My family has been away for a few weeks. In fact, they’ve been away for enough weeks that I legitimately miss them deeply. Even the kids. I’m picking them up on Friday, which is a couple of days from now. Doing some back-of-the-Chinese-food-delivery-bag-left-on-the-table-for-days math, I realized: holy cow! That’s two days from now. Now, when I go away, I like coming home to the house being reasonably tidy, including cleaning up of blood stains, removal of Thomas trains from under my feet, a sense that I can see at least a corner of the kitchen table. Crud. I bet she’ll want the same thing waiting for her when she gets home.

I was raised to be the kind of guy who does chores, and that there’s no such thing as “women’s work.” I’m modern in that regard. But I’ll admit something: I don’t really remember the last time I used the vacuum cleaner. There’s not a lot to it. On/off. Suck/stop sucking. I get that. But there are, shall we say, rules, about what goes into the tube. I forget the nuances of those.

You see, both my children (6 and almost 3) believe that popsicle sticks (they eat a lot of those sugar free fruit bar things) belong wherever they finished the popsicle. So, even as much as we do the whole “clean up brigade” with them (my daughter prefers me hanging her upside down and bonking her head on the things she needs to pick up to just wandering around picking them up as requested), it turns out that there were at least four popsicle sticks on the floor when I started cleaning.

Have you ever heard a vacuum cleaner try to eat a popsicle stick? Cool! I did 4 of them.

I knew enough to lift the rugs up. We have about 200 rugs on our floors, which are poured concrete (we live in a factory loft space). Okay, not 200, but it feels that way. That’s because Kat’s sure that my son will split his skull open at any moment. (He probably would.) Under these rugs are some interesting things, including what looks like beach sand. It’s almost November. Oh well, I can get that, too.

That rattling/hissing sound is very satisfying. It’s like the difference between vacuum cleaner commercials where they’re always sucking up a spilled potted plant and typical vacuuming, where guys go for those perfect carpet lines that show you did your chore. (I wish they sold carpets with those lines in there, like a permanent crease in pants).

I did a bunch of those other things we’re supposed to do, like run the brush around the inside of the toilet, clean up all my Chinese food bags and diet Coke cans, and put all the bills (3,471 and counting) in a neat pile on the bookshelf.

It’s what we’re supposed to do, right? It’s what Dads/husbands do to show that we really missed someone. I’m trying to think of all the other things a Mom/wife would do to welcome me home. I guess I can make my own crayon banner and pretend someone else’s kids did it.

What else would you do?
Photo credit, Robbie1