How .75 cents Made Me Cry.

My plan:

Go home. Do the laundry. Decide on delicious dinner. Greet boyfriend as he walks in the door, make him sit down and relax because he was super stressed out earlier. Present with delicious dinner and silly movie. Cuddle. Relax.

What happened:

Get home. Start laundry. Go back upstairs, snack for a bit, relax, go downstairs to continue laundry, more clothes in hand. When I get down, I find every single washer has been taken, except the two I had used earlier. ..Okay, not a problem, but a bitch for drying. I foresee a problem but shrug and accept it.

I transfer my clothes to the two remaining driers open, start them up, put the rest of my dirty clothes in the now-empty washers, start those up, and head back upstairs.

*inhale*

Relax for a bit, read. Head back downstairs to move now-clean-but-wet clothes to drier. Eeeexcept every drier is taken and running. ...Poo. Again I shrug and note the remaining time on my driers, go back upstairs and wait.

Chris gets home as soon as I head back downstairs. I will note that I still have no idea what I'm making for dinner, nothing is thawed, and I have no brilliant plan. *sigh* Oh well.

We head to the laundry room, hand in hand, so I can finish it up and get it done. He empties one drier, grabs clothes from the second one.

"Uhh.. these are wet."
"...What?"
"They're really wet."
"Well god dammit.. I guess we'll have to run them again."

Annoying, but manageable. I insert the laundry card, select the cycle, hit go, remove card, wait... ...wait... ....waaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiishit.

C: "Derp."
A: *blank stare*
C: "Piece of shit.."
A: *continued blank stare*

...

And then I snap. See, I only had .75 cents left on the little laundry card. Enough for one more load of laundry. ONE. I now have THREE loads of wet clothes that need to be dried.

Except the machine to load the card doesn't accept cash. Plastic only.

Not only is it JUST plastic, but it only allows increments of $10 to be put onto it at a time.

...

My electric, water, and internet bills are doubled because they're past due. I have $20 in my bank account, $13 on my credit card, and a shitload of change in a jar taunting me with it's precise amount of uselessness in this situation. I need to pay for gas, and food, for another two days before I get a smaller-than-usual paycheck, which will be going entirely to past-due bills.

And now I have to put $10 on this little fucking laundry card so I don't have 3 loads of wet clothes growing mildew in my bathtub until I can deposit all those jar-coins into my account at the bank tomorrow like the poor son-of-a-bitch that I am.

I managed to hold myself together while paying to dry the clothes that were supposed to be dry already. Again. Meanwhile my clean-but-wet clothes continue to lurk in their washer-based dens of mildew growing wonder for another hour.

I managed to grab the hamper with the dry clothes in it, storm out, stomp home, throw the bag down in disgust and sit on the bed for a full two minutes before angry bitter ashamed tears started (against my strict orders that they discontinue) while Chris sat next to me apologizing for not having any money of his own to help me do the laundry.

I even managed to completely deny that I was crying for another five full minutes until it got to be too much and I clung to Chris sobbing about how idiotic it was that the money machine didn't take cash and how that would have solved so many problems.

I finished crying, Chris made me giggle against my stubborn I'm-still-sad-so-there mentality.

C: "We'll be okay. We always pull through bad times."
A: *sniff* "Times have been bad?" *weak smile*
C: *blink* "Pffft! No. What bad times. None." *too big smile*
A: *giggle and hug*
C: "What's for dinner?"


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