Why I Slept Naked

(No, it wasn't for fun. It's cold in Holland, remember?)

I slept naked last night because I did my laundry yesterday.

(Still don't get it, do ya?)

Laundromat owners here are conniving, I tell you. I can go and do my laundry there for only 50 cents a kilo if I do it myself. What a bargain!, they advertise on their glass windows in orange spray paint. They drag you in. They dragged me in. The place was clean, well-kept. Detergent creeped up my nostrils, reminding me of Jenn and her almost OCD need to do laundry every week in Westwood. (What an awesome form of OCD.) They had won me over.

I was about ready to sprint home, shove dirty clothes into a bag and skip right on back, when everyone filed out of the place, the lights went off, and the door was closed with a very anticlimatic 'click.' Just like a gun with the silencer on. Just like that, my dreams of laundry were dead. It was 6 o'clock. The laundromat was closing, like every store and service in The Hague. And it wasn't going to open again until after I'd left for work the following morning.

How convenient.

So how do I do my laundry? Well, here comes the conniving bit.

The laundromats will wash your laundry for you! You can go to work or school or take care of your kids or whatever and they will do all the dirty work! Not such a bad deal, except for the fact that it costs 2.50 Euros per kilo. 2.50 Euro! That's five times as much the price of me doing my own laundry! That's outrageous. I have to pay more for my laundry just because the laundromats aren't open at convenient hours? Harumph.

I dropped my laundry off yesterday morning. Being the expat I am, I didn't realize that it would take them 3 days to do my laundry. I guess I am unaccustomed to the Dutch work ethic.

I slept naked last night. My pj's are still at the cleaners. And so are my towels. (After my shower, I dried myself off with an unused kitchen rag that was still in its plastic wrapping.) And I have one more night to go.