Our new Roomba has completed its exploration of the known world, also-known-as our home’s main floor. To celebrate this achievement, Meryl Sweep presented us with its map of our abode. It was a crude affair, something a kindergartener might draw, but it does capture the basic outline of our floorplan. I labeled all of the different rooms and now can dispatch the little robot to a particular area, instead of continuing to let it roam free, lost, throughout the house. X marks its home spot, basecamp, where it can rest a while and recharge or just take a dump. So far, it has led a very sheltered life and knows nothing of the basement or the stairs leading down to it, beware here there be monsters. While there are still herds of roving bands of dust bunnies that stand ready to pounce and may attack anytime, their numbers have dwindled, and the place is beginning to look a little bit cleaner. There have been no more choking incidents like on its first outing, when it first ventured beneath the living room couch.

Pictured is Meryl Sweep’s big brother, Crime Roomba. We are looking at it now. This superhero stands ready to clean up our neighborhood streets from crime. Not that there is much of that around here. Certainly not enough to warrant the acquisition of this behemoth or its cadre of uniformed officers, required for its own protection. Besides our neighborhood is undergoing siege. Plumbers and earthmovers are all about creating trenches wide enough and deep enough to swallow even super Roomba whole. The other day it was nearly impossible for us to circle the block. So, for now we will limit ourselves to cleaning the house.