Years of rigorous dusting, vacuuming, and bathroom scrubbing under my mother's watchful eyes did little to train me to maintain my own household. Don't get me wrong - I don't like to be dirty. I don't like living in filth and squalor. But the whole endless routine of cook, clean up, start-it-all-over-again just gets the best of me.
I can stand one morning a week of vacuuming, dusting, and toilet cleaning. But that's it. Doing the dishes every night? I once revealed to Tuesday Fight Club that the previous night's dinner dishes were still sitting in my sink - albeit rinsed and neatly stacked - and the group visibly recoiled. One woman came back the next week and told me she'd been thinking about what I said all week.
But I would rather go outside to play after dinner.
Or go read blogs.
59) In January 2006 we purchased a $1200 vacuum cleaner from a traveling salesman.
Now that's a seriously hardcore dirty secret. I actually hid the thing when my mom and sister came to visit and put my old model back in the hall closet.
But meet Kirby:
This shiny, upright creature sucks so much dirt and dog hair out of my carpets that the members of my household actually weep for joy when he appears.
Who knows what possessed us to let the young man in door when he appeared that cold evening. It was Minnesota after all: traveling salesmen are alive and well in Garrison Keillor's home state. He attached a funny little filter with a viewing window to his wondrous machine and it began pulling years of dirt, sand, and filth right out of our carpet. The carpet that had been vacuumed earlier that day.
We were horrified.
We were ashamed.
We were too damn embarrassed at our own filthiness that we bought the damn thing, on credit. I paid it off just last week.
We still look at Kirby from time to time and shake our heads. "I feel so dirty when I think about buying that thing," one of us will say. It is however, the last vacuum we will ever buy.
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