Issue link: https://fredparent.uberflip.com/i/235797
FAMILY CHATTER It Mocks Me BY MARY BECELIA T here it sits, mocking me. Gathering dust and requiring me to step around it when I want to open my bedroom window shade. My Kirby vacuum. How I hate it. You may be a Kirby lover. If so, please stop reading. This essay is not going to end up on a warm and fuzzy note with me "learning to love my Kirby." Not a chance. I've owned that sucker for a year-and-a-half now and I regret it more every day. On the other hand, you may not be aware of Kirby brand vacuums at all. You, too, may wish to stop reading. Why trouble yourself with my sad tale when you've never strayed from your (fill in the blank: Kenmore, Hoover, Dyson, etc)? So, we're all alone now, my fellow Kirbyhaters and me. Can we start by talking about how heavy it is? Hence the do-si-do I do every day to get to my window. The idea of moving that behemoth is just too daunting. (I confess, I do move it occasionally.) I think the last occasion was around Christmas when I knew my darling little Roomba vacuum would choke on the pine needles from the Christmas tree. 38 Fredericksburg Parent and Family • January 2014 Now let us turn to the blasted attachments. I can't remember what they are all called and don't dare disturb the layer of dust covering the manual, so let me go Dr. Seuss on you and refer to them as the carpet-washing snozzler, the dust-blasting squozzler and the floor-polishing glozzler. Yes, the Kirby is, in theory, an all-in-one machine. You can wet-wash your upholstered furniture with it, deep clean your rugs, vacuum dust mites off your bed and suck the dust from between the piano keys. But, given that I barely have time or energy to keep up with my family's laundry and dishes, whatever possessed me to think I was going to become the Goddess of Steam Cleaning? Did I really think I would have time to set up the correct attachments and blow the dust (not to mention probable cat hair and, I fear, crumbs!) from the piano keys? That wasn't ever going to happen in this lifetime. But somehow, I convinced myself that, yes, the Kirby and I were going to whip this. Mary Becelia lives with her family in southern Stafford County.