Death of a vacuum

I get a day off work today. A friend asked me what I was going to do with my free day, and before I could answer, she said, "Don't say something like laundry." Which was exactly what I was thinking of doing. I promised her I wouldn't do laundry, but damned if I didn't wake up today after a delicious extra hour of sleeping and decide that not only was I going to do my laundry, I was going to vacuum, too!

My life is such a strange mixture of the enviably hip and the excruciatingly boring. Just goes to show that one can live in Brooklyn, work at an art school, host an indie radio show, and still have to deal with mundane shit like dirty clothes and broken vacuum cleaners.

To be fair, this particular vacuum cleaner was the walking undead to begin with. I was walking R to subway station one night a year or two back, and found the vacuum in a pile trash in front of a brownstone. Without breaking stride, I swept it up and hoisted it over my shoulder. "This is mine now," I informed her. She was slightly horrified but appreciative, I think, of my scavenging skills. It was in fine shape on the outside and started right up when I plugged it in. Sure, it smoked a bit after it had been running for a while and smelled like burning hair, which is probably why its previous owner had thrown in away. But my apartment is tiny and doesn't take long to clean, so zombie vacuum smoked and smelled, whatevs, it was free.

This afternoon, I plugged it in and started on the bathroom, and my poor vacuum promptly shrieked, had a seizure, sprayed dirt everywhere, and died for good. Of course, my cleaning appliance couldn't just quietly stop working when my apartment was clean. It had to puke a mess EVERYWHERE before it went. I'm cleaning dirt off the top of my medicine cabinet and bathroom counter, and I'm trying to clean up piles of dirt and hair with my little handheld broom and bent, useless dustpan.

The worst part of this is that I hate, hate, HATE cleaning floors. It's my least favorite chore and I only do once every six weeks or so. So now that I can excuse myself from my duties by saying, "I don't have a vacuum cleaner," it is going to be months before my floor is clean again. The dust bunnies will be biting my ankles as I wash dishes.

Fortunately, I live so far away from the subway that no one ever comes to visit me, so I don't have to worry about the filth scaring away my friends. Well, the BF comes to see me pretty regularly, but he's the one person who is obligated not to judge me and the living conditions in my squalorous pit. That's why they call it love.