The area where I’m staying does not endear itself to me. Today I had need of a laundromat: without a private bathroom and a supply of towels my ability to do hand laundry does not exist.

Because there was no one on desk duty at 9:30 in the morning, I followed instructions and phoned someone on the house phone, asking where I could find a laundromat. To me, a laundromat means a place with coin-operated washing machines and dryers and boxes of detergent where you do your own laundry. I had packed all of my dirty laundry into my day pack in a plastic bag and needed to know where to take it.

The guy I spoke to gave me directions. “Go right. Go right again…”

“Could you just tell me the name of the street?”

He told me it was on Brighton Ave. I walked Brighton Ave in both directions. No laundromat.

I turned the corner onto Harvard Ave where I had seen a place where you take your laundry to be washed. You were supposed to have a minimum of ten pounds.

My laundry, including my dirty lavender day pack, came to nine pounds. Ten pounds gets you a rate of $1.50 per pound. I didn’t care. I needed clean clothes so I paid fifteen dollars and watched the proprietor dump my laundry out onto the floor in front of a washing machine. Um. She also refused to wash my day pack (I throw it into the laundry regularly).

I have to be back at 5 PM to collect my clothes and I hadn’t yet had any breakfast, so I crossed the street to a convenience store, renewed my cash supply and bought a quart of milk to eat with some granola I took from our kitchen in Ireland.

I walked back to my lodgings. I was just going to eat sitting on the front steps: I had granola and milk and a spork. Ding, ding, ding — i didn’t have a bowl, mug, glass or anything to eat out of.

I went back inside. I asked the desk man on duty if he could find me a bowl or mug. I held up the milk jug and said “I have cereal, but nothing to eat it in.”

He offered me a plastic cup, saying “This probably isn’t good” and volunteered to go looking for something. Ten minutes later he came back with a dusty pot: “This is all I could find. You probably need to wash it. It’s been sitting around upstairs.”

“Could I have the plastic cup, please?” I asked. He went and got it again.

“Sorry to trouble you,” I said. “I have a whole kitchen without a plate, bowl, or cup.”

“We used to have all that stuff,” he said. “People would steal them, or not wash them.”

I sat down at my wooden kitchen table for five and poured half my granola into my new cup, adding a splash of whole milk. I ate it with my trusty travel spork, and rinsed it twice with water, which I drank, zen-style. I still had to clear out small seeds with my fingernail and use one of my precious tissues to wipe out the cup.

I put the milk in the refrigerator along with the rest of the granola. If the milk survives the night I’ll have granola tomorrow. The kitchen is adjacent to my room and is just for my own use behind a locked and chained door. It’s hard to go wild in a kitchen with only a refrigerator, a sink and empty cupboards.

I had a nice day yesterday, sketching and spending time in the Boston Public Garden, walking around and going to hear live music at Club Passim. I might write about all that later.