Dr. Me

It is amusing to watch my cats do yoga - "downward dog" is their fAvorite pose. That has nothing to do with vacuums or doctoring. Last night, I gave my vacuum cleaner a tracheotomy. It wasn't sucking. At all. All it was doing was spitting out hard pieces of debris from under the brush. This is not helpful if the goal is to get all the little bits of stuff removed from the carpet. Why else would I do it? I'd already gotten more than my fair share of exercise at the gym yesterday, and was tired as a result... Which begs the question of why was I vacuuming in the first place? Because I was cleaning my room. I don't know where that urge or energy came from, but I did it. And the vacuum was not cooperating. Since my vacuum tends to be a bit asthmatic (the HEPA filter makes me crazy - I don't want to clean my vacuum before I use my vacuum to clean), I took it out to the shop vac to clean the filter. Still didn't work. So I watched the hose on the vacuum cleaner and saw it drawing up tightly. The hose was clogged. No air. Couldn't breathe. This machine needed an airway, stat! I had a long piece of picture framing molding (which is a perfectly logical thing for me to have at my house), and slid it into the hose, gently, with the thought that I could maybe dislodge the clog and push it out the other side. Ha. Not a chance. So I took a box cutter and sliced through the hose, between two coils, pulled out a huge handful of dust, lint, hair, cornstarch and other detritus that made up the clog. Then I shook out as much dust as I could, closed the incision (I still need to find my duct tape), and cleaned up the mess. The vacuum had bled dust all over my bedroom floor. I swept most of it up. And when I turned on the vacuum, man, did that sucker suck! The doctor is IN! All day today, I've been ignoring the urge to vacuum the whole house.