I hate picking things up.
Blame it on my bad back. Or better yet, blame it on my bad work ethic. No matter the cause, the process of bending my body in half in order to collect Legos, rubber bands, clothes, and shoes might as well be considered a circle of hell. Especially when you’re 7 feet tall.
Now to be fair, I do have my own self-supplied labor force that is put to work on a regular basis. Sadly, they are not the most fastidious of minions:
Me: THE PEN. Pick the PEN up off the floor. You’re practically STANDING ON IT, Dan.
Minion #1: Where is it? I don’t see it.
Me: There are 300 Rainbow Loom bands still on the floor, Jack. Get them now.
Minion #2: I did! I totally got them all!
Me: Go hang your coat on your hook, Joey.
Minion #3: I like cake.
When I told my husband I wanted a Dyson for Christmas last year, he thought I was kidding. When I bought one of those gripping tools (the ones that work-release prisoners use on the side of the road to collect cans and garbage), he thought I was being ironic:
My Grip ‘N Grab. So precise, it can pick up plastic pegs from Battleship and chocolate chip fragments.
My husband doesn’t always understand me.
But you know who does understand me?
The Dyson people. When I wrote about my umpteenth vacuum breaking last week and my decision to order a refurbished Dyson to replace it, you know what those most blessed of people sent me? One of these babies:
That’s right. A hand-held, cordless Dyson DC 44. With countless rugs strewn around my house, bending, plugging, unplugging and re-plugging had just become a way of life.
Until this week.
Cordless changes everything.
When I realized how easy it was to suck cobwebs off the high corners of my ceiling, I poured myself a glass of red wine. When I brought it out to my minivan for a quick once-over, I cackled like a loon as three pounds of beach sand was eradicated.
Best of all? When it comes to vacuuming the floor after dinner, YOU DON’T HAVE TO MOVE THE FLIPPING KITCHEN CHAIRS. The thing just maneuvers around everything. It was like the Dyson people knew my every lazy quality and built the Mother-Sucker of all vacuums.
Despite this miraculous instrument of modern ingenuity, Joe still won’t let me sleep with it.
No matter. Dyson’s U.S. headquarters are here in Chicago, the old Montgomery Ward building in fact. The nice corporate people told me I could pop in and “check out their vacuums” anytime I wanted.
And by “check out,” I assume I will be allowed to lick them.
Stay tuned as I’ve already lined up fellow Chicago Parent writer Kari Wagner to come along and fondle the fancy vacuums with me sometime before Christmas.
Dyson’s corporate offices may never be the same again. And they may want to think about disinfectant wipes once we leave.
