March 28, 2024

Roomba does the rumba

Ginnie came to me in a panic. “I can’t find Roomba!”

Roomba is a computerized vacuum cleaner I gave Ginnie for her birthday. I know, you shouldn’t give your wife a vacuum cleaner for her birthday, but she loves it. It’s like an old friend. Turn Roomba loose in any area of the house, and she vacuums better than we can the old-fashioned way. She’s short and compact and whirls under furniture like a ballerina.

Ginnie was going to have cataract surgery the next day and wanted to have the house clean before she came home with her sharpened eyesight. She had turned Roomba loose in the master bedroom, shutting the bathroom door and putting a barricade in front of the walk-in closet.

I looked under the bed, under the dressers, no Roomba. I checked the bathroom and the closet, nothing, not even a sound. Roomba makes a comforting humming noise.

“How can she just disappear?” Ginnie wondered. “Roomba, where are you?”

I checked the rest of the house, just in case Roomba had somehow escaped the bedroom.

I turned around and there was Ginnie, holding Roomba upside down, a shoe in one hand, its shoestring stuck up in the rollers and brushes of Roomba’s underside. “I must not have had the bathroom door shut tight. Roomba bumped it open, got into the bathroom and ate a shoestring. I found her on top of the bathroom scales, hiding behind the toilet. She had shut herself off. Poor Roomba. I hope I haven’t hurt her.”

I helped Ginnie extricate the shoestring. We turned Roomba back on, and she went to work on the bedroom floor, humming contentedly, harboring no grudges. Whew!

Ginnie’s cataract surgery went amazingly smooth. In fact, it was so smooth and fast, if I ever need it done, I won’t hesitate. It’s nothing like I had imagined, not like getting poked in the eye. Ginnie’s eye wasn’t even red after surgery. And she walked out to the car afterward, no wheel chair needed.

Ginnie tells me she feels like she’s falling apart. She had hip-replacement surgery a few months ago and now cataracts. She wants to be the trail-hiking, bike-riding gal she used to be.

I tell her as long as she can make it out to the hen house to gather eggs, that’s all I want. Just kidding. Actually, gathering eggs is fun, now that our hens are starting to lay. One hen can’t seem to get it right and insists on laying her eggs on a flat, open surface, above the nesting box. But at least I know where to look.

I had Ginnie fix me some of our own brown eggs for breakfast. She cracked one, it was a double-yolker. The next one was a double-yolker also — two double yolkers in a row! It must be the laying mash. It has marigold extract in it to brighten the yolks and give’m zing.

They say a double-yolker is good luck. Two double-yolkers has to mean double good luck. Right?

After suffering hail damage this spring, contractors are replacing our roof with steel — blue steel. The sky is blue and our roof too. Blue sky is the color of dreams.

And Roomba keeps right on doing the rumba.

Contact Curt Swarm at 319-217-0526
or curtswarm@yahoo.com