Maybe next week, babyface. Tonight I'm making dinner for me and the Kenmore Java Lava Upright

Ok, ok, I admit it: My last post was a shameless attempt to get a free vacuum cleaner. I was hoping that a sales rep from Dyson or Electrolux might be perusing the Internet for needy cases, see my pathetic hairy sock picture and exclaim, “We must get this woman a vacuum!”

Why not? It worked with the Furminator and Snuggie. And that was years ago. If cheese and wine improve with age, the value of someone’s blog freebies should too. It’s perfectly reasonable that someone should want to send me a $500 vacuum. I’m a mom blogger, dammit! I’ve earned it.

Sadly, no one has contacted me.

But fear not, I have a working vacuum cleaner to hold me over. It’s one of the few things I inherited from my grandfather after he passed away. My father had bought it for him as a birthday present, and he never used it. You think my stairwell is dusty? My grandfather’s stereo was once stolen; after the police caught the suspect they confirmed the lifted stereo was indeed my grandfather’s by matching it to the dust imprint on his bureau.

Isn’t it sweet how I’ve followed in his footsteps?

My mother doesn’t think so. When she comes to my house to baby sit Junior, she twitches at the sight of the dust balls. Sometimes I’m not even out the door before she’s got the vacuum in her hands. Physically disabling the vacuum cleaner so she couldn’t use it would be akin to torture.

Torture!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining that my mother vacuums my house while I’m at work. It’s just that she vacuums like she’s...in the midst of a serious romp with a 25-year-old Brazilian gigolo who knows how to use his poker.

I can’t tell you the times I’ve walked in on her as she’s bent over with her face in the baseboards.

“Yes! Yes!” she cries. “It feels so good to get in there and suck it all up! How could you not enjoy this?”

She’s covered in sweat. She’s breathless. It kind of makes you want to shower.

Inevitably, I end up teasing her. Then I feel guilty because deep down I know that it is possible to have a satisfying encounter with the vacuum cleaner. It does feel good to suction up things that have been attacking your toes and clinging to your pants, children and guests. (Of course, I’d never tell my mother that because she’d enroll us in a vacuum cleaning retreat for mothers and daughters. Moms are hokey like that. At least my mom is. Hokey and embarrassingly intimate with the brush nozzle.)

Having said that, I don’t experience vacuum nirvana frequently enough to use it as an excuse (“Not tonight, hon, I’ve already ridden the Dirt Devil”).

But I guess you already know that, don’t you?