KARaMAel

Two events, blasé and common: a man possibly "hitting on" a woman who half-folded his laundry and whom he thinks paid 50 cents to complete drying those shirts, and a woman's house getting burglarized.

Does anyone deserve anything?

Latter-she has had her radio stolen from her car at work. She does not live near work, but recently had workers at her house, checking up on a flooded basement and a potentially, but not ultimately, fried furnace. A few days later, a break-in.

She, former, shook his hand and offered to give up the dryer she hadn't placed money in yet. He declined. Even though it was technically still "his."

That's what makes me think the bunch of white tulips are motivated by a cultural sense of Karmic whatever-I'm-assuming rather than any sense of woo-thee. He's Indian, and I've never seen him before (normal when you live in an apartment).

However, there was chocolate by my door when I came home today as well. Three Belgian, shell-shaped pieces. Knowing what I do of Asia (though not so much of India, no matter what three books I read a decade ago), I should go count the flowers.

Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps you could do it for me.

At least my husband is joking about it. As I intimated, he was the one who dried the man's Park University t-shirts instead of sending the note "done, dryer free" under T__'s door as I hap-hazardly had arranged.

The old-ass washers, while only costing 75 cents, are inefficient and frustrating. One does not fill quickly at all and takes over 45 minutes to cycle. The other (perhaps both now) does not spin, leaving clothes so soggy that even seven t-shirts in the most efficient dryer of the pair don't get done after 45 minutes.

Note: other "good" dryer bears a ball-point sign "decommissioned." My landlord is funny, sometimes; there is a random extension cord wrapped around the coin intake, as if someone would go ahead and try to try clothes anyway (or in case the sign would get lost). A cord would not deter most people anyway, but it would show up well in "Clue" or "CSI," you know.

I asked T___, and he said he had had the same problem with the washers. He hadn't called the landlord about it; I suppose he's as nonchalant as I am about such things. Laundry is the most horrible chore in the world.

Anyway, those harbingers of spring could be making up for the fact I thought in his presence though did not utter, "Ah, you got a new Gateway computer last fall, right?"

You may recall the praying mantis blog. That was the day I had spent over 20 minutes breaking down five or six huge boxes fully formed and full of styrofoam and filling the trash container for all 12 apartments. It was how the bug got a ride, I guess. The boxes bore the packing slips, itemizing the printer, the router, all kinds of crazy individual parts, and a name that I presumed was Indian. I thought it was a female's name.

I have no idea what he meant by "we live" in apartment 2N.

And Sunday night, I was "making" my husband do his own laundry just as this guy was having to do (though not keeping very good track of it. I had an earful of such woes when I came home Sunday at six). No indication about couplehood in these modern times can be found in who's doing what chores.

The men's problems with laundry is why I went down to the basement in the first place. . .

For all I know, his roommate, sister or wife encouraged him to remember my apartment number, which I also had described as "ours." Surely he saw the socks, quite male things. He was nice about how the soggy laundry basket had leaked on his towels. I noticed that and had moved aforementioned items, to floor and drying poles, respectively, before he showed up.

As for the other odd incident (which left my soon-to-be-not co-worker to finish ads, intuit the layout, engange in a "do this and then that" oral dialog that made me realize why I put up with other things the other other does and that lasted four hours, two or three past the usual finishing point) I have strange post-eclipse feelings.

Two semi-surreal things in one day's span. Surreal at my age just means slightly out of the ordinary; you know, "news."

So, without a choice, I spent a twelve-hour day, following a 57.75-hour week.

My plan for Tuesday was to clean the apartment all day - recycling, scrubbing, and then washing and drying two hundred pounds of laundry (beds! towels! etc.!) - all work that sucks but that is piling up (obviously) and driving me insane. However, I have to do several hours-long tasks that I did not have time for today - surprise, it always miraculously happens that way, no matter how hard I try - to do. Why plan?

Well, I guess if your home is invaded and a few pawnable, useble, fun things are stolen, you want to go and guard. She at least had to fix the entry-point anyway. Understandable.

I haven't slept much, so little that Saturday slanted-light late afternoon I ran through a red light at a very prominent intersection (two boulevards, no less) long before I noticed what I was doing.

Fatigue turns all those extra/double traffic signals into simply too much to look at. I was watching a red-painted little bus go ever so slowly in front of me; it was after four and I had been up since seven, and I decided to go around. I swear I saw no yellow light, but a smart pedestrian did see me. (He was on the oncoming traffic side anyway, quite safe from spacey I who took so long to process all those details, that I took on the default of "just get through, stopping could upset things and cause others to crash into you" and drove home.)

Thank you for lack of incident.

Saturday night, after two hours at another work-related event, I slept on purpose and purposefully for about 12 hours. Thank goodness you can make some things up.

During the winter, when I wouldn't eat "enough" and would break down into a pained disaster. As of late, though, I can well-survive on less than 1,000 calories a day. Nothing is consistent.

I'm still too fat. No one looking at me would agree, of course, but I know what percentages are supposed to be. People over 30 start to lament their lack of motivation/time to run around most of the day like kids (used to) do.

Sadly, my little hopes of walking my work-hood for fun and for exercise as during my bus-taking summer are running away from a new accumulation of facts.

Robberies, burglaries, stupid things.

Is it just that we collect more experiences overall as time in our lives go by, or are things really "getting worse?"

Mrs. Archer in "The Age of Innocence" laments every Thanksgiving the downward trend of society.

I don't claim to use the word in the same way whatsoever. New York of the rich and structured in 1870 is far different from our loose associations and commercial ambitions. Then again, I suppose we are what she meant was to happen. Also, she was lucky, as all of us are, to go to the family vault before things got too radically-intolerable.

It's what "news" focuses on, you know, the tragedies and psychoses of contemporary humanity. No one applies any of the proffered solutions, either, of course, for we're all streaming down the river of Now. We ignore suffering as much as we shudder to wonder how the citizens of 1942 Germany were able to.

And so we go; we do what we think is right, and we all - don't we? - reason away the implied consequences because they are coming from different times, from different people who are not as smart as you, as "you" as you, as completely thoughtful and right as you.

Our actions still draw their drawn-out consequences. Drawn-out, they still so seem to be grouping and of such numbers that they are felt all the time.

There is a drug dealer living within blocks of you. Drug users, functional and actively criminal. Alcoholics. People who use assault for every purpose. Those who smash out car windows for no reason but to be accepted. Arsonists, random robbers whose motives we so try to search out and use for strategies to avoid. Kids who are so wronged that I would cry if I had to name their experience, whom we somehow don't see. People like you. People like I.

That's annoyingly correct grammar now, eh? Good thing English is so strange, otherwise I would have had to rhyme.

Anyway, I think it's time.