A month ago, Papa brought “Sparky” to his new home.
Each day Sparky goes through the house, learning his new surroundings.
We even move out of his way and let him “explore” the house. The cats are not bothered with him at all.
Right away, we put Sparky to work cleaning the floors. He works 12 hours a day—without a break.
You see, Sparky is our new Robot Maid.
He is an iRobot Roomba.
His actual job is to vacuum the floors—daily.
Papa wouldn’t normally get such a thing, but he had accrued so many points with his credit card that he could use the points to get Sparky.
And I love “Sparky.” (I named it Sparky)
While eating at the Breakfast Table, we’ve learned to lift our legs and let him pass.
All the rooms in this house are wood. And it’s easy for all of us to dirty up the wood floors.
Mom would spend hours during a normal week just sweeping the floors and saying things like, ” Land sakes alive! Just look at these floors.”
When Momma and Papa remodeled this house in ’05, they had no idea of the changes that were to come to this family.
They thought they were going to spend their retirement alone in this house. They had no idea that they would one day raise my late brother’s two girls. Nor did they know that their son with Spina Bifida would be moving back home.
They didn’t know that this house would also be home to four cats and three dogs— dogs that play in the dirt and mud.
Our house floors are much cleaner than before.
The house is also cleaner because we all are not laying things on the floor as much.
For example, We make a conscious effort to make sure Sparky doesn’t suck up our socks by putting our socks on the table instead of the floor.
And Mom is a lot happier with Sparky in the house.
He has made a map of the house so that we can send him to vacuum certain rooms instead of the whole house.
Mostly, though, he vacuums the house daily from 8 AM to 8 PM.
Tonight, though, Sparky got tired of being over-worked and hid from us.
“Where’s Sparky?” Papa asked.
“Hmm, I don’t hear or see him. He was in the Den earlier.” Momma said.
The App on our phone said, “Can’t Connect to Sparky.”
“Are we gonna have to get in our vehicles and roam the neighborhood lookin’ for him?” I asked.
Mom ended up finding Sparky. He was hid under the Hutch.
We may have to start giving Sparky a fifteen-minute break every two hours.
