Imitating a Washing Machine and Other Fun Things To Do When Your Roommate is a Shithead.

So my roommate moved out. After all the initial drama caused by her surprise announcement that she was doing so I'm pretty glad she's out of my hair. Her family came and moved her out at 8 am on Saturday, a time when I am not exactly known to be at my very most chipper. At first the fact that she left me with absolutely no dishes, furniture or storage space (she took most of the cupboards) made me angry and the way the eerily empty apartment echoed whenever I walked freaked me out a bit. But then I realized that not having any dishes means I won't have to wash HER dishes and a completely empty livingroom translates into a brand-new, hardwood floored yoga studio, complete with candles (she took the lamp). So yesterday I bought a frying pan, a plate and a fork and today I turned Mates of State way up and danced around the gloriously dog shit free kitchen.

Then I decided to do some laundry. When Tian moved out she took the nice, new washing machine with her and replaced with some old funky looking thing that is probably from the same era as Claire's old stove, just less of a cheerful harvest gold and more of a depressing cold porridge brown in color. Tian, her mother and her sister (who all look disturbingly like the same person) assured me it worked. I'm naive. I fell for it.

So I took all my clothes and threw them in and poured in a generous cup of expensive-ish yummy smelly laundry soap. And then I tried to turn it on.

I've never heard an appliance sound constipated before. I makes this weird, low pitched, "I'm going to blow up soon" type buzzing when set at the "wash" part of any setting. At the rinse and spin cycle it rattles like an unmedicated Parkinson's patient but remains mysteriously free of water. In short, it is not a functional washing machine. And now I'm really angry.

I washed my clothes tonight by dumping them all in the tub and walking back and forth on them like I was making wine. I am now reduced to backpacking-through-Asia standards of hygiene, except there, if I shelled out the 50 cents, someone else would walk on my clothes for me. Since I don't usually get angry I no longer have appropriate ways of dealing with my anger in my repertoire of social interactions. Would someone with more experience being upset please tell me what to do?