Rapidly approaching Old Lady status.

But a Very Clean, Dust-free Old Lady at that. Why? Because I can't stop thinking about this:



Clearly, I have to have one. Right now. So badly in fact that my mother is sending me one since I reported to her that I have yet to find one here in town. And the simple fact that I am going on about a cleaning product like this instead of blathering on about my jealousy over my best friend's eating disorder or an episode of Mr. Personality proves, well, two things. One, that I do really sound old gushing over Swiffers, and two, that a huge percentage of America's youth are currently wasting precious cytoplasm and countless megabytes.

You know it's funny because it's true. Sure, I may be wasting cytoplasm as well. But hey, at least I'm cleaning up behind myself.

As much as I want to believe otherwise, I am giddy over this Swiffer thing's arrival.

Look, I'm not going to beat myself up over This Unusual Want. My dad even wanted one. Of course, this is the same guy who vacuumed my whole apartment. Then I turned around to see the vacuum cord snaking out the back door as he vacuumed my sidewalk... yes, this is the same guy, but I respect him. It's not just because he takes out my garbage when he visits. It's not because he sweeps my porch and the in river spiderwebs from the sides of my cocooned apartment . No, it's real respect. And my dad asked my mom for one, and he took it to work. He came back happy, reporting "That thing picked up so much crap that I'm gonna have to NAME it."

He didn't pick up his DNA-related humor from the Army, it just aggravated it.

In the words of the immortal Phil Hartman: "I'm an enigma, wrapped in a cipher, smothered in secret sauce." Applied to my dad, it's perfect. When asked in elementary school what our parents jobs were, my dad always told us he was a janitor. I bought it. He had his own set of keys to the place, and even a special key to shut the lights on and off. And granted, when he took me up to work with him afterhours, we went there sometimes to check on his lab animals to make sure the cages had been cleaned.

Oh yeah, lab animals. I said it. But that doesn't make me guilty of eating baby condor while clubbing a baby seal. He experimented on lab animals. It was his job. Not anymore. He's a safety officer. With the cleanest office in town. So he says. For all I know, he could be an FBI agent.

So now I see why he told us he was a janitor. It's got a better ring to it, plus he thought it was funny. Now I just think it's ironic.