The Understudy

Something you should know about my older son: One of his favorite playthings is our old upright vacuum cleaner.

Yup.  It's way fun.  He pretends to vacuum with it, of course, but he also pretends to ride it astride like a horse, or a tractor, or a spaceship.  The attachment tubes have been telescopes and guns (of course).  The power cord has been a snake or an eel.

The MiL bought a new vacuum a few months ago because the switch on the old one had gotten all wonky, requiring the user to fiddle with it constantly to keep it in the right position for power.  That position was sometimes in the middle, sometimes at the top, sometimes at the bottom, which is technically the off position.

Since the user is almost without exception me, I was getting pretty damn sick of the Possessed Power Switch.  Also, that vacuum is really heavy and cheap to begin with, so not really worth getting fixed.

So the MiL bought a new one.  And yesterday, it broke.

Well, technically, the wand attachment got jammed on there.  I can't get the thing to disengage, which means I can't hook up the main floor part.  I need that part to vacuum the rugs, which get filthy alarmingly quickly, what with all the mud and dog hair and hay and assorted other nastiness that finds its way into the house.

AND, we're having Cubby's third birthday party on Sunday, which means ten guests in the house.  AND AND, my mom and my sister are due to arrive on Friday and will be staying with us.

All of which means I really need a functioning vacuum cleaner NOW so I can pretend my house is kept to some reasonable standard of cleanliness.

So I used Cubby's vacuum/toy.  I wasn't even sure it would work, given the abuse it's been subjected to in the past few months.  But I plugged it in, fiddled with power switch, and . . . there it went, sucking up the filth just as if I hadn't discarded it for a newer, fancier (and defective) model.  How forgiving of it.

It just goes to show that sometimes keeping junk around just because your kids like playing with it can be its own reward.