Both hands in wrist-stabilizers, I am next to useless. You've no idea how badly I want to write, but the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome will not allow. Please send gin, limes, a typing monkey, and someone to brush my hair.
And in the meantime, enjoy this tale from April of last year, wherein Mary gets the appliances of her dreams.
Ring! Ring!
“Good mor – Good afternoon, Acme Grommets and Gravel. Pearl speaking.”
“I’m like a rich person over here,” Mary says.
“You buyin’ the name-brand tuna again?”
She chuckles indulgently. “Oh, Pearl, Pearl, Pearl. So droll.” There is the sound of her opening then closing the lid of a large appliance.
“Do you hear that?” she says. “That, my friend, is the sound of a washer machine. And this – “ the lid of another large appliance is opened and then closed. “ – is the sound of the dryer.”
A smile leaves her lips, bounces off a satellite, and hits me in the ear. “Like I said,” she grins, “I’m like a rich person over here.”
“No more running to the laundromat,” I say. “It’s the end of an era.”
“It’s the end of a backache, more like,” she says.
“Would you like to describe them to me? Because I would like to hear them described.”
“Well,” she chuckles, “they’re white. And one of them washes, and the other dries. Hmmm.” She pauses. “That’s it, I think.”
“That’s all you need.”
There is silence as we each nod. We know we are nodding.
“Mary,” I say.
“Hmmm?” She’s staring at her new washer and dryer. I just know it.
“You’re staring at it, aren’t you? Lovingly.”
“Am not.”
“Mary,” I say, reproachingly. “We got a thing that’s called Radar Love.”
“What?” she says, laughing. “What’s this now?”
I laugh, refuse to answer.
“Pearl,” she says. “Pearl!”
“What?”
“I bin driving all night, my hands wet on the wheel…”
“Scoff at my love for you,” I say, in a mock-hurt voice, “but I know that you are standing in front of your washer and dryer, running your tiny freckled hands over their lids, aren’t you?”
A smile is muffled. “No, I’m not.”
“And you just stopped.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I’ll let you get back to that.”
“Weirdo.”
“Appliance-based pervert.”
Click.