering in the room, and realize it's me: my hands, my skin, my shoulders smell faintly sweet. The lotion is called earth (uncapitalized too. That's how you know it's coooool. :smirks:):

See? In any case, this earth-lotion is faintly sweet, like some barely ripe melon, honeydew. I have become, then, a walking fruit salad.

Why does this not surprise me?

Worse, yet, why does this not surprise all two of your reading this now?

I think the world takes a slow, regular, absurd delight in fooling us, lulling us into some bland acceptance of the obvious and then spinning us around, 180 degrees, in the other direction. I didn't eat breakfast this morning because I did not want to face my refridgerator, full of stuff I've purchased and never ever ever eaten that now needs to be thrown away. I'm convinced that this would not happen so much did I live with other people. Either I would control my need to buy things at the grocery store, or the stuff would just plain get eaten. Throwing out food bothers me.

Major guilt, particularly because I do it all the time.

Nevertheless, back to the wild-spun world, a double helix of changing blankness and shifted assumptions. I managed to be dressed, down to and including hose, and ready to leave ten minutes before I had to be at work. Of course, I therefore sank onto my bed and stared at the ceiling for an obligatory five minutes, wondering, alternately, about a good many different things - and then grabbed my bag, purse, keys, and dry cleaning and dashed out the door, into a leaden world not quite chill enough to be pleasantly brisk, not quite warm enough to be comfortably snug.

The world has lightened considerably since then. I noticed, on the way to work, all the usual suspects. The trees on the sidestreets have begun their yearly change of clothes, and are fringed with spots of color. The sidewalks and gleaming we street are strewn with the earliest casualties of the season. It gets dark earlier - and I like the comfort of falling twilight, the buoyant sense that the world is settling down, battening against the long winter storm, and people think spring is the time for falling in love, but I advocate autumn.

All the usual suspects: as customary, I catch literally every single red light between home and work. I know - somewhere deep down, somewhere lovely and clean and prophetic - I know that without these small, charming disasters I would really be in trouble. I attract trouble the way celestial bodies attract moons or nerds - magnetically, inevitably.

Almost all the usual suspects, because for the first time in weeks, I have remembered my dry cleaning. I pull smoothly into the free parking spot just outside the cleaner's around the corner from work. This dry cleaner, mind you, has a conspicuous red awning with white letters declaring "One-Hour Cleaners."

I unwisely assumed this meant they would clean your clothes in an hour.

"Can I help you?" Said the languid man, ingeniously, after wandering out from his tryst, or whatever, in the back.

"I'd like my clothes cleaned," ...as if that wasn't obvious. I blinked and stammered and smiled, shoving the tangled group across the counter. It seemed a tad... empty, and I noticed they were only open until 5:30, which meant I would be rushed getting away from work.

"Friday okay?" He said, curling his fingers into the fabric, sorting the things I wear against my skin with a vague impersonality that made the whole thing seem rather sordid. It is a good thing I don't need my skivvies dry cleaned - and particularly a good thing I don't have a laundry service.

"...uhhh," I stammered, having nothing suitable to wear for a rather formal day tomorrow. "Uhm..." My fingers pinwheeled frantically through the disappearing rayons and knits and linens. "...welllllll," I hemmed. I hawed, I looked at him crosswise.

"The, er, uhhhh, sign? says one hour?" I looked at him. Had he merely inherited a promise long defunct, one he could not keep, but could not afford to take down? Was it only a specific hour on Fridays? Did it mean they'll spend an hour cleaning your stuff, but are never sure when, and thus offer a three-day window?

My fingers spidered over my clothing. Things were looking desperate. I latched onto the suit I wanted to wear tomorrow with the fervency of a true believer clinging to the hairshirt of a saint. The proprietor simply looked at me, as I struggled to say something more expressive.

"I was hoping to have it done today...?" He seemed skeptical. He was the grand pooh-bah of clean clothing. I was a mere hungry peasant at the gate.

"This one, at least," I stuttered hastily, clenching one pair of garments rather fiercely as I tried on a smile. "Friday's fine for the rest." As if those few words would bring me throught the vast bowl of uncertainty to the sheltered valley of the chosen.

"We don't do any of the work here. It'll have to be five o'clock." He seemed so smug, so pleased to disappoint. So necessarily gallant and or put-upon, depending up the angle of view. "It'll have to be done special. We don't clean here."

"One Hour Cleaners."