well, no salsa...till tomorrow

I postponed my salsa orgy. I had every good intention to do everything today (Saturday), but life got in the way. Before I made salsa, I had to go to town and get some peppers and a few more things. I found all the jalapenos and more at the farmer's market, which I have been pleasantly surprised with in its first year.

As long as I had to go to town, there was laundry to be done. One of the unpleasant facts of domestic life here is laundry; I would love to do it all in my wringer washer and hang it out to dry, but that just hasn't worked out this summer. So I went to the laundromat and paid my dues in quarters. There are two kinds of people who go to the laundromat in this town, it seems; the totally hopeless, lobotomized, and clueless, and the ex-hippie homesteaders. Today the balance was tipped in favor of the latter, thankfully. There's a thriving community of people around here I've found who thoughtfully stray from the mainstream. Today I talked with a woman who used to work at the library in town; she recognized me, I didn't recognize her at first, but she knew me and my family and said she really enjoyed our visits to the library, and she really liked our family! I was almost speechless. That's why I'm loving living here. And everyone else in the laundromat today was polite and pleasant. One guy even brought a dirty sock to me that had fallen from one of my baskets.

One of my favorite episodes of the TV show Northern Exposure was when Maggie decided to buy her own washer and dryer. The results were unexpected; she found she missed the communal experience of doing laundry, of making conversation while waiting for the end of the spin cycle. Much as I hate going to the laundromat, I think there are a lot of connections to be made there.

But I did get to see some wonderful music tonight, as mentioned in my previous post. It was as I expected, maybe even a little better than the last show I'd seen with them. I talked briefly with Mike and David before the show, saying I had seen them last November and I learned a lot from their workshop. This wasn't schmoozing; I really meant it, and they both seemed to appreciate it. And The Whistlepigs sounded great, as usual.