Runner Problems #1

I am a runner.  I run some miles almost every day.  This means that I wear at least two sets of clothes every day: school clothes (à la Clark Kent) and running clothes (Superman).  Since you're all quick-witted and observant readers, you'll notice that this is twice as much clothing as the average non-athlete.  And twice as much laundry.  

I am constantly doing laundry.  Whenever I have a sufficient amount of free time, the siren song of the washer calls to me.  Swish bump clang! it croons.  Swish bump clang!  In the manner of gangsters at strip clubs, I make it rain on those sweet square machines.  I am constantly leaping up or down the stairs (where I found that errant pizza crust) to the laundry room, folding laundry, doing homework while waiting for the laundry to be done, or simply letting clean, damp laundry infuse my dorm room with the ambience of a detergent-scented greenhouse.

One helpful gift my parents gave me when I left for college was a wooden drying rack.  This is pretty much a permanent fixture in my small room; it fits together neatly with the bed, desk, bookshelf and dresser in such a way as to obliterate the notion of floorspace.  It's a good thing that I have a hovercraft.

There is also no vertical space in my room because of laundry.  I pride myself on the unnecessary complexity of my sartorial organization.  Clean clothing goes in the dresser or "closet".  (A wimpy, open-faced sandwich of a closet.)  Not-clean-at-all goes in the laundry basket or, if I'm feeling spontaneous, the dresser. 

Clean-but-drying.

No, for real, in the laundry basket.

Then there are finer gradations.  Clean-but-drying goes on the drying rack, the wall hooks, the sprinkler pipe (this is illegal), the hallway pegs, the bed, the back of the door, and visitors who stand still long enough.  Probably-clean-after-airing-out goes on the drying rack (if there's space).  Clean-enough-to-wear-post-run is hung on any edges that are edgy enough.  Bored yet?  Confused?  I thought so.


I can't overestimate the importance of laundry in my college life.  Even my suitemates are affected by its pervasiveness.  Skyler actually had an upsetting dream the other night about me hanging up laundry in his room.  Somewhat nonplussed, real-life Merp apologized.  I guess that's what you're supposed to do when you're mean to someone in their dream.  (But I can't help wondering:  which category of clean did the laundry fall under?)