too much moving around

On an evening walk in my neighborhood yesterday - in DC, don't forget - I walked by a sign advertising a new condo building planned for an empty lot. The sign read Lincoln Park condos. My first reaction was - Lincoln Park? Are they confused? This is North Capitol Hill - a far cry from the posh lakefront neighborhood of Lincoln Park. And just because you dress it up with a name like Lincoln Park it's won't stop being the ghetto.

Then I realized I don't live in Chicago, where the other Lincoln Park neighborhood is. Oops. I guess I have been moving around too much in the past year. I don't even remember where I live.

Also of interest during my little jaunt:

In a small yard in front of a rowhouse, my neighbor has planted, alongside the lush greenery and pansies, a dirty bouquet of silk yellow roses. Silk. Fake roses. Planted into the ground right next to the bushes.

In other news, I learned a priceless laundry lesson last night. After turning my only white shirt light blue (this is why I shy from wearing white), I promptly called my father. I realize I moved away from home nearly a decade ago (yikes) but sometimes you just need to call in the experts. He passed me on to my step-mother, who then referred me to her mother.

So I called who I guess you could call my step-grandmother, who is an ultra-Southern, God-fearing, Republican wife of a former minister. If anyone knows laundry, she does. In the thickest, kindest, most bourgeois (as opposed to rednecky) Southern accent, she instructs me to fill the washer with water, half-cup of bleach and detergent.

"Then you let it churn a little, and put your garment in and let it soak over night," she tells me. "Then run the wash again in the morning. I do this every week with all my whites."

It worked. This woman knows her laundry.