Laundry Adventures

Life is entertaining.  And it goes by really fast -- in hindsight.  Sometimes, like when I'm bored at work, the time seems interminable.  But then I get to a nice quiet Saturday and zoom!  I realize a lot of time has passed.  No idea where it went.

So I will regale you with a tale of the laundromat variety.  I'm pretty sure that, with the adventures at the laundromat, Jeremy and I will make the purchase of a washer and dryer among our top priorities once we have a new place to live where we can have them :).  That will be blissful indeed!

So Jeremy likes to help me at the Laundromat.  Unfortunately, 90% of the time when he goes with me, we encounter "issues."  The first time that happened, we had started our 3 loads of wash, gone out to the car to read our scriptures while we waited, and then returned inside at the appropriate time to make the transfer to the dryers.  And it turned out one of the washers froze at minute 33 (it started at 34 minutes) and was waiting for us to press the button again.  That would have been nice to know 33 minutes earlier...  So we had to wait extra time for that load.  This Thursday, it was a new adventure.  We got our 3 loads in.  We waited to make sure all the machines passed minute 33 and the doors locked (we figure this is a good sign :)).  And then we went out for scriptures.  We came back in to find only one washer with 2 minutes left.  But the other 2 weren't far behind.  One was at 5 minutes and one was at 8.  So we got our two of the loads transferred without incident.  But we went back to that last washer, and it was still on minute 7.  What!?!  It was like I was back at work where 1 minute lasts 10!!!  Seriously...  It had issues.  It actually took 15 minutes for that washer to finish out its 7 minutes (we used the dryer to verify this...).  And when we pulled them out, we discovered why it was taking so long...  Something was wrong with the spin cycle.  Oy.  Our laundry was sopping wet.  So, since we didn't know how to just do a spin (and Roberta, the attendant wasn't there yet), we put them in our basket and went out back and started wringing them out by hand.  I had to laugh.  We got about halfway through (this is hard work, by the way), and Roberta pulled up.  She said there was a way to just do a spin cycle, so we went inside with the clothes, loaded them in a (different) washer, and hoped for the best.  Well, the best did not deliver.  We ended up on a delicate cycle -- and had to wait the entire 33 minutes.  And if you don't know, the delicate cycle doesn't spin super fast either...  It's "gentle."  So our stuff was still pretty wet (although better than when we pulled them out of the washer the first time).  And so our dry time took a little longer (40 minutes).  Alas, our trip to the laundromat wasn't very quick, and we had thought we had it down to an art and would be home before 8!  (We got home at 9).  Yeah, life's an adventure.  This is the stuff stories are made of :).  The best part to me was us standing outside wringing our clothes out.  I could not stop laughing.

Anyway, Friday arrived, and that is my favorite (and most productive) day of the week :).  I got up early and went grocery shopping at the local WinCo.  Baked a dessert (for which I threw away the recipe, because, though edible, definitely not make-again worthy) and took it to the funeral home (I used to do stuff like that for them all the time, and these days, I just never even get by there to visit, so I rectified that yesterday).  Then I came home, cleaned the chicken I bought, and also the strawberries (lazy confession:  I love strawberries, but feel it's an extra step to have to clean them and cut off the green part, so I usually don't eat them a lot and then they go bad.  So now I will just clean them all when I get home and cut off the greenery and they'll be ready to go!).  And these were some great strawberries!  Had really big ones.  So I thought, "Hmmm.... It'd be fun to do chocolate dipped strawberries!"  And wouldn't you know, I had a few squares of semi-sweet baking chocolate!  So I started melting the chocolate and at one point pulled it out and smoke was hissing out!  Yikes!  And let's not even mention the smell!  Okay, so I've never burned chocolate before (and trust me, I've melted my share of it...) and this was nasty!  I had to air out the house (and tolerate the flies that decided to fly in while the screenless windows were open.  Blah).  But I did have enough chocolate (of the non-burned variety) to dip 4 of our big strawberries.  :).

And since I don't think I have a picture with Jeremy since we got married, we took one in the kitchen before dinner.  And then took one of our dinner (including our strawberries :)).  I'm totally loving this cooking thing.  I love to cook.  So last night I made these stuffed shells.  It looks fancy, but it's so easy!  And I made rolls a couple weeks back from our family reunion cookbook (thanks to Elka for the added info on letting them rise twice).  It made so many rolls that I froze half of them before the second rise.  And so I figured we could enjoy those with dinner, basted with garlic butter :).  And it was fun!  Plus salad.  And I have decided I just need to have things like mushrooms on hand.  They really spruce up a plain salad (yes, Dad, mushrooms are wonderful... even when raw :)). 

And today has been a wonderfully relaxing Saturday so far :).  We are going to make jalapeno chicken enchiladas with tex mex rice and (hopefully) home-made fiesta corn (if I can find a recipe or something....).  Then popcorn and movie night :).

Oh, and I'm moving forward with planning our open house thing.  We tentatively plan it for June 23 (assuming we can get the location).  Food, some games with cool prizes...  Hopefully make it fun for anyone who wants to attend.