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An Unbalanced Load
There is a noise. The laundry is unbalanced and bouncing, knocking really. I should address this, but yesterday I discovered the car needs work. True, balancing the load will allow me to focus on the bills, which I cannot do now because of the noise. We need the bills paid to find the money for the car repairs. The car has not been paid off, but the laundry has. I mean, the washing machine has been paid off, not the dryer. We're still paying on the dryer. I am not sure if fixing something we own, or fixing something we might own is more important.
Besides, there are other things for the money. For instance, we, meaning me not my wife, have a college loan to pay. It was a good school and I was happy to attend, but I had a lousy time there. The monthly loan is a reminder of that. I would like to get rid of the reminder. I discovered that I can consolidate the college loan with another--not the one for the dryer or the car--and it'll be just the one large loan. I don't think it will feel like I'm paying for the bad time in college if I do that. I'll forget that the college loan is in there. The other loan is for the house. I like the house. The new college-house loan will be fine. There should be no mental problem with this plan.
I hear the laundry bouncing around again. There's a new sound, a cranking sort of sound that might mean it's broken. If it's broken I should have a snack, leftover chocolate cake, before I do anything. The cake has too much icing, which is good from my perspective, but bad from my wife’s perspective. She would prefer I went straight to the laundry and skipped the cake. There is a clear reason for this.
I am now obese, BIG obese. Once she did the math and determined my obesity costs us 30% more than a normal person of about my height and about my build. I think the 30% comes from me being roughly 30% larger than a person of about my height and about my build. She blames the broken laundry on my "expansive," meaning large, clothing. She thinks it absorbs too much water and causes an imbalance. This extra water costs us money, too. It takes more for me to bathe, 30% more. I eat the cake anyway. I tell her I will just have to make 30% more money, which I do because I am a lawyer.
I am a bad lawyer. My last case was thrown out of court because of my incompetence. The clients were drug dealers who had paid retainers. All of three hours I spent preparing for this case; not nearly enough time. But I am not a greedy lawyer. The retainer is all I wanted. After the judge threw us out, I referred the clients to another lawyer, a friend, for the next trial. They were nice criminals. It was the least I could do. And, in the end, they were grateful for the referral. I know this because they did not ask for the retainer back. This is how the law works. I made my 30% more as a result, so now I eat the chocolate cake.
The laundry has stopped. Assuming it is broken and that we buy one of a similar price, we will owe as much as our entire house, the structure, is worth for all of the things we put inside of it. Of course, I'm throwing the cars into the equation. We have two now. The one car leans because I am obese. I tell her I would drive from the passenger side half the time to balance things out. She says she has no time for my jokes. She says to fix the laundry.
Copyright © 2009 Eric Neagu
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Eric V. Neagu lives, writes, and works as a consultant in Chicago. His undergraduate degree is from Purdue University in civil engineering, which he uses to improve the world as much as he can. Eric also has a graduate degree from The University of Chicago, which he mostly uses to give driving directions to Barack Obama's house when people ask. Other work can be found in Simon Magazine, The National Ledger, Bartleby Snopes, Bewildering Stories, Everyday Fiction, The Write Place at the Write Time, A Long Story Short, The Camroc Press Review, and Hackwriters.
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