It’s cold.

Yes, still.

Yes, I’m still whining about it like a big ol frizzy headed baby.

You know what sucks?  Doing laundry in Korea.  Despite the fact that this entire country is ruled by Samsung and that Korean scientists are cloning puppies, we haven’t reached the point where clothes dryers are a standard household appliance over here.  For the 2 weeks in Spring and the 2 weeks in Fall where things are temperate, it’s ok.  I can hang my clothes out to dry on my state-of-the-art aluminum clothes rack on my porch and they’ll dry within a day. During the soupy, steam bath hell that is known as Korea’s monsoon season, they develop a delicate bouquet of mold and must while taking 5 days to “dry”.  And currently?  Currently, doing laundry is literally going to kill me.

Last night, I did a load of laundry but fell asleep before the rinse cycle completed.  When I awoke in the Land of the Morning Calm today, they were crumpled up into a giant ball at the bottom of the washer.  I stuck my hand in and poked the mass with my finger, only to find that it was frozen solid.  MY CLOTHES FUCKING FROZE TOGETHER.  Not having the time or desire to deal with this shit, I took a shower and went to work.

Around 8:00 tonight, I finally got around to dealing with this.  Logic would dictate that I could just fill up my washing machine with hot water, melt the clothes, stick it on the spin cycle, and hang that shit up to dry.  As anyone who has spent an iota of time in Korea should know, however, logic dictates nothing here.

First off, the buttons and the digital read out on my machine are all in Korean.  I know the “power” button, and I know the “activate the fucking washing sequence” buttons, but the rest are mysteries.  So I can’t just fill the machine with water and then spin it out.  I’ve got to run a whole washing cycle.

On to the next problem:  When they hooked up my washing machine, they only had one hose, and they didn’t connect it to hot water.  I’m a slob in more ways than one, but I’m rather particular about personal hygiene and cleanliness, clothing included.  I decided I’d rather wash all my clothes in hot water than cold.  I busted out my W100,000 store screwdriver set (W100,000 is about $0.90) and changed the hose over to the hot water.  I turned on the water.  It sprayed everywhere.  I tightened everything.  Water spray.  I disconnected and reconnected.  Spray.  I rolled my eyes and hooked the hose back up to the cold water.  No spray.

I resigned myself to a lifetime of handwashing my underwear and cold washing everything else.  This was back in April, so my whites are now my greys.

No matter, right?  I mean, even the coldest water is still water, thus at a higher temperature than ice, right?  It would still melt the clothes.

BUT THE WATER IS FROZEN IN THE DAMN HOSE AND WITHIN THE ACTUAL MACHINE.  FUCK MY LIFE.

I learned several weeks ago that if i fill 2 liter water bottles with the hottest water I can get from my shower and pour it over the pipes and into the water faucet in the machine, it’ll eventually melt everything enough to get the water running.  Sometimes it takes two bottles of water, and other times it takes 749.  Tonight is one of those nights where it took a lot.

Of course, in the process of running back and forth between my bathroom and my porch, water is splashing everywhere.  My feet are wet.  It’s like, -19 C here.  Oh, look.  The cuffs of my pants have gotten wet, too.  Fill the bottle, put on slippers as I step outside, splash water everywhere, kick off slippers, step inside, repeat.  This went on for a few damn hours (i took some breaks) before I finally got water to come out of the machine.

The machine is running as I speak.  It’s past 2 AM, and I am damn tired.  Something’s telling me that I’m going to be repeating all of this again with the same clothes tomorrow.