A Title So Dull Even Reverse Psychology Won’t Get You to Read On

I’d hoped to be back writing short pieces of truncated scenes this morning as I normally do, but I’ve gotten a late start due to an early start.Maybe some sort of weekend recapitulation is in order.

Our house is clean this morning.  Last week while cleaning resilient wads of red hair from the rollers of our vacuum I determined I was wasting time.  The thing was well and truly busted.  I didn’t want to fix it; I’m not Bedouin or a junk man.  Carrie quickly priced a couple options for a Dyson and we were off to buy the cheaper of the two since the pet hair one exceeded our gut cost-to-performance expectations.  Once home I jerked it out of the box and fired it up.

A trip around the living room filled the canister.  A second trip around the same carpet nearly filled the canister again.  The vacuum performs under expectations or the carpeting exceeds them.  I’m going with a win for the carpet.  We’ve found a comfortable combination of ambivalence and willful ignorance a quick route to a clean house.

So we Dysoned it up.  Moved all the furniture to the periphery.  And rolled out the Bissel home steam cleaner.  I use the word steam loosely—I don’t think they use it at all—because I don’t think it would make as much sense to call in a wet-vac.  This lonely tool bewilders and impresses me every time I use it.  An unintuitive combination of dials and triggers coupled with a long-ago skim of the instructions means I start each session by figuring it one more time.  In the end it’s simpler than I recall.  Then the cleaner sucks up all the pet stains—that’s marketese for shit, puke, and pee—and kid stains—not exactly the same but close.

The other pleasure is it’s facility.  I come away thinking we should do this once a month.  Why don’t we?  Why haven’t we?

Sink’s clean.  Kitchen counters clear.  Garage 10% better than the weekend before.

Hopefully these conditions maintain throughout the week till our 10th Annual Pumpkin Carving Party on Saturday.

Day 305