nessie and the furbaby

i seem to have issues with vacuum cleaners. they're heavy, clunky, dirty & they often blow hot air at me, which i hate. i use a lot of different ones because, well, i'm a low-down, dirty maid. actually, i prefer to call myself a "housekeeper extraordinaire", but it all amounts to the same thing at the end of the day. scullery duty.

have you ever used a central vacuum in a house? they usually work really well & you don't have to deal with insufficient suction, but dang, those things are tough to work with. the hoses are about 40 ft long, they're heavy & they're covered in a hose sock. that means you're having to drag around pounds & pounds of slithering, serpent through room after room & those wily coils are sneaky too. they will reach out & snatch a chair leg or a small table & try to take it down. they look harmless, but they're actually beasts from the deep, dark lagoon. whenever i work with one, i silently call it nessie (as in, lochness monster), trying to make it think that we have a close and affectionate relationship in hopes that it will behave itself and not knock anything over out of spite or anger for having been awakened and disturbed and then expected to perform.

in my own house, i don't have such fancy dirt sucking technology. today i found myself on the floor with both of the simple vacuums i own. i snipped, pulled, yanked and chopped enough hair, yarn, string, and crud out of the roller bars of one that i could have made a medium sized stuffed animal with it. maybe after brooke goes to bed tonight, i'll dig the clump out of the trash, if the cat hasn't consumed it all yet, & pull out all my crafty skills & turn it into something exciting and new. maybe i'll even make a little outfit for it & give it to her for valentine's day. we'll name it dustin. or tumble.

i dismantled the other sucky machine to try to empty & clean it. i swear, i had my arm so far up in that thing, i felt like i was helping to birth a cow. but instead of slime and happy, wet cow babies, i only had a big bag full of hairy yuck, dust to my elbow and funk under my fingernails. but it gives new meaning to phrase furbaby.