A new toy

Let me state clearly that the picture is not of me or of my house! I do not own anything in powder blue polyester. If I did, it certainly wouldn't be a matching set like that, either. But that carpet cleaner looks like the one I just bought, except mine is black.

About a lifetime ago I got married. Once we both finished college (although I went back much later for another degree) we decided to get a puppy. The puppy was Sadie, the doberman. She was not an easy dog to train because we both worked all day and she refused to be confined. She was an escape artist.

There was a small window in the front door of our first house, and I used to peek in before I dared open the door. Once I saw nothing but feathers stuck to every surface of the house, including the drapes. Sadie had a pillow fight with the cat. Feathers were still floating slowly to the floor when I looked in. Another time there was toilet paper draped all over the furniture, lamps, floors and every where else. Usually there were some piles of brown stuff that I had to clean up. It didn't take long for me to decide we needed our own carpet steamer.

(Side story: once Sadie was in heat and getting little blood spots around the house, including on our light-colored bedspread. I put a pair of tighty-whities on her when we went to bed that night to soak up the problem. Dobie's have no tails, they are docked when they are born, so she wore them just fine. She got up in the middle of the night and decided to poop in the living room. She became very frightened when the poop stayed in the underpants, and she started running around the room, little pieces of poop flying out the leg holes. I got up, my ex got up, we steamed the carpet, and all 3 of us ended up with our feet in the bathtub at 3 am. I figure I have just about the only dog ever to poop in her pants.)

I still have it. The carpet cleaner, not the poop. It's a cannister type, and it still works. There are few moving parts on it and it probably will still run when I am long dead. However, the cannister part is heavy and awkward, plus I find it hard to push on the carpet with the wand for very long. My back aches in no time at all, and almost my entire house is carpeted. I like my carpets cleaned thoroughly every 3 months. Baby has some bad habits that need to be addressed regularly. The cat likes to revisit her hairballs. Molly sheds more than I do.

So I decided I need a nice, new upright carpet cleaner. I will need to keep the carpets fresh here to sell my house and I will want to keep them nice in the new place.

I am not particularly impressed with the new machine. The newer appliances, in general, are crap. They are mostly fragile plastic. There are a million moving parts that are easily broken. "Self-propelled" appears to refer to the owner, not the appliance. The hose is flimsy and came with damage to it. Of course I didn't find that out until after I assembled the thing, used the magic words (all with four letters, of course) and was wrapping the hose around as the picture showed. Of course, the picture shows the hose being wrapped backwards. I don't get it. They even show little arrows to indicate which way to wrap the hose, but if you do it that way, it won't work. I think it was a test.

Of course I had to try it out on my bedroom first. That is where Baby has her on-purposes when I leave the house. It's a separation anxiety issue. I try not to make an issue out of it, but I have to keep half my bedroom covered in a plastic painter's tarp all the time, and then a throw rug on top of that. It's not too attractive, but it is easier to clean the throw rug than it is to steam the whole room on a weekly basis. She has been doing better lately, but I never know when she will drop the next bomb, so to speak. Yes, I am sure it is not Molly. A mother can tell these things.

All over the carpet now are these little balls of fuzz. There are a million of them. The machine seems to suck up the dog hair and hunks of the carpet fuzzies and makes little fuzzballs out of them. Do they set the machines up to do that so we will actually think they are working?

Have you ever noticed that if you use a carpet cleaner and you dump the water, it's really dirty looking? If you go over the same room again in an hour, the water will still be really dirty? I have done that four times in a row before, and the water always looks like that. I think there is something in the cleaner that makes the water change color to make us think the carpeting was badly soiled. Mine never get a chance to be badly soiled, but the water always comes out brown. I did that on a brand new carpet once, and it still came out brown.

Maybe this carpet cleaner is a better choice than the old one. Molly didn't follow it around and try to bite it. I have had a problem ever since my old vacuum cleaner once sucked up a sock she was fond of. Now all my vacuums have bite marks on them. She shows them who is the real boss! I returned the sock to her, but she can really hold a grudge.

I got Molly's blood test results today. The vet was delighted. I wasn't. I told her I want her to reduce the amount of the shot again next month. She thinks I am too picky. Molly agrees with me. She is still overdosed and her electrolyte ratio is still too high. It's getting closer, though.

No word yet from the condo company. I had expected a call today. Maybe Friday. They are closed tomorrow and I am going to be with my CPA tomorrow anyway, getting taxes done and having lunch.

The armoire woman rode again today. On her high horse, that is. She has been calling me daily, and today I finally felt calm enough to talk to her. We agreed that I would pick it up tomorrow at 6:45 pm. I called Gary, we set it up, and all was fine. The woman called me again about two hours later and said she can't possibly make it at that time and can we do it on the weekend? I haven't called her back yet. I was too busy calling Gary to apologize yet again and ask him if Saturday afternoon will work.

That armoire sure would look nice in my (potential) new condo. I can't find anything else as nice in either Pottery Barn or Crate and Barrel. If I knew I had this much time, I would have had the room it's going into all repainted by now. I would have enjoyed taking an axe to the old desk to get it out of there.

I could have cleaned the carpet tonight, too.