How to Live in Chicago

1: Do your first load of laundry in your new apartment.  Discover that the dryer does not dry clothes completely.

2: Decide that you need to buy a drying rack because there are not enough door frames and chair backs and coat hooks in the apartment to finish drying your clothes.

3: Look at Target’s website and find out that they have lots of drying racks to choose from.

4: Print out a map from Google with directions to the closest Target.

5: Take a bus and then a train to get there.

6: Get off the train and realize you are in the shadiest part of town ever.

7: Go inside Target.  Walk to where you think drying racks should be.

8: Find every laundry accessory known to man except for drying racks.

9: Ask a stock guy where the drying racks are.  Listen as he tells you to go back to the exact location you were just in.

10: Go back to that location.  Look around some more.

11: Call CVS and ask if they have drying racks.  Smile with relief when the guy says they do.

12: Leave Target.  Walk back through shady neighborhood to the train station.

13: Wait for the train and read the sign at the community college, which says that it is 84 degrees at 8:36 p.m.

14: Get off the train and decide to walk home instead of taking the bus so that you can save $2.

15: Walk past a cemetery in the semi-dark in the sketchy part of town and totally regret saving $2.

16: Decide that if you aren’t murdered or raped or overcome with shin splints, you are going to buy a ton of ice cream before going home.

17: Go inside the blessedly air-conditioned CVS.  Go to laundry section and do not be surprised that they don’t have any drying racks.

18: Buy toothpaste, face cleanser, and two boxes of ice cream products.

19: Go home, let you clothes sit damply on the bed, and eat ice cream in self-imposed peace.

THE END.