Day #170: The one with the vacuums

Let's have a conversation about vacuums.
The floor is dirty.
You go into your closet, pull out your lightweight vacuum cleaner, run the vacuum over the carpet, and the floor is clean.
Wrong.
This is how it works in the US.

In London, it goes a little more like this...
The floor is dirty.
You go into your ONLY closet which contains your massive, scalding hot, and rumbling water heater.  There is also a shelf at the top that fits your vacuum if you disassemble it.
You cross your fingers and hope for the best as you get down the hose, the vacuum body, and the cord.  As you are unwinding the cord from around the water heater, you burn your hand.  You treat your hand with Neosporin and ice.

Once recovered, you build your vacuum.  When your vacuum is built, you heave it down your hallway, scratch a wall, scratch another wall, and finally arrive to your living room.
You turn the vacuum on and feel a small and dainty inhale of air come from the hose.
You realize you will be vacuuming your house with a hose suction that is about as powerful as a small desert tortoise slowly opening his mouth and gasping in one breath of air.
You attempt to hold the hose over a very tiny piece of thread on the floor.
The piece of thread looks up at the vacuum hose and says, "What now bio-tch! You ain't got nothing on me!"
You press the hose hard onto the thread and move the hose bristles back and forth.  The thread prevails and taunts the hose by singing a house beat version of, "I Will Survive."
You pick up the thread and attempt to feed it directly into the mouth of the hose.
The tortoise uses all of it's gusto and takes a massive inhale; however, peeters out just as the thread begins to lift off your fingertips and the thread flutters to the floor while casually humming, "Free Falling."
You pick up the thread, walk it to the kitchen, place it in the trash can, muster up your best ghetto face, look the thread in the eye, and yell, "Fuuuck Yooouuuu...." in your best Scottish accent (see #169: The one in Edinburgh).
You re-enter the living room, see a floor covered in threads...a graveyard of forgotten lint and fuzz.
You call your husband.
You strike a deal.
"If I clean the entire house, can you vacuum just this one room?"
You feel a tiny bit bad about the fishing line manipulation, but gladly go and get the toilet brush and 409.  An hour later your return to the living room to find your husband on his hands and knees with a travel sized lint roller and 39 used sheets all balled up under the TV.
You take apart the vacuum, walk it down the hallway, scratch another wall, and shimmy it onto it's shelf above the burning helium tank that is heating your water.
You plop down on the couch, ice your burn, and think, "I'll get you next time you little Hoover wanna-be!"

Lessons Learned: British appliances suck.