In Which I am Easily Amused

I like laundromats.

They're a giant black hole that a ridiculous number of quarters disappear into, but I like them. I like that they smell like detergent and clothes hot out of the dryer. I like the background noise of swishing.

When my family first moved to Kentucky, I spent hours and hours at the laundromat with my older sister because we had no plumbing in our house for the first few weeks. And that meant hours of writing while drinking orange sodas (which are both really great things). So I'm kind of biased in favor of laundromats. I have a good history with them.

Anyway, our holiday project of replacing the shower in one of our bathrooms (it was supposed to take two days tops) turned into the bigger project of getting our soil pipe replaced. Plumbers were called. Plumbers did not show. Holes in the floor remain and the washer stands idle while the laundry-that-needs-washing continues to collect. Obviously, with ten people in the house we can't let it collect for too long without some of us running out of clean things to wear. This is another reason why I like laundromats. We pulled out two loads of essentials and headed on over.

By the time our laundry had finished drying, my sister and I were the only ones in the place. We had three quarters left. Everything in the vending machine was 85 cents. Fortunately, I had a dime. So my sister puts the money in and selects D4. Well, having never used a vendor before, she pushes the coin return halfway through the process and the machine stops. Our bag of sour Skittles was just barely hanging on the corner of the wire that had stopped mid-coil.

We kind of looked at each other and started laughing. She banged the front of the machine. No luck.

You know those people you see in the movies/advertisements who go ballistic and start practically attacking the vending machines to get their snacks? Well, I decided that was a good idea. Not quite to that degree, mind you. I was going with the general principle. So I stepped around to the side of the machine and gave it a big 'ole hip-bump.

The Skittles fell.

That was fun. Really, really fun :) Go ahead, you can laugh. I did. My family did. It's silly, I know. But I had the best little moment there in which I bumped a vending machine and the bump was effective. I'm tellin' you, it's the little things ;)