Laundry day has long been my least-favorite day.

Well, how can that be? No... no... that’s not true at all, because on my list of favorite days (Pay Day #2, Pay Day #1, Buffy night, Survivor night, South Park at the Eagle night, Earth-shattering Sex night, 2 Bottles of Wine night, etc.), Laundry day does not even appear. Laundry day is actually perfectly, solidly lodged at the very dark, eternal bottom of my list of most-loathed days (Rent due day, Seventh Heaven night, Leftover dinner night, Butt-shot day, Organ Transplant day, Quitting Smoking day, Day-after Quitting Smoking day, Laundry day).

“What’s so bad about Laundry day?” I’ve been asked. Imagine, if you will, what laundry day entails for us.

Step 1: Sorting the laundry. Whites. Warms. Colds. Towels & Bedding. Cramming it all into two large baskets and one giant, over-sized duffel bag.

Step 2: Walking to the car, a red Ford Escort named Butch. She may be a block away. Or two. Or three. In the heavy mist, or rain. Uphill.

Step 3: Parking the car as close to the apartment as possible, often illegally, since finding a parking space in San Francisco is more exciting than getting laid and/or finding a twenty on the sidewalk.

Step 4: Lugging the laundry down three flights of stairs to the street, to Butch, wherever she may be, and stuffing her full.

Step 5: Driving. This could mean driving to the nearest Laundromat, Brainwash, which is about 2 blocks away. But Brainwash is a zoo, their folding tables are shaped funny, and though 2 blocks is too far for us to walk with all our laundry, it is a ridiculously short distance to drive after all the work it took to load the car. So we drive to Launderland at 46th Ave. and Judah, which is a block from the beach, and about a half-hour drive from our cozy South of Market flat. It’s kind of a mind-trick, really. You see… we’re not going to do laundry, I tell myself. We’re taking a nice evening drive to the beach! Riiiight (works every time).

Step 6: Doing the laundry. Loading the double and triple-loaders, plugging the quarters in, waiting, fighting for dryers, plugging more quarters in, waiting, waiting, waiting, folding the cold, wet load (and then lugging the much, MUCH heavier oversized duffel bag out to the trunk), folding the dry clothes, packing them neatly into their baskets, and back into the back seat of Butch.

Step 7: Driving back to our lovely South of Market flat, parking (illegally, if necessary), and unloading the car.

Step 8: Repeating step 4, backwards, this time, much wetter, and therefore heavier.

Step 9: Catching my breath, but only briefly because Butch is blocking a garage (or a lane of traffic on 9th St.).

Step 10: This is where we divide and conquer. I typically go find a place to park the car, while my Tall Boy begins hanging up the wet clothes to dry.

Step 11: Walking from the car. I may have parked a block away. Or two. Or three. In the heavy mist, or rain. Uphill.

Step 12: Putting away the folded clothes and making the bed with new, freshly washed sheets.

There you have it. Our twelve-step program: Laundry Abominabous. If all goes smoothly, getting off to a good start right after work, we’re done by midnight!

So you may understand, ein bischen, the truly life-changing (yea, World-transforming) visit we had from my Tall Boy’s Tall Parents three weeks ago.

They bought us a washer-dryer – of our very own.

So much better our lives were soon to become! So much easier! So much happier! As my Tall Boy said, upon returning from the Sears Outlet in San Leandro, to his Tall Parents, without a hint of irony or sarcasm, “This changes everything!”

Is that where the story ends? Did we live happily, fluffily, snuggly-softly ever after? Oh no, my friends. Don’t even kid yourself. That was three weeks ago.