Vintage Blog – March 2005
A mosaic of kool aide stains, blood and snots and the smell of fish caught two years ago – it was time to replace the carpeting. As you may recall my home has been a test site for vacuum cleaners since I bought this house in 2000. Every time I bought a new vacuum, so every other month, I knew there would be no point in buying replacement bags since the kids would use it to retrieve balls off the roof or a slice of bread out of the DVD player! It would need a new belt, new engine and new wheels before it would need a new bag. So now the current vacuum is safe since I got laminate floors.
Ahhh yes! Freedom! No more spraying, powdering, vacuuming the carpet. Just the three of us, in a house smelling of potpourri or maybe gardenia candles until… POP! That bubble burst. We are outnumbered. There are dust bunnies every where! They breed as we sleep! And they are big, Texas-sized dust jackrabbits!
Here in Texas we have some sort of huge mosquito type creature, I think it is called a May Fly. It’s not even May but since we have already hit 90 degrees here they are everywhere. They some how get into the house. Probably out of habit as they probably found my former carpet a stain, snots, fish smelly garden for breeding! The first time I saw one I tried to negotiate with it, “I am not permitted to give blood as I lived in Ireland in 1989-90 which were the Mad Cow years” but it came after me anyway. They look something like a daddy long leg with wings.
I have permitted the dust jackrabbits to grow and breed. Perhaps because of the fact that I work, go to school and am in the continual role of lion tamer of my two 12 year olds. So now I have super size dust jackrabbits. I discovered they eat May Flies! Yesterday, during dinner I watched as a May Fly had a huge dust jackrabbit attached, it couldn’t even fly, it just spun around and could not free itself from the grip of the dust. Though lively entertainment during our meal, to the ultimate, dismal tragedy of that May Fly’s life, I decided we need to rid the house of dust jack rabbits.
It’s not that we may have company some day. That’ll never happen. Oh, no, I stand corrected, as I recall a couple years ago there were some stubborn evangelists on my doorstep ready to save my soul. They wouldn’t leave. So I put them to work since I had just returned from the grocery store. They put away groceries, emptied the garbage and I was making a list for them but then suddenly they had to leave. I think it was the carpet, they couldn’t take it any more. Haven’t seen them since.
So in my effort to exterminate the house of jackrabbits I invested in a tool called a swiffer. Somebody is sitting on a beach somewhere in the Hawaii sipping a pineapple drink with an umbrella claiming they are not a dotcom millionaire but in fact the inventor of the swiffer. This tool is something like a board with a towel stretched around it like a bonnet and then hinged to a stick. The bonnet can be removed and washed in the washing machine.
Oh but the poor washing machine. Since the kids do not have the vacuum to do experiments on, they have turned to Maytag. They have washed belts, books, money, a skirt hanger and a stress ball. The motor is near shot. She works at half capacity and just doesn’t spin like she used to. I remember when I got her. My Mom, Tom in his car seat, and I drove through the hills in Connecticut which seemed like an eternity to the Sears Outlet. As I walked in the door they were marking her down which I felt was a message from God that this is my machine. I brought her home the same day. She has been sputtering, giving each load all she’s got. I have had her looked at, but have yet to call the Maytag man. I’m in denial.
The swiffer has a happy home in the corner of the garage, the bright white bonnet up, next to the vacuum. I also got a bottle of laminate floor spray, probably toxic since it kills dust jackrabbits.
So armed with our swiffer and our toxic spray we will exterminate dust jackrabbits this weekend. Of course that just means we will have to come up with a plan for the May Flies – perhaps closing doors? Naw, that’ll never work. And maybe finger through the yellow pages under M-A-Y-T, no, I just can’t do it. She’s fine with half a load.
A mosaic of kool aide stains, blood and snots and the smell of fish caught two years ago – it was time to replace the carpeting. As you may recall my home has been a test site for vacuum cleaners since I bought this house in 2000. Every time I bought a new vacuum, so every other month, I knew there would be no point in buying replacement bags since the kids would use it to retrieve balls off the roof or a slice of bread out of the DVD player! It would need a new belt, new engine and new wheels before it would need a new bag. So now the current vacuum is safe since I got laminate floors.
Ahhh yes! Freedom! No more spraying, powdering, vacuuming the carpet. Just the three of us, in a house smelling of potpourri or maybe gardenia candles until… POP! That bubble burst. We are outnumbered. There are dust bunnies every where! They breed as we sleep! And they are big, Texas-sized dust jackrabbits!
Here in Texas we have some sort of huge mosquito type creature, I think it is called a May Fly. It’s not even May but since we have already hit 90 degrees here they are everywhere. They some how get into the house. Probably out of habit as they probably found my former carpet a stain, snots, fish smelly garden for breeding! The first time I saw one I tried to negotiate with it, “I am not permitted to give blood as I lived in Ireland in 1989-90 which were the Mad Cow years” but it came after me anyway. They look something like a daddy long leg with wings.
I have permitted the dust jackrabbits to grow and breed. Perhaps because of the fact that I work, go to school and am in the continual role of lion tamer of my two 12 year olds. So now I have super size dust jackrabbits. I discovered they eat May Flies! Yesterday, during dinner I watched as a May Fly had a huge dust jackrabbit attached, it couldn’t even fly, it just spun around and could not free itself from the grip of the dust. Though lively entertainment during our meal, to the ultimate, dismal tragedy of that May Fly’s life, I decided we need to rid the house of dust jack rabbits.
It’s not that we may have company some day. That’ll never happen. Oh, no, I stand corrected, as I recall a couple years ago there were some stubborn evangelists on my doorstep ready to save my soul. They wouldn’t leave. So I put them to work since I had just returned from the grocery store. They put away groceries, emptied the garbage and I was making a list for them but then suddenly they had to leave. I think it was the carpet, they couldn’t take it any more. Haven’t seen them since.
So in my effort to exterminate the house of jackrabbits I invested in a tool called a swiffer. Somebody is sitting on a beach somewhere in the Hawaii sipping a pineapple drink with an umbrella claiming they are not a dotcom millionaire but in fact the inventor of the swiffer. This tool is something like a board with a towel stretched around it like a bonnet and then hinged to a stick. The bonnet can be removed and washed in the washing machine.
Oh but the poor washing machine. Since the kids do not have the vacuum to do experiments on, they have turned to Maytag. They have washed belts, books, money, a skirt hanger and a stress ball. The motor is near shot. She works at half capacity and just doesn’t spin like she used to. I remember when I got her. My Mom, Tom in his car seat, and I drove through the hills in Connecticut which seemed like an eternity to the Sears Outlet. As I walked in the door they were marking her down which I felt was a message from God that this is my machine. I brought her home the same day. She has been sputtering, giving each load all she’s got. I have had her looked at, but have yet to call the Maytag man. I’m in denial.
The swiffer has a happy home in the corner of the garage, the bright white bonnet up, next to the vacuum. I also got a bottle of laminate floor spray, probably toxic since it kills dust jackrabbits.
So armed with our swiffer and our toxic spray we will exterminate dust jackrabbits this weekend. Of course that just means we will have to come up with a plan for the May Flies – perhaps closing doors? Naw, that’ll never work. And maybe finger through the yellow pages under M-A-Y-T, no, I just can’t do it. She’s fine with half a load.
This is so good, your writing is similar to Erma Bombeck, have you heard of her? Funny situations... you should write a book!
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