As a stay-at-home Dad, I find myself battling against the stereotypes that have been applied to Moms and wives for years. Friends joke that I don’t have anything to do all day. My wife complains that I don’t bring in enough money. My children think I’m on call 24/7 for whatever they might need. At the very least I assume everyone is under the false impression that I love doing dishes. If I look at it that way, then my family aren’t being jerks when they leave piles in the kitchen. They’re contributing to one of my hobbies.

Thus, when I noticed that the largest gift under the tree was addressed to me, I was immediately suspicious. “They got me a vacuum cleaner, didn’t they?” My ability to read people has gotten me where I am today so I generally trust my instincts on things like this. Although there was that one time I thought the kids were stealing money from my bedside table when in reality my wife was stealing money from my bedside table. Stealing may be too strong a word. Her philosophy is what’s his is mine and what’s mine is mine. You can agree or disagree with that sentiment but at least it’s an ethos. Anyway, in this case It turned out I was right. I did receive a vacuum cleaner for my Xmas gift and I’m totally okay with it.

Forget for a moment that if a husband were to buy his homemaker wife a cleaning tool, or appliance, he would rightly be pilloried both privately and publicly. Forget that it essentially means when my family looks at me, they think, “Whoa, that guy needs a vacuum.” Also forget that buying anyone a gift that in any way involves chores is suspect from the get-go. Side note: As part of an ongoing multi-media campaign designed to get our 12 year old to do his fair share around the home we decided that the branding of housework needed a lift. The word “chores” seemed so glum, so we changed it to “chip chips”. So, forget for a moment that buying anyone a gift that in any way involves chip chips is suspect from the get-go. Forget those things, okay? Just look at this vacuum in a … well, vacuum.

The truth is that I really need vacuuming help. As previously mentioned, we are the proud parents of two English Shepherds, but you know that already because you have read all my articles, right? Named Kitty and Trucker they are very different creatures; one is super neurotic, and the other is just moderately neurotic. What they have in common, however, is the ability to create massive amounts of hair in our house. Piles of it. So much so that I can detect air flow patterns in the living room by how the hair drifts into mounds. This information has never really come in handy, but I’m convinced someday that data will be important. As a writer I’m filing it away for a future novel where I create a world-ending catastrophe that can only be avoided by someone who knows the drifting patterns of dog hair. I don’t have it all worked out yet but it’s sure to be a page turner.

As if Shedcase 1 and Shedcase 2 weren’t enough, my wife and I decided to be cool and install dark blue bamboo floors all over the house. They really are gorgeous and really do make us look cool, to a certain demo, but they also work as a great backdrop, highlighting every single strand of hair. The result of all this is that one of my chip chips is to sweep the floors almost every day. The volume is incredible. If we could harness whatever makes my dogs able to grow hair at that rate and scale, we might have a limitless source of energy. I’m not sure how that would work exactly but I’ll leave that to the scientists. Obviously, they’re reading all these articles as well.

Now that you have the proper context, and understand the universe within which I’m writing, you can see that despite it being inextricably linked to chip chips, receiving a vacuum cleaner as a Christmas present might not be such a bad thing. It feels more like a Perry buoy when you really think about it. Of course, you’re not really thinking about it because you’re thinking about what a Perry buoy is. A Perry buoy is one of those life-saving rings you throw to drowning people. Now stop thinking about that and go back to thinking about the metaphor. It’s pretty good huh?

What this all means is that my family essentially thinks I’m drowning, except instead of water I’m floundering in dog hair, and this was an attempt to throw me a lifeline. At this point I should probably mention that it’s one of those robot vacuums that runs around by itself until it’s full when it returns to base for a dump. Technically, I’m not supposed to have to do anything which makes it a potentially crucial part of my bon-bons on the couch lifestyle. Speaking of bon-bons, the robot vacuum has a very distinct shape. It’s a bit like having a double-stuffed chocolate Oreo cookie roaming around underfoot all the time, which isn’t really all that bad if you think about it. Mmmmm … double stuffed.

As of this writing, they have proven to be quite a vital new member of the family. I’m careful not to misgender our little suction buddy, but the kids named it Remi after the mouse in the movie Ratatouille. Not sure I see the connection there but as usual I’m just holding on and trying to pretend like I know what’s happening. In that way my life is much like a David Lynch film; nobody wants to admit they don’t know what’s going on and there’s always a little person talking nonsense.

Since Remi is now a part of our family’s chip chips, I can say the load on my shoulders has dwindled significantly. In fact, I haven’t had to sweep at all in five days which is a new record. Of course, during that same span I’ve had to twice take Remi apart to remove the debris that clogged up the wheels, the brushes, and the bin but hey, isn’t that what stay-at-home Dads do all day?