The Key to a Successful Day

Today was quite an exciting day. We woke up to see that it was grey and rainy and decided to make it a lazy morning. We caught up on our reviewing and planned for the next few days, and then we decided that it was time to do some laundry. With our pockets stuffed with quarters we set off for the basement to examine the washer/dryer situation. While waiting for the elevator we saw Rick and his wife Anne coming out of the apartment for a say on the down, and we saw that they had locked the door behind them. Realizing that we didn't bring the keys, we asked them to leave the door open for when we returned in a few minutes, and they gladly did so. On the way down, they told us that if we ever were locked out, Gil down the hall had copies of the keys.

It wasn't until we were almost in the basement that we realized that we didn't have any detergent. We took the elevator back up to the fifth floor and Cecilia ran into the apartment to find some. Finally in the basement, we chose one of the empty washing machines and put our dirty clothes in.

Only a couple of minutes later, we were back up at the fifth floor. Only now, the door was inexplicably locked. Well, not inexplicably, someone must have locked it, but it was very surprising. We stood dumbfounded outside the door for a few minutes, frantically knocking and ringing the bell, before we decided that we would have to go find Gil (and thank goodness Rick and Anne had told us about him!). However, we didn't even know which apartment he was in. We realized that the only solution would be to go look at the board with everyone's name on it down in the lobby. Louisa stood safely on the other side of the lobby door while Cecilia ran out to check. He was in 5F.

We knocked on the door of 5F. A woman's voice called out, "Who is it?" We told her that we were friends of the Pughs and that we had been locked out, but she couldn't really hear us from the other side of the door and almost sent away. We persisted because we could hear Gil's voice in the background asking who it was. Finally she let us in and we found the keys. We ran back excitedly to 5A and tried to open the door. We tried the first lock, but nothing happened. Then the one above it, but the door still would not open. So we tried the first one again. This time, however, the key got stuck. We stood bewildered for a few seconds before we decided to unhook the other key from the loop and try the upper lock again. Finally we were able to open the door, to our great relief. Cecilia ran the keys back to Gil while Louisa again stood safely on the other side of the door.

It wasn't until much later, after lunch, that we remembered about our clothes. We again journeyed down the basement, only to find all of the washers filled--but none with our clothes. After a moment of panic, we found them piled on a folding chair in the corner. Unfortunately, all of the dryers were filled as well, so we had to come down later to dry them.

Then it was finally time for the day's gelato. We had been hearing all about a new gelateria on the West Side, and we had decided that today was the day to finally check it out. It was definitely worthy of the reviews it has been given.

We decided to walk up Broadway to 96th St. where we could take a crosstown bus, but we hadn't made it that far before we ran into potential prom dress stores. After trying on several, Cecilia miraculously found one that she liked! Both she and Louisa were very happy to finally be done with that.