Ask Dana, I’m not much for cleaning. I’m not even really much for noticing when things have been cleaned. If not for Dana, I’d just push aside piles of clothing on the floor until I eventually ran out of clothes to wear; and at that point there’s even a good chance that I might just go and buy some more. That is I’m not much for it until I AM much for it, at which point I become a Nazi about it. When I’m no longer gonna speak about it, I’m gonna BE about it.

Usually the only room in the home that I really care about being clean is the living room, aka the movie watching and music listening room. This is also the room that seems to be the most prone to becoming a war zone, with the floor covered in strewn remnants of whatever toys Lauryn has been playing with. Little Pet Shop guys that seem to be invisible and all round and soft and Chinese plasticy until you step on them barefooted at which point they turn into punji spikes. Stuffed toy animal guys and randomy jumbled pillows that crowd you off the couch. Game boxes opened with lids here, pieces there and instructions somewhere else. Random Tupperware containers with cereal or cracker remnants and juice cups. So about once a month or so I’ll have a minor freak out where I tear the living room apart cleaning, vacuuming and returning the room to Go.

So, the other day I’m in the shower and I look up and I see a daddy longlegs spider. Hmmm, I think. Then a couple of days later I’m back in the shower and look up again and now I see TWO daddy longleg spiders. Double hmmm, I think. Then we have some people over to dinner on Saturday and while we’re in the dining room I look up and see ANOTHER frickin’ daddy longlegs spider! For some reason my home was becoming the Afghanistan for harboring daddy longlegs spiders and now the freak out was on! It was time to call in the Delta and SEAL Dev Group of cleaning. It was time to break out the Dyson.

Like most people, we would use a vacuum until it developed complete respiratory failure at which point we’d wheel it to the curb and then go and buy another merely adequate vacuum. Use for a few years and then repeat the cycle. I think we have had 4 vacuums during our married life. So, the last time I had some Best Buy Reward Zone bucks saved up and I decided that we were going to elevate the rhetoric on vacuum purchasing; we were going to step it up to a Dyson.

Now, I have some real complaints about the Dyson. For a $600 vacuum, ergonomically it kind of sucks, lacking features found on many $100 vacuums. First, to use the detachable wand, you have to completely uncoil the power cable. There is no quick pull out the vacuum and whip out the wand. Next, instead of a really quick and easy retractable cord where you just pull out what you need and then retract when done, you have to wind the cable around the back of the unit. There is no light, so you can’t see in dark corners. You have to put your foot on it in a less than elegant manner to lower the handle and the handle goes COMPLETELY flat to the ground, which means the only way to get the front wheels up over an area rug are to back it up. Also, there were no instructions of operations manual with it, just some kind of pictogram on how to assemble it. (There are a couple of attachment doo-hickeys that I’m still not even totally sure if I’m using them correctly.) For a luxury product – which, let’s face it, at $600, this vacuum is a luxury product – you’d expect some better support materials. (Though at $15,000, you don’t get a manual with a Kaleidescape server and I’m not sure the iPad comes with anything.)

Now, what I don’t have any complaints about is its actual vacuuming prowess. The Dyson sucks. Hard. Like if you stuck the wand on your neck, you would give yourself an awesome hematoma in very short order. (Holy crap! I just Googled “hematoma” and looked at images. Do NOT do that. I’m not even sure what some of those pictures were! Oh, the horror... )The first time I used the Dyson, I ran it over our woven area rug. That was also the last time I used it on the woven area rug. The Dyson quickly filled its ENTIRE container with fibers that it ripped out of the rug. It wrenched sand and powder out of our bedroom carpet pad that I think had been there dating back to the previous owner. So, when it’s time for serious, no foolin’ around cleaning, you break out the Big D. (Unlike the other Big D, which only seems to break itself on you and only at the worst moments.)

So this morning I uncoiled the cord, broke out the wand and went around my house vacuuming at the ceiling line in every area of our home. And when I couldn’t reach, I got the Little Giant ladder (which is mostly Giant when it comes to its weight) and continued on. All told, I think there were 11 daddy longlegs spiders AND one “big ant” (Lauryn’s name for what people back here call Palmetto bugs, the southern hospitality term for what the rest of the world cause roaches) that was wedged into an HVAC register.

Cleaning freak out over for now. Though, that “Pretty Pretty Princess” game – with necklaces and bracelets and earrings and rings – spread everywhere IS kind of starting to get on my nerves...