Laundry Day

Today is laundry day, as were the last three days, but today I am serious. I don’t have any clean pants I have to do laundry. I have to get out of bed and I have to do laundry. I have to wear pants, it’s not appropriate to pasear nude from the waist down, not in an evangelical town, not anywhere. Remember how the office thought your name might be Evangelica when you first got to Panama, thank god it’s not. I need to get out of bed, if I get out of bed in the next ten minutes, you don’t have to work out, deal? Yeah washing clothes is definitely a work out in itself, bending, scrubbing, and squeezing for hours, and in the sun too. Hace calore. This bed is so uncomfortable, is it raining, or is that the wind blowing through the roof? I squint through the cracks in the wall, not raining. What day is it? What time is it? How long have I been here? Shit it’s been elven minutes, do some crunches as punishment, it’s good for you. Remember when you used to run, before it started raining and the whole town turned into the most awful, suck-in-your-shoe-and-never-let-go-mud? Get out of bed, turn on the radio, put a shirt on, not a bra, just a shirt, too early for bras. Do crunches. 100? A couple more, 300. OK, can you do a pull up yet? No, but I’m closer. Boil water, oatmeal and tea for breakfast, casual. Oatmeal is weird, hey? Im almost out of food, get over it, look at all those dry beans, eat those. Ok. Cool, Wonderwall is on the radio. Eat breakfast, whatsap your girlfriend, “morning, babe.” Collect dirty clothes, they’re everywhere, hanging to avoid mold growth. Hamper; check, bucket; check, dirty clothes; check. Gross a cockroach, “La cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar…” Squish! Fuck you cockroach. Off to the shower to wash clothes, the sun is coming out. Swell! “Ill get some color. Fill up the bucket with water dirty clothes and shampoo. Fuck, where’s the soap? Go to retrieve the soap. You should let your clothes soak and burn some of this paper trash. Yeah. I have a make shift incinerator made from a paint can. Burn paper, tweet, Facebook. What day is it? 25 percent battery, unplug the solar light, PLEASE CHARGE. No more paper, back to laundry. Remember when you bought a second towel, fucking stupid, two dirty towels. Start with jeans, they’re hard but not as hard as towels, let the towels soak, they’re moldy. You’ve always hated doing laundry, but never quite this much. Blog about this later. This could be a good blog. The sun is hot. Sunshine, I’d really like to see you, oh my sunshine… Scrub. I look at my house, I bet things would charge better if I rotated my solar panel, do that after laundry. I won’t. Sing songs; follow you into the dark, ballad of love and hate, monsters, all about the bass, what? Why does everyone hate that song, love it. Anaconda, not so much. “My anaconda don want none…” SHIT! La cucaracha, la cucaracha…” Fuck Congo, where’d that come from? Ah well, gone now. Nice, done with pants. Towel time, tho. Hang up pants to dry first, need pants, the reason for the day. I should start washing my clothes daily, you won’t. Nah. The sun, hot. I just where shorts when I do laundry, three tarps protecting me from the outside world, wet shirts are the worst. Viene Mirrian. “esta lavando?” obviously. “Si, hace calor!” “Si, angie, el sol.” Back to work. Towels, Fuck. Scrub. I need to get out of site, but I don’t have any money. What should I teach Monday? Things in the outdoors. Perfect. What day is it? Shit, you need to pay rent. I’ll go today. You should call your dad. Can’t, next time I have saldo. I need to get saldo. You won’t. True. Ya viene your other neighbor with a huge ass iguana, “Que Paso?” zone out. “Esta bien, dale!’ I’m totally going to get iguana today, score. Free food. Woah another Congo? Or is that the same one? They live under the table, of course! I’ll kill those later, you won’t. Almost done scrubbing, rinse cycle soon. Its getting cloudy, its going to rain, always. At this point I stop scrubbing my clothes, too tired, they’re clean enough, you’ll just get them dirty again. Fill bucket with water, dump, fill, squeeze, fill, dump, squeeze, repeat. Good enough. Hang up clothes. The line is saggy, my clothes are touching the ground. Into the jungle with a machete to find a big stick to prop up the line. What happened to the old one? Used it to make the fence for the garden, ah yah. Is that a snake!? Vine, Relax. Chop down this little tree its perfect. You’ve done enough today. It starts to rain, move all my clothes to hang on porch. They’ll be moldy by tomorrow. “Anyi! Vamos por bañarse!?”