My father and I -- two bachelors and two cats sharing a small house near the
water (salt air coats everything if the windows are open, about as fast as I
could wipe it down), I've long since given up trying to keep the house super
clean, or even terribly tidy; I concentrate on keeping the actual dirt and
grime at bay, with periodic major cleanings.

Today was a major cleaning day.  I rented one of those steam cleaners for
the carpet and upholstery, moved the furniture around and did a better job
than I thought possible on this old carpet.

Dad watched TV in his bedroom most of the time, came in once to admire the
improvement in the half-cleaned carpet and to offer a second time to hold up
one end of the sofa while I cleaned under it (yeah, right). He is very
appreciative when I do things like this - and I'm very grateful for that.

Then while I was down in the garage cleaning out the carpet machine to
switch to upholstery cleaner, Dad came into the room and sat down for a
snack of Oreo cookies.  Usually now he puts the cookies in a bowl and takes
them over to his chair to eat them (then he puts the bowl back in the
cabinet - I'm constantly finding crumb-y bowls in the cabinet); this time he
just held them cookies in one hand.  He has a severe benign essential tremor
in his hand, strong enough to crumble the cookies a little bit.

I'm used to that, it's not exasperating that he gets crumbs all over when he
eats cookies.  It's exasperating that he is apparently utterly unaware that
he's dropping big pieces on the floor - and when he finished, he stood up
and trod on the crumbs, grinding them into the still-damp carpet.  The
long-hair cat, hiding from the noisy carpet cleaner, was also apparently
hoarding an extra stash of cockleburs to commemorate the cleaning - I had
brushed him after the last time he was out earlier today, but I've picked up
eight cockleburs off the carpet this evening.

It's exasperating to not be able to keep the carpet clean for the time it
takes to clean the carpet cleaning machine.  Aaaarrrgh.

(Sorry to rant.)

--
Robert