Dishes and laundry

I had this dream almost two years ago, and never published it.  Rereading it now I'm reminded of why I thought to write down my dreams in the first place: my subconscious is a really weird place.  

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I went to visit a colleague who was sick at home, but it turned out he wasn't at his house; he had rented an Air BNB, so I made my way to the high rise apartment he'd rented. When I arrived, he wasn't there after all, but the place was a mess, so I decided to pitch in and clean up a little. I collected and stacked dirty plates from all over the apartment, sorted piles of laundry, then started washing up. It was one of those wide, deep farmhouse sinks, and I filled it with heaps of plates and cups.

A woman appeared and said, "What do you think you're doing?" I quickly realized that my colleague had only rented a single room in a two-bedroom apartment, so this person was the actual tenant (who was, understandably, taken aback to find a stranger washing her dishes).

I explained that I was hoping to visit my sick friend, and wanted to help out if I could. The tenant said, "Well, you can't be doing dishes now, because we need to eat." I turned away for a moment, and when I looked back, the farmhouse sink was now covered with a giant griddle or grill, and she was heating it up and throwing on steaks.  Before I could comment about what an ingenious, space-saving technique that was, she said, "If you want to help, I guess you could do some laundry."

I gathered up an armload of laundry, and someone pointed the way to the laundry room. I groaned when I saw what appeared to be an old wash tub with a hand-crank wringer. As I looked around, though, I came to realize that the set-up was a lot more complicated than that.

I watched as laundry-laden folks lined up, then climbed into something that looked like a roller coaster seat, strapping themselves in, and still holding on to their laundry. They'd then take a few deep breaths, and blow into a tube; the implication was that they weren't going to be able to breathe in the next phase of the operation. Once they'd expelled the breath, their seat would rocket up, and the next person in line would climb into the next seat.

The contraption I'd mistaken for an old wash tub and wringer popped open, and out climbed a person who'd completed the wash cycle.  She unbuckled herself, and departed with her now-clean laundry.

I looked around, wondering if there was a way out of this situation. What had started out as a visit to a convalescing colleague had turned markedly bizarre, and I did not want to rollercoaster someone else's dirty laundry.

Now I'm left to contemplate that metaphor, and figure out what it's saying about my life right now...