Or, laundry.  

At $1.50 a load, I usually end up opting out of laundry each week, instead deciding to see how much mileage I can get out of bikini bottoms as underwear and bath towels as evening dresses.  Still, even these must run out eventually and so I'm left with a closet floor that has long since disappeared underneath about 6 months worth of laundry.  

But, last weeks additions to the pile had garments in it that had been completely submerged in lake water and then just tossed on the floor - and I feared if I left them there, they'd begin to grow their very own lake vegetation.

So, I did what I do when I finally decide to do laundry - I pulled out the biggest suitcase I could find, loaded up everything I could, and headed for my aunt's in Winnetka.  

I try to take the fact that I'm 25 and still take my laundry "home" for the weekend and think of it not as pathetic and immature, but instead as monetarily responsible.  I will put the $15 I'll save on laundry towards my retirement fund, and years from now it will have grown into something really spectacular.  Like $45. 

It was somewhat of a struggle hauling that suitcase into my tiny, dark, tower-of-terror elevator, but by the time my eyes finally adjusted to the midnight-esque ambiance they've got going in there, I discovered I wasn't alone. There was another woman in the elevator with a suitcase the exact same size as mine!

"Hey!!" I said, probably a little too enthusiastically, and pointed at her suitcase.  "Laundry?!?"

"Excuse me?" she said.

"Is it laundry day for you, too?" my enthusiasm deflated a little bit.

"Um, no, I'm going to Vegas," she sniffed and pulled her suitcase a little closer to her, as if the fact that I pulled my laundry around in a suitcase the size of North Dakota made me some sort of vagrant who was going to make off with her Vegas wardrobe and head for the hills.

I decided then and there that I'd rather use my suitcase for travel than what it was currently being employed for, so I concluded it was probably time to start getting serious about marketing my book.

Another problem with being a starving artist, however, is that you tend not to have a marketing budget.

So, I tried to brainstorm some creative solutions.  Solution #1 was to find anyone reading a book in public, strike up a conversation, and steer it in a direction that resulted in them vowing to ditch whatever author they were currently enjoying in favor of reading my book instead.  I pictured striking up a casual conversation, wowing them with my intellect, and bashfully agreeing to follow them to the bookstore so they could buy my book and I could immediately sign it for them.

I found my first target at a bus stop on Clark and Fullerton.  I was sitting there waiting for the 22, so it could drop me off a mile from the movie theater for which I was bound, and I could walk the rest of the way.  The alternative, in lieu of cab money, was walking the entire way, and I didn't trust I'd make it that far without the Starbucks I couldn't afford to stop and get. 

So, here I was - and here she was, reading a book, just like I'd planned.

"This is it!"  I thought gleefully as I inched closer to her on the bench, getting ready to make my introductory move.  Before I could though, I caught a glimpse of whatever it was she was currently reading.

"She lay on her back, bound to the bed by tawdry leather straps," was the first line I read.  It was also the first line of the book. 

It struck me that perhaps this was a woman who may not be interested in the particular genre I had to offer.  I certainly have no "tawdry leather straps" in my book, and I wouldn't want to disappoint her.  I'd have to find someone else.  Or, some money for marketing.

In the meantime, its more of the same.  Six months worth of laundry crammed into a suitcase meant for exotic backpacking trips, and getting wherever I need to go via busses and train cars that smell like an acute mix of urine, discontent, and failure.  (Masked as Monetary Responsibility, of course.)