Rambles and Brambles

As stated in an earlier post, I work at a laundromat.

It's actually a pretty cool job, very much like Steynberg in that they have open mics and music most nights and a cafe where I work most of my shifts. Tomorrow I work in the laundry room, though. There are no tips for the laundry shift, but the dirty laundry holds endless material for the imagination. People can either do their own coin laundry or drop it off and for a fee have us throw it in the machines for them - usually there's just a line of laundry bags and we don't see the owners, so I like to try to piece them together from the prAna shirt (does yoga) and the "mom jeans" (over 40).

Laundromats always remind me of a book I loved when I was little. It was about a bear (stuffed, of course) named Corduroy, who got left in one. I grew up thinking laundromats were urban and exciting - maybe that's why I don't mind working at one.


The cafe shift is more exhausting, with few breaks and constant running back and forth to ring up purchases, make espresso drinks, call food orders, take money, re-stock, clean, and enter phone orders. I like it, though, and the regulars are amazing. Yesterday I chatted with a guy who toured with Third Eye Blind and got a beautiful long-stemmed rose from a hobo.

Kate, one of my editors at Chronicle, asked me a few weeks ago if I would like to stay on for two months as a temporary editorial assistant while they look for someone to fill a position. Obviously, I jumped at the chance, but now I'll be working six or seven days a week between Mondays - Wednesdays at Chronicle and the second half of the week at Brainwash.

San Francisco is grey and cold. People are chronically disappointing. But today when I woke up I noticed the daffodils I bought last night at Trader Joe's had already unfurled from tight buds to bright yellow blossoms. Sometimes I wish the world was more about stuff like that.