Last night, I forwent drinks with my friend after work and begrudgingly dragged myself to the laundromat.  It was a chilly Thursday evening and I was happy that the weatherman was once again wrong; I hadn’t been looking forward to walking home in the rain with my clean clothes.  Once there, I got myself (my laundry that is) situated and went towards the back to chat with my friend R (the owner).

We have this joke that laundry is like a therapy session.  We do a lot of girl-talk and just venting in general.  The only interruptions are when real customers (I don’t count) come to either pick up or drop off their laundry.  Last night, we were in rare form.  We were a group of four; R broke out a bottle of wine and locked the front door.  So, in the midst of folding laundry and our therapy session, we had wine.  I highly recommend having wine while doing laundry by the way, totally makes it tolerable.  I ended up staying there much later than I had anticipated, but I no longer cared what time I got home.

On my way home, I received a phone call from my father.  He was on his way to drop something off at my apartment and asked if I was home.  I told him I would be home shortly.  Now, I am very anal with my clothes when I wash them.  More than half of my wardrobe does not get dried in the dryer, but rather hung on a rack.  Since my father was coming over, I wasn’t about to hang all of my underwear for him to see.  My poor clothes had to suffer; but I could put freshly cleaned sheets on my bed.

As I was in the middle of making my bed, I heard my father’s knock at the door.  After I let him in, I continued to put the finishing touches on my bed (consisting of a lot of pillows) while we chatted.  This, of course led to my father throwing a pillow at me to “help” my process.  After I was done, we chatted a little more and when I thought my father was about to leave (he never usually stays that long) he asked if our cousin was working that night.  I said yes he was and we ended up heading out.

To explain, our cousins own a pub in my neighborhood.  I never hang out in my neighborhood, so I rarely ever set foot in there and my cousin who works there always nags me about not visiting him.  I figured he’d be pleased that I was finally coming.  When we got there, his younger brother (another cousin) was behind the bar.  So, my father and I grabbed seats at the bar and ordered drinks.  It figures that the one time I would actually show up, he wouldn’t be there.

When we decided that we were going to leave, a friendly patron decided to buy us our next round, so of course we were obliged to stay for another.

By the time I walked through my door I was definitely more than tipsy and I still had to hang my clothes to dry.  Needless to say, I did not get to bed early like I had planned and I broke my no drinking until this weekend rule for this week.  But…it was totally worth it.  Girl bonding and father/daughter time all in the same night…priceless.