wanderingsoul
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Registered: 07-2003
Location: Wandering
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Lawrence of Arabia Couldn't Make it Though All This Dust! - Saturday, April 10, 2004
Did you know that dust can form UNDER a stack of CD’s? I didn’t. I felt sure I would be safe from dust if I just covered up the surface of EVERYTHING that might get dusty. Oh, I realized that I would have to run a duster—or, in my case, more likely a paper towel—over the top of whatever I had chosen to cover things up with. (Don’t critique the grammar of that sentence please.) But that’s not too bad. And don’t go applying reason here. There IS a difference between dusting the surface that is covered up and dusting the surface of the things that are covering up the surface.
But I was very wrong. Today I decided to clean up my desk. This was mainly prompted by the fact that Mark is away and I am gradually chewing off the tips of my fingers. But I suppose it might also have been prompted by the fact that I KNEW I had a computer on my desk SOMEWHERE, but could no longer quite determine just where that would be. And my printer/scanner…well, scanning something actually requires lifting the top of the scanner…and considering I could no longer quite identify the top of the scanner, that was becoming a slight problem.
And then…I have 10 kittens. And all 10 of my kittens like to sit on the computer—or more accurately, on the power strip or hanging over the back of my computer where the nice warm air exhausts. Not normally a major problem—but lately whenever one of the little ballerinas would jump on top of where they assumed the computer would be, the subsequent landslide often took out a stack of papers, several CD’s and at least one other kitten. Not to mention triggering sudden name changes for each kitten involved, such as “****ingarourayoulittle*****!” (she used to be just Aroura) or “*******itbear!” (he used to be just Bear) or “Doyouknowhowmuchihatecatsprettykittykitty?” (she used to be Pretty Kitty Kitty).
While the revised names do tend to suit them better, they get a little confused and tend to just look at me with startled eyes before attempting the same jump again, this time accompanied by another kitten who apparently thought that my voice was raised because I wanted him or her to come join the festivities.
So I cleaned my desk. I removed the CD’s from the shelves. Well, I did once I FOUND the CD’s. Oddly enough they were covered by bits of notes, dragons (Sam, I assume), printouts of how to erase adware files, a stray pack or two of Taco Bell taco sauce…and a paper plate which still had tell tale signs of what had occupied it prior to being consumed. (Don’t ask what it was, because I have only just sent it to the lab for identification and cannot expect the results back for at least 2 weeks.)
But what I found most of all was dust. I do NOT live in the desert. And I KNOW that no dust is blowing in through my windows, partly because they are closed because it is 20 degrees outside, and partly because there is NO dust outside because no matter how you try, you cannot make dust out of mud. Dust is a dry thing, mud is a wet thing—you just can’t get there from here. So where the hell does all this dust come from? And I am not just talking a thin “oops I forgot to dust today” layer of dust. I am talking dust you could form dunes from.
One thing I can tell you about Endust is it does NOT END DUST. And I know this because the last time I cleaned my desk I sprayed Endust everywhere. I got ****ing high from the fumes, for god’s sake! All I can think of is it may END DUST but it must be someone else’s dust it is ending—by sending it here.
So I dusted again. I have a nice little duster thing, supposed to “magically” pick up the dust. It picked up the top layer “magically” enough. And left little tracks in the layers below. So I put that back where it belonged—hanging over the stairs to the basement. I sprayed a paper towel with Endust and wiped the surfaces—which, remember, had been UNDER things—carefully, only to accomplish nothing more than creating those little dunes I mentioned by pushing the dust from one place to another.
So I gave up and got the vacuum cleaner. How do you spell that again? vacu…um…? And I vacuumed all the surfaces of my desk, vacuumed the back of my computer, vacuumed the speakers, the printer and everything else I thought might have any lingering dust. I went completely MAD with the vacuum. I didn’t need those pens anyway. And I’m not sure what made that clunking noise, but I feel fairly certain it wasn’t a CD or a floppy disk or the scissors… Hmm… where ARE the scissors?
But I am going to outsmart the dust from now on. I moved the printer to sit on top of the computer. I moved the shelf that used to be over the top of the computer (Imagine that! I didn’t realize there was a shelf there!) up a few notches so that there will only be about 4 inches of space between it and the top shelf. I figure if I completely fill that space with CD’s and floppies then there will be NO WAY any dust can get in there.
And it seems that there may, just MAY be a connection between the cats and the dust. I got this thought when Punkin did a three point jump from the window to the computer to the monitor—and left behind, in the air, a trail of falling particles. Some of it looked like cat hair…the rest was identifiable only as particles (and quite frankly, I prefer to stop my quest for identification right there). But when I had dusted (ok, shoveled, vacuumed, whatever—don’t get picky), I hadn’t found actual cat hair. Which made me start to think about cat hair and its rate of decay. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust… So how long DOES it take for cat hair to actually decay to dust? I would think it would take quite some time—which made me start to wonder when the last time was I had cleaned my desk…
So I came to the conclusion that I could avoid the whole “cleaning the desk” ordeal if I just vacuum the cats.
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And by and by my Soul returned to me, And answered "I Myself amd Heav'n and Hell"
Omar Khayyam
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11/4/2005, 3:59 am
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