Mean People Suck...and other life lessons learned at the laundromat.

When I was in high school I carried my books around in a backpack that I had personalized with patches. Yeah, I was cool like that. One of my patches said "Mean People Suck" and it was the closest I came to having a foul mouth in those days. Now, ten years later, I'm reminded of how sage I was back then. Because you know what, mean people DO suck.

Ben and I have developed this great system for doing laundry. We let it pile up for three to four weeks (DON'T JUDGE - my mom gives us new underwear every Christmas, so we've got about 73 pairs each) and then we alternate taking it to the laundromat. This means I get to go almost two months between laundry shifts. Granted, each turn amounts to about ten or fifteen loads of laundry, but it's so worth it when you can run them all at the same time and get out of there in 2-3 hours.

Except for when you forget a load in the dryer, only to realize it four days later.

So, you return to the laundromat to retrieve your load.

Only to find out that someone stole your sheets. They left your cute kitchen curtains, but took your fancy 600 thread count sheets. Your only consolation is that you bought them at Ross, so it wasn't that expensive of a mistake. But oh, how you'll pay for it with all the teasing your husband will heap upon you for the rest of your laundromat days.

In my defense, I was a bit distracted by the strange man seeking marital therapy. And by seeking, I mean following me back and forth from washing machine to dryer as I transferred my loads. Hence, life lesson #2: don't tell people you're training to be a therapist when they ask what you do. From now on, I'm going to say I research the mating habits of snails. And, sadly, I clearly learned life lesson #3 the hard way: a book and an ipod are not enough deterrents against chatty strangers. In fact, such people may even view these objects as sporting challenges that they are more than capable of overcoming. I don't know what the solution is for the problem implied in this last lesson. Because to ignore a friendly greeting (which is how all these crazy encounters start) is to be mean. And we all know what that leads to.

I also learned another valuable lesson yesterday, this time not from the laundromat, but from surfing. And that is this: no matter how much spf 50 you lather on prior to the beach outing, the surfboard will rub off every bit of sunscreen it encounters. Which is to say, the tops of my thighs, my torso, and parts of my chest and arms are all fiery red. I now look like a lobster wearing a white bikini. Awesome.

Yep. I'm all about discovering lessons. Just call me a student of life.