Farewell To A Few Old Friends

2008 was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. For me, it was a year of ironies. Life alternately ransacked my sensitivity and held me tightly in its arms, high above the late '08 wreckage.

I felt comforted in ways unimaginable, then red-faced and embarrassed in front of those I love. I felt betrayed, and forgiven. Near the end, and starting over. Then after a stomach-wrecking week of "skiing" with my old college friends, I somersaulted down the steep hill of recovery and lied on my back with stars spinning around my head for another couple of days.

When I emerged from my self-inflicted transitional haze, 2009 seemed to taste a heck of a lot like 2008. The only differences so far are the lack of parking spaces at Flatirons Athletic Club, and a vague feeling of job-security with tax season right around the corner. Se la vie!

For a week and a half after Christmas, I agonized about writing a Year-End Self Criticism blog. I thought, what better way to wrap up last year's mistakes than in a hankerchief little hobo pack tied to the end of a stick? That way I could easily catapulted it through the air so that it would sink to the bottom of the river forever. But then I remembered that a) I am no Huck Finn and b) the only bottomless river in Boulder is the foot deep, smelly Boulder creek, and a year's worth of mistakes wouldn't make it very far down that stream.

After much thought, I decided to ignore the age old literary tradition of retrospection. Instead, I followed in the footsteps my critic-hero, NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd, and I took the entire month of December and half of January off (unlike Ms. Dowd, however, I did not write the cover story for Vanity Fair during this time).

This is not to say that my time during the holiday spent unproductively. Even the three lecherous nights of drinking and, well, more drinking with old college friends gave me a much-needed pep of camaraderie and belonging that I've been missing since our days of theme parties and final exams. Neither was my time off all sweet things and Christmas cookies. By far, the most painful part was coming to terms with my new year's resolution.

This year I have vowed to increase my financial stability. I knew that after having visions in my head of strangling my super-saver, penny-pinching friend who recently quit her job and moved to Argentina, the problem was clearly mine. So, in a smooth intervention move, my best friend Jess offered to take me out to brunch at the St. Julien Hotel on the condition that I bring my bank statements and any other pertinent clues to determine where my money has gone. I am (un)happy to say that her sharp detective skills led her straight to the culprit: overdraft fees.

So with the new year under way and my guilty confession behind me, I've begun to focus on exciting new ways to manage my money. You can probably look forward to such riveting blog topics such as "shopping in my own closet" and "getting rich slowly." Practically the only good thing about the current financial crisis is blending in. My brown bag may not stand out as much this year, and no one will care that I've colored my scuffed patent-leather Mary Jane's with a Sharpie.

In closing, it just wouldn't feel like 2009 without a quick peek back over my shoulder. So in light of my resolution, I'd like to bid farewell to a few of my favorite 2008 indulgences... Farewell to the frequent Brasserie brunch, Rodney Strong 2006 Pinot Noir, after-work snacks at Radda Trattoria, and dining out four times a week. Farewell to new Mac lipstick, last-minute plane tickets, and premium bottles of tequila. Farewell to (fake) mink stoles, gold chains, Anthropologie shopping sprees, and white-blonde hair appointments. You will be missed.

All I have to say is that the only thing better than saving money, eliminating overdraft fees, and moving to New York this year is an article that I read recently entitled, "How to Keep Your New Year's Resolution." According to statistics, the average American restarts his or her resolution 8 times throughout the year before sticking to it.

I'm at three and counting...

Laundry Mat Soliloquy

The only unpleasant thing about laundry mats are the clothes that people wear to them. I love the soapy scents, the low hum of the spin cycles, the gentle vibrations, and, most of all, the warm clothes and towels that make you want to crawl right inside that triple-load commercial dryer and take a nap. I've been officially intoxicated.

The fact that I rarely go to the laundry mat makes it easy to forget what incredibly relaxing, quiet places they are --not to mention an ideal hiding spot if you don't want to be found. Although I have a standing invitation to use the washer and dryer in the house upstairs, there's nothing quite like the guilt of paying late rent and mixing a Saturday morning hangover with two screaming children to get me packing up my dirty laundry.

My affinity for laundry mats began about five years ago when I was living in the 9th and Marine neighborhood with my best friend, Jess. Jess and I used to go to the cosy little laundry mat at Arapahoe and 4th street that is, sadly, no longer there. The laundry mat was in a tiny building in the middle of a neighborhood, and sandwiched between overgrown pine trees. A true diamond in the rough, as far as laundry mats go.

It was the perfect place to finish homework, to read, and to gossip until one night something happened that made us afraid to show our faces there ever again. One night, Jess and I left all of our clothes to dry and headed back to our apartment to study for final exams. Several hours later, just before nine o'clock, Jess jumped up from the table. "Oh no, we completely forgot about our clothes in the dryer!" she said.

So Jess raced out the door with three minutes to go, but by the time she got to the laundry mat, it was well after nine. She tried the door anyway, and to her surprise, it was open. Laundry bags in hand, she opened the dryers and began to gather our clothes, when suddenly, the overhead lights shut off, a bright spotlight came on, and the security alarm started ringing at full blast. Expecting the police to show up, Jess shoved the clothes into the bag at a criminal pace --like money from a bank robbery. Unseen, she sped back to the apartment as fast as she could. When she finally told me what happened, we agreed just to sacrifice our forgotten load of towels, and leave them behind for good. Sadly, that was the last we ever saw of the 4th street laundry mat.

Since that fateful day, I sometimes come to Doozy Duds across from campus on the hill. The thing about Doozy Duds is that it's right next to Dot's (dirty-ass) Diner. Nothing says "we're going out again tonight" like a Dot's hangover-curing breakfast, so I dropped a few quarters in the washers and ran over for some scrambled egg whites, the pepper-iest hash browns you can imagine, and a couple of greasy sausage links to settle my shakes. After six beverages (well...water, juice, root beer, and iced coffee) my headache didn't stand a chance.

The thing about Doozy Duds that really sets it apart from the 4th street mat are the college boys. One of my favorite things to do there is hop up on the counter near the dryers and watch last-clean-tee-shirt-wearing college boys pack four loads of laundry into one dryer and wait three hours for it to dry. I mean, there's just something adorable about learning.

Speaking of the opposite sex, let me tell you the truth about something here: You will never meet someone you want to date at the laundry mat. Think of all the movie scenes and commercials where a cute girl is folding her lace panties across the table from a hot man? That never happens. First of all, guys at laundry mats have waited until the absolute last possible day to do laundry, so they show up in ratty tee-shirts and sweatpants without boxers because none of them are clean. The scene plays out a little more like this: nine times out of ten you catch some perv-y creep anxiously watching you unload your clothes from the dryer, hoping to catch a glimpse of the g-string of his dreams. It's not nearly as romantic.

And last, but not least, before you set off on a laundry mat quest of your own, I have one fair warning: These timeless establishments will never go out of business, and that's because God made laundry mat floors dirtier than any other floors in the world. It would be cleaner to drop your white shirt on the dirt floor of a hut, than on the floor at Doozy Duds. You are so incredibly fucked when this happens because now all the dirty hair and crumbs and diseases of the world are caked on your clean white shirt. And, trust me, that is exactly what it looks like. In fact, I've only seen a floor mopped once at a laundry mat, and the next week it was out of business. Consider yourself warned.