No One Cares What You Had for Lunch

I ran across this little gem the other day: a workshop for writers about our wonderful world of blogging, titled, "No One Cares What You Had for Lunch." While I might argue with the absoluteness of the appellation, "No one," (After all, you can generally find someone out there who cares about anything. The trick is finding them!) I cannot argue with the sentiment behind the title. Things we find interesting may have little or no relevance to the lives of others.

On the other hand, things we think are mundane may touch a chord in someone else, triggering, if not a lifetime transformation, at least a sigh of recognition or a mordant chuckle. Who knows?

For the record, I didn't eat lunch yesterday.

But if I had, I would have consumed a turkey sandwich on whole grain bread with fat free mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato, with an apple thrown in for extra brownie points.

Wait a minute...

Did someone say, "brownie?"

Who am I kidding? I would have grabbed whatever left-overs were hiding in the nether realms of the fridge. You know, that part at the back where the wild things grow...where the turkey from Thanksgiving keeps company with the cranberries from Christmas and the shrimp cocktail from New Year's Eve.

Gee, I had no idea my fridge was so...festive! It almost makes it a shame to clean it out.

Almost.

But it DOES make a handy excuse for the next time my husband opens the freezer door and things fall out on top of him.

Now, I have posted before on my, shall we say, RELAXED attitude towards cleaning. I enjoy a clean house as well as the next person. I just have better things to do with my day. Who doesn't?

(Actually, I know the answer to that one: my dear departed mother-in-law, who famously began her first visit to our first apartment on her knees cleaning out our bathtub because, "You obviously don't have the time to do these things." I had cleaned it the day before. Or THOUGHT I did...)

The world is divided into two groups of people: those to whom cleanliness is their default setting, with momentary messiness occurring now and then; and those to whom cleanliness appears to be a miracle of God (or the results of nocturnal toiling by the Lysol elves.)

I am firmly in the latter camp. I am so firmly in that camp that I dispute the word, "camp." After all, "camp" implies a certain transitory aspect. I don't camp. I have established permanent residency.

So, I bet you all got fabulous gifts of yarn, and books, and woolly stuff for Christmas.

I got this:
A Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner.

I choose to accept this gift in the spirit in which it was intended: as my hubby's desire to make my world a better place by alleviating my allergic symptoms, which are aggravated by dust, pet hair, and fibers. Also my bad back, which is aggravated by the bent-over posture required during vacuuming.

Yeah, that's it...

He couldn't possibly be impugning my vacuuming credentials, could he?

So this little robot charges around my house of its own volition for an hour and then automatically shuts itself down until I activate it again at the push of a button.

(Hubby knows I appreciate technological simplicity. He remembers the whole thermostatic fiasco.)

Two things have changed as a result of this recent acquisition:

1. I now share a house with FOUR ambulatory beings, one husband, two cats, and a robot maid.
2. A new phrase has entered my lexicon: "Honey, I lost the vacuum cleaner."

I no longer have to clean the floors.

But I DO have to uncover them. They haven't yet invented a robot that will pick up your belongings, rather than vacuum around them or, worse, over them.

Not that this Christmas was entirely a knit-free zone. I did receive these lovelies from my ever-l0vin' daddy:




That's ten skeins of Pear Tree 12 ply wool in "Winter Robin's Egg." Yumm!







Yesterday, I gave Roomba the acid test: a little jaunt around my studio floor.

The cat watched...





From a safe distance (This thing can't climb stairs, can it?)

Wuss!