The “House Critters” Being Helpful!

   The house critters had all slept in this morning and were not fully awake when they heard the humans talking. A week had passed since Barbs’ birthday and as a present Amy was taking her out to brunch at a place with gourmay coffee, which Bob did not like. Barb told Bob, “The small almond flavored cupcakes left over from her birthday, that Amy made along with a cake, would be a good breakfast snack.” She strongly suggested that he did not need to put any chocolate frosting on them. Bob knew that what she really wanted was to get the Tupperware container that once held two dozen cupcakes, where there were now four, off the counter. Then she let Bob know the honey do list was on the kitchen table which is where the house critters come into the story. They were all out in the living room by then with Henrietta Bobbie Bunny, Ducky Duck, Blue Booby, Big Bunny and Rainy Reindeer agreeing to help Bob with what was on the list.

   After Barb and Amy left Bob made coffee before he took the cupcakes out of the container to put them on a napkin for eating while watching the TV in the living room. He had forgotten about the frosting until Barb mentioned it and decided at least two of cupcakes needed to be frosted!  Turned out that would have to wait awhile, when he took the frosting out of the refrigerator it was quite hard and would not spread well. He ate one cupcake and decided to wait till a second cup of coffee was needed to eat the rest and watch TV. The honey do list was next, this is where he would find out what wonderful activities his wife had planned for him. First activity on the list was to clean out the upright vacuum. Bob actually understood why he got ask to do this; there was always a problem getting it back together properly. The best place to clean out a vacuum was in the garage so he got the vacuum, put on sneakers and a coat to go outside. Once in the garage he started taking the parts off the vacuum, it was a mess with dust and hair way over the full line in the tank, which is called a canister. There was a garbage can lined with a trash bag in the garage so it was all ready for him to dump the tank. When he took out the top filter the air holes in it were stuffed with the dust and hair mixture, Bob figured the vacuum must not have had any suction before it got put away. The bottom filter just collected very fine dust as by then everything else had collected in the tank. This two piece filter had an inner part, paper filter with a top and bottom made of plastic, and the outer part was a foam filter that wrapped around the inner piece. Each piece was so clogged that Bob could not see light through them. He took them over to the fence and started banging them on the top of a post.

  The critters were watching all the action from the kitchen windows. They saw when Bob carefully dumped the tank into the garbage can dust rose up out of it like smoke, which made them giggle. His banging the filters on the post pushed them to laughter. Dust blew at Bob no matter where he stood to clean the filters. When he started to sneeze and pulled out his handkerchief they almost fell backwards into the sink. His hands were so dusty that the white handkerchief looked like a cleaning rag before he even got it to his nose. When the filters were clean he got paper towels and wiped everything on the vacuum he could reach. After putting the bottom filter together getting the vacuum together was next.  While Bob was putting the two filters in the vacuum he thought how helpful the critters could have been with this task, especially with cleaning the darn bottom filter. With everything back together he went back into the house.

  The vacuum got put in the back hallway; he washed his hands and made that second cup of coffee. Then he went to put frosting on the cupcakes, but all he had was cupcake wrappers. The critters knew they had been very helpful; they had kept him from eating all the cupcakes and having any frosting!