After about a week and a half in France, we started to run out of clothes. Pat had quite a pile up from before we arrived and in asking him, he doesn't remember doing his laundry. Eww, now that is really gross. He seems to think that they did their laundry at the drummer's brother's house but as far as men go, these are petty details.
There was no washing machine at our house. And there wouldn't be as far as I could gather from the things I was told. Oh, there were hook-ups but a small capacity washing machine was well over $1100. And when I say small capacity, I am talking about a machine that would fit 2 pairs of jeans, maybe three comfortably with maybe a couple of t-shirts and that was it.
Water is extremely expensive in France. A monthly water bill would average anywhere from $90-$100 per. This is no lie! We would stagger our showers as much as possible going two to three days sometimes without a shower just to conserve. Before I had gotten there with the girls, Pat and the band members would go sometimes 10-11 days without a shower, they would wash with a rag but that was the extent. Coming from all the luxuries of taking baths and showers, using dishwashers, washing machines, and washing our vehicle in our driveway, this was a pretty harsh reality. I am not one to get up and leave without first taking a shower so when I heard this, I was not a happy camper. And we had to toddlers too, they needed to be bathed at least every other day. At least! Eventually, I grew accustomed to this but not completely.
The bathtub in the house was about 3 feet square and about 1 foot deep so there were no baths to be had by myself. Our girls thought their baths were pretty neat in this small elevated drain area of the shower. But I hated it.
Back to the dilemma of washing our clothes. Well, we really needed a washing machine and bad! Our kids were wearing their dirty clothes at least twice in a week and I just couldn't stand it....spoiled American. So the man who rented the house out to us said that he would send over a washing machine. Talk about excited to do laundry! One just doesn't realize what they got until it's gone.
When the washing machine arrived, I leapt to the door to find him holding a plastic bin type contraption in his arms. It was really small!!! Just like all the mini cars and trucks! It was maybe 2 1/2 feet deep and maybe 2 feet square. I couldn't believe what I was ultimately going to be using to wash clothes. It was like we were back in the days where the women used washboards.
Here is what that washing machine consisted of. A plastic box with an oscillator in the middle that you had to plug in to get it to work and unplug to get it to stop. To empty it, we had to carry it outside and pour it out and then refill. Period. There was no spin cycle, and laundry was definately a two man job for Pat and I.
We had to hand wring everything and this was really a pain in the tooty!!! Especially jeans. He would grab one end and I would grab the other and then we would proceed to twist. Man do they collect the water. Not to mention that once I grew accustomed to the 50+ degree weather, it wasn't exactly good on our hands. My hands became very chapped and dried and they hurt and they were always so red from being in the cold water then in the cold air.
After we would wring them, we would walk through our very long and beautiful yard to the clothes line to hang up a pair of jeans and a few shirts and underclothes. We did wind up having to mix colors in this thing because it only held 1 pair of jeans and a few miscellaneous things and it didn't wash the clothes as well as my machine does here at home. So we really had to pick and choose the clothes that were necessary. For a woman, all clothes are necessary but I learned rather quickly what I needed to pick and choose. Laundry was a huge chore that no one in that house wanted to do! But alas, it needed to be done!
The singer of the band, "Ronny", his girlfriend was rather well off. She funded the majority of this whole band tour, cd's, recording studio time, this guys rent and share of the bills, his crotch rockets, pretty much supported him. She had been married to a mid-level, supporting actor, before Ronny and her met, who was killed and she was left with a small fortune. He would be purchasing a new washing machine once she arrived.
This would prove to cause just a small part of the tension that ultimately ended this whole project but that will come later.
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