Zombies and hotdogs and squirrels, oh my!

I now have a zombie vacuum and yes I do realize how crazy that sounds. The problem is it’s true. 

 

Crazy?

Absolutely.

                   100%.

                             Without a doubt.

 

 But yet it’s also true.  Victor is ALIVE and therefore I have to accept that I have a zombie vacuum cleaner on my hands!  You never know when life is gonna throw a zombie vacuum at you and that's just what it did to me yesterday...

You see, Thursdays are Grandma Day which basically means that I scurry around like a hectic squirrel, frantically preparing for winter every single Thursday. Only instead of harvesting acorns or other tree nuts (because this is a “tree-nut free” blog. Don't even think about bringing your nuts around here!), I am busy getting done all chores that are easier done without my kids.  Yes, I basically take the entire week off from housework and then do it all in one wild day. Thursday. 

On Thursday the kids hang with Grandma and Grandpa while I behave like a squirrel and for the most part it works for us.  Don’t mistake this to mean that I am claiming we have a clean house.  We definitely don’t, but we are doing okay.  Our house isn’t condemned, there is no mold growing in our home (at least that I am aware of) and I don’t weigh 400 pounds.  This cleaning frenzy occurs during about a six hour window mind you and I usually fit in at least a 4 or 5 mile run as well because I need to burn a bunch of calories off for the second phase of Grandma Day better known as the FEAST.  Named so because the second portion is a home-cooked family meal that is usually rich in taste as well as calories and fat.  It is a wonderful arrangement that Jeff’s parents developed when they became Grandparents about a decade ago and I must say I live for and LOVE Thursdays.

 

Anyhow, this Thursday (yesterday) I worked furiously to pick up our house and decided that since I asked for peanut butter for Valentine’s Day (instead of a new vacuum like I had originally planned) I had no choice but to risk using Victor to vacuum the upstairs because it looked very dirty and Jeff would be suspicious if I didn’t vacuum on a Thursday. You know because I am such a great housewife and I vacuum every Thursday.  I plugged Victor in, crossed my fingers, prayed wholeheartedly to God and then hit the power button.  And then I held my breath (long enough that I nearly passed out) waiting to see if smoke would emerge. And then I breathed a sigh of relief because Victor was alive and sucking (which in this particular instance sucking was a very good thing) and most importantly there was no smoke!  I swear in that moment I learned what it felt like for Dr. Frankenstein when his creature came to life.  A wild mix of emotions.  Elated.  Impressed. Surprised. And overall Horrified. I managed to vacuum the entire upstairs level without any smoke or other troubling symptoms from Victor too.  I realized at that moment that I am now the proud mother of a zombie vacuum! YIKES.

 

Victor in his zombie form haunting my housecleaning from the closet!

 



 Victor enters this world for a second time!

 

After more analysis, I decided that his hose thing is broken and it causes the smoke alarm to sound not the main vacuum component because he worked fine today.  I have therefore labeled Victor physically handicapped.  I mean without the hose thingy he is basically an amputee so I think it’s a fair assessment of the situation. I am busy working to have him declared special needs so that we can get federal funding for his education and a cool handicap parking pass.  Turns out there are a ton of forms for such classification to happen so I will let you know how that works out in about ten years when I finish cutting through all the red tape required for such assistance.

 

During my cleaning frenzy, I also went exploring in our chest freezer and located gold, I mean hotdogs. But same difference; at this point in the game, hotdogs are as valuable as gold to me. It is just a cheap 8-pack that I bought last summer with a coupon for 88 cents, in fact I am skeptical that they are real meat, but still for my family this discovery means that we will make it one day longer in this little no shopping challenge and we already made it to Valentine’s Day so I am happy!

 

 Eureka we've struck GOLD! I mean Hotdogs!

I also found a fish fillet from halibut we caught in Alaska ten years ago.  my husband swears it is still edible and he is a food sanitarian (restaurant inspector) so I tend to trust him on such matters, but still that seems really, really. old.  makes the incident with the Ranch seem trivial doesn’t it?  This is quite the predicament because eating it will certainly lengthen how long we make it with our challenge, but it could conceivably cost us our lives...

 

Vern Out