Laundromat Diaries & Suds (Entry: 1)

Photo: Muriel de Sezel

Bubble, Bubble, Toil & Trouble

Dear Diary,

Imagine...

• A bathtub.
• The tub's faucet running with warm water.
• Bubble bath being added... not a capful or two as recommended, but the entire contents of the bottle.
• Water... continuing to run... without stopping.

It's not hard to imagine a bottle of bubble bath accidentally falling into a tub, and then perhaps, through negligence, allowing the water with its bubbles to overflow and flood a room.

But imagine, instead of a bathroom... a laundromat.

• Swap out the bathtub for a front-loading washing machine.
• Switch the bubble bath to... Tide detergent in a box... the whole box.
• Add water into the mix, on a fixed cycle...

And honestly, none of this was my fault.

It was Dad who put his foot down and said, "No!" to having our broken washing machine repaired or replaced with a new one.

And Mom, with strong opinions of her own, who let it be known..."No machine? Then you do the laundry, Mister!"

I probably should have written that last bit in all caps with triple exclamation points at the end, but this was just the beginning.

Somehow, "Little Miss" (me, the 9 year-old daughter) was thrown into the mix and was made to join "Mister" in doing the laundry.

Which explains how Dad and I, never having done laundry before, ended up in a laundromat with 5 machine-loads of dirty clothes and no clue on how to get dirty clothes cleaned.

But Dad had a theory: "If a little is good, a lot must be better"... detergent-wise.

And so, he added a whole box of Tide to each of our 5 front-loading machines and hoped for the best.

The rest you can guess.

As the water in the machines rose, so did the soap suds, soon obscuring any sight of our clothes.

And still the bubbles kept coming...

Out from the gaps in the soap dispensers!

Out from the hoses behind the machines!

We stood. We stared. We were shocked, but stayed silent.

Until the bubbles foamed above the machines... peaking like snow-covered mountains and sloping across the entire back wall!!!

And then, like the bubbles, we could no longer be contained.

At first we giggled, then laughed, then guffawed, till the pain in our stomachs and tears in our eyes wore off. 

What else could anyone do?

When the only other person in the laundromat, a young woman, eyeing us while waiting for her clothes to dry, got up from her chair, and inserted 5 coins into the laundry vending machine.

Out dropped 5 small plastic pouches.

Without saying a word, she then emptied the contents of the pouches: a pink liquid, into each of our 5 machines.

And poof! Just like that... the suds in those machines vanished, and our clothes reappeared!

The woman was a female Houdini!... and our savior.

Her trick?

The pouches, we later found out, contained fabric softener: apparently, liquid magic that makes bubbles disappear.

Laundromats & The Kindness of Strangers.

Until Next We Meet

at

"Here and Next"

XOX... Dyan

   

Sunday, Cyber Monday, The Stick & The Eagles

I was like a rabbit after a stick... not a carrot stick... but a "stick" vacuum cleaner. Not any model... but the one advertised online, for Cyber Monday, with the tagline: "How can you not buy this? They're practically giving it away!"

"They," being Walmart.

And "It," being the ionvac ZipVac, 3-in-1, Corded, Stick Vacuum by Tzumi, retail price: $99.97

On sale for J...U...S...T...$20.00!!!

Okay, the price hooked me, but I'd been after a light-weight upright for years now... something manageable that I could easily use to remove small bits of debris from our hardwood and tiled floors, while still leaving the carpeted areas in the bedrooms to my husband, who insists on using "The Beast": a cumbersome and loud industrial canister Shop Vac with a powerful motor, massive filter, and a flexible hose capable of sucking up a small dog.

I did say loud. But should have said LOUD... as in EAR PLUGS REQUIRED, LOUD!

Not so, for the ionvac vacuum whose 5-star reviews mentions the word "Quiet" again and again, along with...

"Awesome Vacuum!"

"Light Weight!"

"Long Cord!"

"Picks Up Everything!"

"Best Purchase I Ever Made!"

"HEPA Filter Included!"

Words that sold me... but my vac wasn't being sold yet. This was only Sunday, not yet Monday.

So... with high hopes of nabbing one... I went online to Walmart's site: set up an account, created a password, logged in, found the item, not yet on sale, and saved the page to my desktop, where at 12:01 AM, officially Cyber Monday, I'd place my order and hope for the best.

With a plan set, I was then set to relax and enjoy Sunday night's televised football game between the Philadelphia Eagles (our home team) and the Green Bay Packers. An exciting game made more exciting, when during a commercial break, an ad for Walmart announced:

"CYBER MONDAY STARTS TODAY, SUNDAY at 7 PM!"

WHOA! And faster than Jalen Hurts (Eagles QB) could throw the ball to A.J. Brown (Eagles WR), I was back at my computer with Walmart's link opened, the ionvac in my cart, and the button marked, PURCHASE, clicked!

TRANSACTION COMPLETE!

YOUR ORDER HAS BEEN PLACED.

YOUR ITEM WILL BE READY FOR PICK UP AFTER 11 AM TOMORROW. (Cyber Monday)

TOUCHDOWN! I SCORED! As did the Eagles, who won the game, while I won a vacuum!

Fast forward to Monday.

Like a kid on Christmas Day, I woke up early with the anticipation of receiving my gift. Later, with my coat on and purse in hand, I headed for the door, when I remembered that I needed to print a copy of my order to take with me.

That's when I saw... a new email from Walmart:

YOUR ITEM IS OUT OF STOCK. YOUR CARD HAS BEEN CREDITED.

WHAT? WhaaaaaaaT?

I no longer felt like the rabbit who snagged the carrot, but more like the comic strip character Charlie Brown, whose football was snatched from under him by Lucy. Only, instead of a football, it was my vacuum... with Walmart doing the snatching.

I WAS PISSED JUST THE SAME.

"Try not to let this ruin your day," said my husband, sympathetically, while knowing he was stating the impossible.

My day WAS ruined, with several more ruined after that, after researching and noticing the ionvac, even at full price, was out-of-stock... EVERYWHERE!

And so... I let the dust settle and moved on. On to other things... like reading, writing, creating, and browsing the internet where one day, on eBay, I found this:

iONVAC ZIPVAC, 3-in-1, CORDED, STICK VACUUM FOR SALE!

NEW! IN ITS ORIGINAL BOX!

FREE SHIPPING!

$30.00!!!!!!

1 LEFT!

Right then, I bought it!

And received it two days later!

That's when, after opening the box and assembling the gray plastic parts, I heard a hum... 

Not from my new ionvac quietly gliding along my tiled kitchen floor... 

But from ME!... humming this Rolling Stones' song:

Wanted, Needed, and for the price... More Than Expected.

If interested:

Check out these vacuum collectors:

An 11 year-old on 'The Tonight Show' with Jay Leno here:

And a teen on 'This Morning', a British show here.

Watch a vintage Hoover television commercial here.

Take a look at the ionvac ZipVac from Tzumi here.

And as of 1/29/2023, the Eagles are going to The Super Bowl! GO BIRDS!

Watch and listen to 'Fly Eagles Fly' sung by:

The Philadelphia Opera Company here.

The Mummer's South Philadelphia String Band here.

A huge crowd of Eagles fans in front of the Philadelphia Art Museum here.

Watch and listen to the Eagles players record a Christmas album for charity that sold out in 3 minutes and raised $250,000 here. Listen to the complete Christmas album here.

And curious about the slogan "It's a Philly Thing?" Check out the video here.

Here's wishing you & yours...

a

Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous 2023!

and

"May You Always Get What You Need."

From

"Here and Next"

XOX... Dyan

Word/s & Wordle

Source: SpYurbanart

Why Blah, Blah, Blah, when one Blah will do?

Source: SpYurbanart

Not to say that Ernest Hemingway was blahing away when he used six words to tell his story..."For sale: baby shoes, never worn," but sometimes less is more, which is humorously pointed out by Brandon Specktor in the following article titled: "The Power of a Single Word," found in this month's "Genius Issue" of the Reader's Digest.

"One needn't be a blabber-mouth to get a point across. When a Macedonian general threatened to attack Sparta in the fourth century BC, he warned the Spartan generals, "You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army on your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city." The Spartans replied with one word: "If."

Source: Kiwi-english.net

Whoa! The Macedonians suddenly remembered they had to wash their hair that day and never attacked.

Similarly, in 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, German troops surrounded Americans at Bastogne and ordered them to surrender or face being wiped out. Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe sent back this pithy reply: "Nuts!"

And, no, he wasn't requesting snacks for his troops. Today, we'd use something a little spicier and almost as short, but the point got across and the Americans eventually fought their way out.

Another benefit of brevity? It saves you on telegram fees. French author Victor Hugo understood this in 1862 when asking his publishers how sales of his new book, Les Misérables, were going. Too low on francs to send a lengthy message, he instead telegraphed a single question mark. (?) 

Having sold all 7,000 copies of the book's first printing in less than 24 hours, Hugo's publishers responded in kind... with a single exclamation point. (!)

Source: Phoneky

Sometimes even masters of brevity need to employ a second word to make their point. Take America's 30th president, Calvin Coolidge... a man so tight lipped that his friends nicknamed him Silent Cal. A popular story told by his wife, Grace, recalls Cal sitting next to a young woman at a Capitol Hill dinner party. The woman turned to Cal and said, "I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you."

His reply? "You lose."'

Nobody likes losing, especially unfairly, which is what happened to me recently while attempting to play Wordle: the trendy 5-letter word game with a daily one-word answer.

I say unfairly, because I wasn't out of guesses, but was penalized for starting a game and failing (through forgetfulness) to complete the game by the end of the day, which cost me my 100% winning streak, which then had me: IRKED, VEXED, and IRATE! Yes... three excellent, 5-lettered words, any of which, could be the next Wordle answer.

Source: GameRevolution

UGH! Enough about Wordle.

Here's something others found irksome, but I think you might find amusing.

NYTimes: Metropolitan Diary, July 24, 2022

"Phones Off"

Dear Diary:

As an original subscriber to City Center's Encores! series, I was thrilled to attend the eagerly anticipated reopening after a two-year hiatus.

Subscribers generally know all the audience members who sit near them, so there's a bit of a buzz when someone new appears. And at a February performance of "The Tap Dance Kid," everyone in my row noticed a new face in the row in front of us. As the standard announcement was made about the rules against taking photographs and videos and using phones, this woman took out her phone and appeared to start texting.

The orchestra began to play and the audience applauded. The light from the phone was still visible. I was about to tap her on her shoulder and ask her to turn off the phone, when the person beside her turned to her.

"Please turn that phone off," he said.

"And by the way," he added. "You're way off track. The Wordle is 'pleat.'''

—Dennis Buonagura

Ha! And you thought I was done with Wordle.

One last bit... on Tuesday, August 30, 2022, for only the 2nd time in 150 games played, I solved Wordle in just two guesses!

Okay, that's two words, but... only one expression :)

If interested:

Learn about the One Word movement to help improve your life here.

Then scroll down to take a quiz to find one word that's best for you here.

Watch Jimmy Fallon play Wordle here.

Play Wordle here and for multiple plays, try Word Master here.

Listen to Strother Gaines, a one word storyteller here.

And for writers looking to spark those creative juices, try One Word, where upon hitting 'Go' you'll have 60 seconds to write whatever pops into your head after a random word appears on your screen here.

Until Next We Meet

at 

"Here and Next"

XOX... Dyan

Eyes, Names, & Memories

Emilio Villalba

A scent, a sound, something seen, said, or in this case read, that's all it takes to trigger a memory.

And that memory, for me, began with a piece written in Metropolitan Diary, a column in The New York Times.

Dear Diary:

I used to shop at the deli near my apartment almost daily to pick up a few things.

One day, I was short a couple of dollars and asked the cashier if I could make up the difference the next time I was there. She said that was fine.

I stopped in the next day.

"I owe you some money," I said.

She checked a note taped to the register with four or five amounts, with handwritten Korean-language characters next to each.

"$2.59," she said.

"That's correct," I said. "But you don't know my name. What is written there?"

"Big eyes," she said without looking up. "$2.59."

~ Noelle Nichols

Emilio Villalba

Big eyes, chuckle, chuckle.

My Dad, lovingly, called me "Big Eyes."

Not because of the size of my eyes, but more the size of my stomach. With eyes bigger than my stomach, I'd often dish more food onto my plate than my stomach could put away.

To that my mother would say, "She eats like a bird." But instead of nicknaming me Chickadee, Pigeon or Sparrow, she'd occasionally call me, "Miss Dolittle," as in... you do little to pull your own weight around here. Ouch!

In hindsight, I could have, should have, done more, but I wasn't a total slacker if that's what you're thinking. I worked part-time, after school, in the Woman's Department of Orbach's with a portion of my earnings kicked back to my Dad, as a thank you payment, for my room and board. Later, I learned that he saved every penny I gave him when he gifted it all back to me as I left for college for the very first time.

A sweet remembrance.

Not so sweet was being responsible for doing the family laundry... load, after load, after load, in a laundromat, alone.

And as far as helping out by preparing meals...

Well, I was banned from the kitchen after unknowingly blowing my mother's entire weekly food budget after cooking just one meal... Beef Bourguignon. I didn't even know she had a food budget, nor did I know how to cook.

I remember my mother's words, "I won't be home tomorrow night so you'll be cooking dinner." Gulp. The only thing I'd ever done on a stove was boil water, toast marshmallows, make chocolate pudding and attempt to fry frozen French fries, which almost burned the house down.

Yet somehow, I pulled it off: found that Beef Bourguignon recipe, shopped for the ingredients and voila, nailed it! My Dad said it was the best meal he'd ever eaten. When just earlier, he had offered to take my brother and me to McDonalds, when he found me crying while cooking.

The tears weren't from "being overwhelmed" and "in over my head" as he imagined, but by the onions I had been slicing.

Emilio Villalba

And so this is how the mind works... at least mine. One thing triggers another... from the story about Big eyes, to nicknames, to ending up in the kitchen with an onion.

But enough about cooking and more about names: the ones others give to us, and the ones we choose for ourselves.

I chose, at the age of 12, to change the spelling of my name from Diane to Dyan.

My 6th grade teacher never seemed to notice.

He did however notice the odd lettering in the school's hallway showcase, the one he asked me to design. I hadn't finished hanging all the letters but was in a rush to catch my bus home when he said, "You can't leave it like that!" pointing to the sign that read: "BUILDING UP WITH MA." Before I could leave, he insisted I add the last two letters, T & H. Yeah, it was a display about Math... sadly, a subject I still haven't grasped.

Well, it wasn't until my final days of High School when someone noticed the discrepancy in the spelling of my name and informed me that my birth name would have to be used for graduation. "No!" I said, standing my ground, while insisting that my name was legal through usage, something that I had previously researched.

Either the powers that be took my word for it, did the research on their own, or decided it wasn't worth the battle, because there on Graduation Day, I was handed my diploma and multiple awards, all hand-calligraphed with my first name spelled, "Dyan."

Emilio Villalba

Interestingly, actor Sigourney Weaver (Susan Alexandra Weaver) at the age of 14, changed her first name from Susan to Sigourney... a character from the Great Gatsby. She said the name change was an act of desperation because she didn't like being called Susie. Now she's called Siggy. And so it goes.

Singer Miley Ray Cyrus was named Destiny Hope Cyrus. As a baby, her family nicknamed her "Smiley" because of her cheerful disposition. She dropped the "S" and legally changed her name to Miley Ray Cyrus, keeping her family name and honoring her father, singer Billy Ray Cyrus.

Sting (Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner) was given that nickname by some of his band members because he often wore a black-and-yellow striped sweater resembling a bumblebee.

Lady Gaga (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) was nicknamed Lady Gaga by her producer Rob Fusari because she reminded him of the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga." She added Lady because it seemed regal.

And Alicia Keys (Alicia Augello Cook) considered using "Wild" as a star name. Her mother thought Alicia Wild sounded like a stripper, so they agreed on Keys... as in piano. Alicia is a classically trained pianist.

Emilio Villalba

Okay, my eyes are now blurry. We've gone from "Big Eyes" to "Blurry Eyes" with everything in-between. As they say in the film industry... " It's a wrap!"

"The world only exists in your eyes.

You can make it as big or as small as you want."

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald 

If interested:

50 Celebrities: Their Real and Nicknames here.

Famous Companies And How They Got Their Names here.

10 Cities and Their Nicknames Here.

Nicknames of American Mobsters Here.

And From the Mob Museum, Generate Your Own Nickname Here.

Nicknames of 75 Sports Figures Here.

Girl With 1,000+ Letters In Her Name On Oprah Here.

Quick Look At Artist Emilio Villalba Painting An Eye Here.

Curious About How I Almost Burned Down The House Cooking French Fries? You Can Read or Reread that Previous Post Here.

Nomen est omen

Name is Destiny

Until Next We Meet

at

"Here and Next"

XOX... Dyan

Observations & Parking

Photo: Dyan Titchnell / Here and Next

9 times out of 10... if you see a vehicle backing into a parking space, then pulling out slightly, to realign its tires in order to center itself within the spot's white, painted, parallel lines, chances are... you'll notice a man exiting the driver's side of the vehicle.

It's just an observation.

Women don't back up.

Nor do they back down.

But that's another issue for another time.

Normally, I don't pay much attention to who's parking what, or where, unless we're in the city, Philadelphia, where vacant parking spots are nowhere to be found.

But this 'observation thing' sprung from an incident.

An incident involving our vehicle.

Photo: Dyan Titchnell / Here and Next

It started with a lovely walk in the park, Alverthorpe Park, and ended with us in our vehicle ready to leave for our next destination: 'A Taste of Philly', a pretzel store in Glenside, to pick up 2 party trays of mini soft pretzels purchased as gifts, when, in shifting gears, we discovered our Chevy van... had no reverse! Not so lovely.

How does one drive a vehicle without the ability to back up?

My husband didn't seem overly concerned.

Our van, Bruce, soon to be 25 years old in May, could still go forward, and once the car parked in front of us left... we were able to drive through the now empty spot and head towards pretzel-land. Phew!

But upon arrival, where does one park without reverse?

Parallel parking is out, so too, are most lots with double rows of parking.

So we drove around, circling the area exploring all options without any luck, until finally, we chose to park... illegally... perpendicular to all the other vehicles, and hoped for the best.

Then with mission accomplished, party trays situated in our van, we headed home, only to discover mid-way... that our van... had no drive gear. No ability to move forward!

Luckily, after the engine cooled down a bit, we were able to make it back to our apartment complex, where we managed to pull head-first into our usual spot in the garage. A week later, with a new filter, change in transmission fluid and a few extras, our van was once again up and running. What a relief!

Photo: Dyan Titchnell / Here and Next

And it was this fixation over parking: parallel, angled, perpendicular, back and head 'in', that prompted me to observe the comings and goings of people parking their vehicles in our building's parking lot, which is clearly visible through our large picture windows from our 3rd floor apartment.

Once again, the results showed, at least in our complex, that when given the option, more men than women will choose to back into a parking spot.

Why? I can't say.

But here are 2 stories involving parking that I think you might find interesting:

6 years, 211 spots, Gareth Wild conquers a parking lot. Read it on Twitter here.

Italian car parked in same spot for 47 years here.

And Here's Something For After You've Left The Parking Lot.

The Playmates, 1958 here.

Beep, Beep For Now!

XOX... Dyan

 At "Here and Next"