That's right, it was by the pound! I still can't believe how cheap it was. It felt so indulgent, but it was so incredible that we could afford it, no way was I passing it up.

- other people literally seeing my dirty laundry always troubled me. I

One important book on the history of housework, More Work For Mother by Ruth Schwartz, explained how that very issue kept fold n' washes from completely taking over household laundry. Home washers and dryers reduced the work it takes to do your own laundry, but commercial laundries, even if they paid decent wages(which they currently don't), can do it very cheaply thanks to the advantages of large scale equipment, and economies of scale in division of labor when large numbers of people divide up the steps of folding laundry. If a large percentage of the population used commercial laundries, so that they could grow much larger than they currently are, such businesses could probably wash and fold at a price comparable to the water and electricity we use to do it ourselves. But people literally don't want others to see their dirty laundry!

I always wondered about rich people who have servants do their laundry for them, when I read that. If you don't want strangers to see your dirty laundry, isn't it worse with someone you know? But maybe once you have servants, you have already made the decision to surrender a great deal of your privacy; that loss of privacy is to people you have a great deal of power over, as opposed to a stranger you have little leverage with.

Eta: I forgot the part where I used it to find Jeremy Renner's Arms on HBO.

Verily he is his own buddy cop movie.

I didn't mind strangers cleaning my laundry, but I would have minded someone I knew (or had to look in the eye) seeing it.

I assume that the folks at my Wash & Fold see enough laundry that mine (or anybody's) is pretty uninteresting to them.

Thank you, Ginger and Lee, I may well take you up on that offer. We have a doctor in the family, which always helps at times like this.

I suspect the first couple months are going to be focused on the surgical wound site. It's so big that they didn't close it, just covered it with some newfangled surgical gel and a vacuum-suctioned bandage. One of those things I'd think was cool if a student was writing a paper on it, but I find confronting it in RL a little daunting.

My stains aren't that interesting, either, but I don't have a Wash & Fold near me.

I loved using a wash-and-fold laundry pickup-and-delivery service when there was one near me. Now I have a washer and dryer in my house and I can't justify using a service. Basically I'm lazy and I want someone else to do all the household chores for me because I'm lazy and I suck at them anyway. None of my stains were interesting enough for me to worry about a laundry professional seeing them. They've seen worse, and stranger.

Ugh. I emailed the friend on facebook who posted pictures of the "cholo" party, and was like "Um, I saw you posted some pictures, and I just wanted to let you know that a lot of people are going to find that pretty racist" essentially (I was trying to find a nice way to say it) and her response was "Oh, thanks, but the people who hosted were hispanic, it was their idea, and my friends just have that sense of humor, some people might find it offensive but they don't!" and I'm like "...." OK, guess I'm not one of your friends, because damn. If they hosted a blackface party would you go to that too?

(I should add that she had previously posted pictures of hanging out with some friends (people I don't know) earlier in the summer when one of them was wearing one of those horrible faux-Indian headdresses of feathers? But it didn't seem to be a theme party, and I didn't want to immediately hold her friends against her. But now I guess I will...)

Oh yay--I posted about my disappointment on Facebook (though with her blocked, and not calling her out by name) and one of our mutual friends commented that she, too, had noticed it, and was glad I called it out. Yay, mutual friend, even if not yay original friend.