Anddddddd Everything is Pink

Well I’m back in Italy now and for all the pros, there are of course some cons. For example, today I did laundry in our Italian washing machine and turned everything pink. Very pink. I mean, if I have to choose a Crayola color to describe it, I would pick “Cotton Candy.”

Italian washing machines are a bit different than American ones. For one, the instruction manual is in Italian. For two, the symbols on the machine mean absolutely nothing to me (although I did deduce that the t-shirt probably meant cotton), and finally, water temperature is in Celsius. The three factors added up to one unfortunate load of laundry. Another interesting fact about Italian washers is that one load takes approximately 3 hours, and that is on the fast setting. There is actually an overnight setting if you feel like waiting.

I think that Italian washers very accurately portray Italian culture. Italians are never in a hurry. I have yet to see an Italian recklessly pushing through a crowd to get their grocery shopping done and over to the post office before it closes. It’s quite the opposite where I live in northern Italy. People spend their entire Monday morning at the post office chatting and waiting in line to pay bills. They stroll through grocery stores – that is, when the grocery store is actually open for business. Everything shuts down for 4 hours during the day so people can go home for lunch, nap, and sometimes get drunk in the piazza. So it doesn’t really matter to them that the quickest laundry setting takes 3 whole hours, because they just aren’t in a hurry to complete their chores.

A fifth interesting Italian washer fact is that the door locks immediately after pushing the start button, and does not unlock until 5 minutes after the cycle is finished. So if you realized you made a mistake? Oh well! Just enjoy watching the clothes gradually turn pink in the window as it mockingly continues whirling. Or what about that shirt you need to wear within the next 3 hours? Forget about it, there’s no way in there. Again you can sadly watch it get pressed up against the window, tauntingly close, yet completely unreachable. While us Americans would become stressed out at the thought that we can’t rescue our beloved white shirt swimming in hot water with the red sock, Italians apparently either never make this mistake, or get over it. I doubt anyone writes scathing letters to washing machine manufacturers bitching about how they couldn’t get to their clothes when they desperately needed them. Italians probably shrug, and then gather their entire family at the nearest restaurant for raucous wine drinking and pizza eating until late into the night.

So I tried to take a page from the Italian’s book and say I didn’t care about my American Apparel knee high socks turning Easter Bunny Pink….but then I saw them this morning and became sad again. But then I remembered something! Rachel turned an entire load of laundry pink when she first moved to New York in Friends! Granted, I’ve been doing laundry for 10 years and this wouldn’t have happened in the states, but Rachel moved on and so can I. At least I can pull off my pink socks, and my white undies that are now Sunset Pink are evenly died so they actually look quite nice. Unfortunately for My Husband, I’m not so sure how people will respond to his new pink socks. He can mix and match them with his yellow socks though – because yesterday he accidently put an orange shirt in with them and dyed an entire load of laundry a nice Sunshine Yellow.