If you haven’t heard from me in awhile, it’s not because I’ve stopped reading, it’s just because there are a few more important things to do at my house. The first one is, of course, a new baby. The second is that I am homeschooling full time now. In case you didn’t know it, I was a part-time homeschooler before, which is another story, for another time. And finally, I am writing monthly articles for the Knoxville News-Sentinel, which has taken up any brain capacity I have left for creative endeavors. This morning, however, I thought, “Enough is enough! I have several posts rattling around in my brain that I must get out, be they ever so sloppy.” So, here we go.
This morning I had the bright idea of doing some spring cleaning. I asked my husband to drag the shop vac out of the garage for me so I could clean out the fire place which was filled with ash amounting to around 6 inches in height, evidence of chilly evenings filled with hot cocoa and conversation. I turned the machine on and began happily sucking up the mess of black and grey when I heard my husbands voice over the fan, “Stop! Stop!” I looked back to see what the commotion was. Had I sucked up a child? A puppy? Then to my dismay, I saw the black cloud of dust shooting out from the back of my machine and floating toward my kitchen, my hallway, and covering my living room furniture. “Oh well,” I thought. “I wanted to give everything a thorough cleaning anyway, so now I’m just forced to do it.”
Later, as I was dutifully vacuuming (with my Sears Kenmore canister vacuum), my husband came up behind me laughing. “You know, you’re just like that maid in the kids’ storybook.”
I thought for a moment. “Oh, you mean Amelia Bedelia?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. You were ‘dusting the living room’.”
That I was.
The Book Stops Here 