New Adventures of Borrowed Cleaner

You know those times when you've procrastinated so much that you can't do anything you want to do without doing something else first? Tonight I donned my workout attire and planned to do my standard pilates/elliptical combo. However, I borrowed a Yoga Booty Ballet DVD a couple of weeks ago, and have been wanting to use it. Because (I'm assuming) I'll need to move around in order to follow this routine, before starting it, I need to rearrange my workout room. Right now it houses a large TV, a futon, my pilates mat, and my elliptical machine. It's set up to give me as little room to move as possible, because I haven't done a thing to it since it turned into my own little home gym.


In contemplating rearranging this room, I stepped on a spot on the carpet that was unusually stiff. Not only was there that spot, but three others. Shaded ones, all around the room. This is the only room with spots on the floor, and it's interesting that it's the only room that's housed a teenager. But that's beside the point. The point is, I borrowed a steam cleaner from my work wife, and had been planning on using it anyway. The spot on the carpet would be under something if I rearranged the room. In order to move the furniture, I needed to get that done. But I hadn't vacuumed recently enough, and to use the steam cleaner, I'd need to. I decided to go for it and vacuumed first, then started checking out this foreign machine.

It was different. Look, I wasn't raised on steam cleaning. I'd never seen it done in person, and when my work wife told me how to do it, it seemed needlessly complicated. But I was up to the challenge. She had given me a bottle of half-used soap concentrate and told me that I'd need yet another bottle to do my whole house. Psh. I'm stingy, to put it mildly. I read the back of the bottle, and it said you only needed 5 ounces to a gallon of water. Since it looked like that's what the water reservoir held, I went ahead and measured out 2/3 cup and poured it into the soap dispenser. It didn't even fill it up halfway. I added water. Hey, it said concentrate.

I got everything assembled and started on my living room rug. There was going to be a learning curve here. For one thing, I couldn't remember the push-up-pull-back-hold-trigger-push-up-release-trigger-sweep-the-leg combo she told me to employ. Then, my rug is so long and shaggy, the whole thing wanted to slide across the room when I tried to pulling back. Finally, I found a good position, planting my right foot on the rug to stabilize it with my weight while fully engaging my arm muscles pushing and pulling the machine around. Quite comical. On the bright side, the rug soon became so heavy from the water that it wasn't going anywhere.

In the end, it worked great, the short carpet was easier, and my house smells so nice. Except for one thing. I think there must be some sort of defect with the machine, because it kept spitting out hairballs. Also, for some reason, when I got done, the machine had become quite dirty. I'll have to talk to her about that.

Also, I decided to count it as my workout.