Today I finally made good on my promise to Junior that he and I would make some art with the hot glue gun. He was TREMBLING with excitement. As I was putting Junior Jr down for his nap, the very last obstacle between Junior and the glue gun, I could hear him downstairs, saying my name over and over while he waited for me. He exercised a massive amount of self control and waited to plug it in until I reappeared.
No surprises here: the hot glue gun was a hit. In fact, I’m thinking of another mini blog series: Gluegunning with Junior. Think of all the clear strings that would be dangling, weblike, from every item in the house!
What amused me most about this particular art project – we don’t do “crafts”, this is serious art, people – is that I brought home a bag full of collected sticks which inspired it, making me absolutely no different from my children, 4 years and 18 months, who also regularly drag home sticks of every shape and size. My husband is the only one who doesn’t bring home sticks, but he brings home guitar amplifiers, synthesizers, and broken Dysons to repair. (Actually, I scavenged the most recent one, which is still on the porch in a heap. But I just KNOW he can fix it.) We’re probably the only household in America that has a specific Dyson vacuum cleaner for every floor. Yet despite these Dysons, our floors maintain a spectacular level of grime, and are also covered in sticks.
Most people with a Dyson vacuum cleaner probably spent money on a Dyson because they like their home to be vacuumed, and Dysons do this quite well, and with interesting design principles to boot. So their house has a low Dyson to dirt ratio, at a high up front cost. I, on the other hand, hate to vacuum and I’ve only recently realized that this is because I detest the noise of the vacuum. It makes me physically uncomfortable. For years, I only swept with a broom, but I have to say, when my husband vacuums the living room rug with the Living Room Dyson, and I cower with my ears plugged somewhere else in the house, that rug looks so good. It comes back to life. And I come back to life too, once he unplugs the noisy thing. So we have spent very little money on our small army of Dysons, mostly just parts and filters, and yet I hate to vacuum even though I love the look of it, it being both the vacuum cleaner and the vacuumed floor. Our home has a very high Dyson to dirt ratio, with a low low up front cost.
None of this has much to do with the glue gun, but I have been enjoying inane ratios recently. And our children have certainly been enjoying the glue gun and vacuum cleaners. Junior Jr was caressing and chattering to the purple upright Main Floor Dyson – he gets so excited when it comes out. Though he and the purple Dyson’s sucking tube arm thingey are basically the same height, he managed to detach it from the hose, which meant that he could wander through the house waving it about like a medieval lance. The other day he heard vacuuming happening in the basement from the top floor and was inconsolable until we got out the Hall Closet Dyson and began cleaning the rug in the bedroom. Again, I was blown away: that rug was so CLEAN!
So between the glue gunning and the not vacuuming, we’ve been pretty busy around here. Next time you need a stick hot glue gunned to a rock and then want to vacuum up after yourself, just come on over.
To further your vacuuming design knowledge, there’s a great How I Built This podcast featuring Sir James Dyson, who is probably the only person to own more Dysons than we do. He’s now a billionaire so maybe we’re on the right track.
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