Words from The Crone

I’ve often heard the expression, “I love you,” followed by “I Love you more.” It is almost as if loving someone is a contest of who loves who more or better or longer or something. My R and I have a couple of rituals that keep us connected in a mystical sort of way. Each morning we give each other a kiss and hug with the words, “I love you.” We are not in a contest and so the other never says, “I love you more.” Nice.

Our other ritual is what we like to call “Bus Insurance.” Bus insurance is a kiss, a hug, and an “I love you,” when either of us leaves the other, particularly if we are out and about driving somewhere. Bus insurance is our quirky way of saying, “If you get hit by a bus and die, I want the last thing you remember is that “I love you.”

This particular ritual is so important to us that I have been known to run out the front door after the car yelling, “Wait, wait, you forgot your bus insurance.” We even invoke this ritual if I am going to stay in the car when R dashes into the grocery store for milk or bread. I mean, really, there may be bread buses or dairy buses in there. Over the years we have conjured up a whole host of different “buses” that might just smack us out and send us into the eternal whatever. Who knows? Our answer: Bus Insurance.

My R loves the spring season better than almost anything else. As soon as the first hint of a bud or a leaf pokes its head out of a barren twig, my R will say, “Look, spring is here.” This is not a weekly proclamation, but a several times daily one. As each flower pops out his spring enthusiasm mounts in a fury of ohs and ahs and he enters into what I like to call his spring ecstasy syndrome.

As the trees begin to green out in that most delicate and delightful pale green, R is known to mention how beautiful spring is and how much he loves the season minute by minute. He can do this five times as we drive about three blocks from the house. I get the message I’ve told him and I know how much spring means to him. He has retorted from time to time that since he never grumbles about the barren winter twigs and trunks he is entitled to rave about the blooming forth of spring. Sigh, I’ll give him that.

As we were driving home the other day however, I mentioned that I had forgotten to tell him “I love you,” that morning and I wanted him to know that. He nodded and we drove on. As he commented on another willow tree bursting forth in green, I commented on how deeply he really did love springtime. He smiled, looked at me and said, “Yes, I do love spring, but I love you more than green trees.” How can you not love a guy who loves you more than green trees when green trees give him so much joy?

The other day we received an email about dogs and the unconditional love they give to us humble humans. R and I talked about how much we loved our little dog and came to the conclusion that if he died before us we would simply have to get another dog. I said to R, you know “I love you more than our dog.” He said, “I love you too more than our dog, but he’s right up there!” Of course, we both cracked up laughing, and so I guess our previously simple “I love you” may always have to include the dog and green trees, at the very least!

Our family entered the 21st century last December 9th. We acquired our first robot and life hasn’t been the same since. After several friends demonstrated the absolute necessity for our very own robot, we purchased the next to the top of the line irobot. Our irobot is one of those vacuum cleaners that sucks up every scrap and ort of dust and dirt in any given room. AND, it is WONDERFUL!

Robbie Roomba as we call him (I decided my vacuum would not be a “her”), was a Christmas gift to the house, but he arrived on December 9th. When I read that we could return him for lack of performance in 30-days, I mused that if we waited until December 25th to begin using him, we would only have about a week to return him. Thus, his servant-robo life began way before that.

The days of paper instructions or manuals are long gone, and in its stead was a DVD. Oooookay. Popped it into our player and the three of sat through one hour of instructions, half of which were repeats from a previous module. It was actually kind of nice seeing it in living movement and vivid colors. But, it was frustrating that we couldn’t look up an instruction in the index and go to page whatever. Like, how do I change the filters. We had to pop in that sucker DVD again and cruise through the modules until we found those instructions. Not really efficient.

At any rate, we powered Robbie up and decided that we needed to see what he would be doing before we programmed him to clean automatically. So, we hit the “Clean” button and off he went. For over an hour we watched him slowly traverse our great room and entrance hall, bumping and banging along as he encountered objects like chairs, walls, table legs, etc. We giggled and laughed as it took him minutes to figure out how to get out from under a dining room chair. We tiptoed behind and around him, wondering when he thought he was done.

Finally, he moved slowly toward his docking station to be recharged for the next go-round. As he moved onto the dock, he tootled like a flute, a fanfare of notes ta-da-da-ta-da-da! Oh, he talks too! We gently lifted him from his “home,” re-ran the DVD, and figured out how to program him to run in the middle of the night when we were all asleep. We thought 1am would be good and so we programmed him for every night at 1am to make his cleaning rounds.

Since it was Christmas and we had our tree up, we didn’t want him moseying off into that area, so we used the two “Towers” that came with him to send a beam of light across the space which prevented him from crossing over into tinsel, lights, and glass ornament land. They worked, TBTG. We just loved having our very own robot.

Over the months we have found that there are dangers lurking in our home that give Robbie a modicum of distress. For example, one day I hung my fringed cape on the doorknob in the hall. Of course, it hung on the floor. Of course, the next morning we found Robbie’s cleaning brush tangled up in the fringe and him lying dead beside the cape. We lovingly picked him up and returned him to his charging dock. Poor baby.

Another night he got stuck on the small rug in the bathroom and circled himself to battery death right next to the toilet. We have also found him dead under the rocking chair, unable it seems to figure out how to get out and thus drained himself of all his life giving juice in the effort. We try now to anticipate such dangers, but somehow a new one pops up every so often.

Finally, there is the bumping and banging. It doesn’t often disturb my R and I because we sleep upstairs, but often it wakes up K who sleeps on the first floor. Early on in our robot adventure, she went out one night to investigate the noise, forgetting we had Robbie. As she opened her bedroom door, Robbie scared the living bejesus out of her as he rounded the hall corner and headed for her room through the open door.

We do love him though, and our cleaning peeps tell us it makes a difference when they come to do the heavy stuff. We did forget to change his clock to daylight saving time so now he bumps and bangs at 2am, but hey, he does a great job and we are even thinking of getting Roger Robot for upstairs! Welcome to the 21st century. I wonder what kind of robot they will think of next? Maybe one that cooks? Writes sermons? Goes grocery shopping? Oh, the possibilities are endless.