I Swiffer Therefore I Am

I brought my Swiffer Duster wand into the office to dust my cubicle today. My wife has asked me more than once if I thought I had borderline OCD (Occlusive Compulsive Disorder). I don't think I do. At least I don't have to arrange my socks a certain way everytime or get dressed in the same order every morning. I'm just one of those people that have certain thresholds that once they are crossed, then I would spring into action. Enough is enough. I just don't like dust. Never have. Never will. I'm allergic to it. It makes my skin puffs up. It makes me sneeze and wheeze. My office cubicle is full of dust. There's so much dust covering my computer and shelves that my Swiffer actually stopped swiffering. As amazing as those little dust wands are, they too have their limits. Their little microfibers simply stopped functioning and atrophied. I was pretty sure they were gagging and spitting back dust balls before becoming catatonic. The air conditioning system isn't filtering it out fast enough, and the office cleaning crew apparently doesn't do windows, chairs, tables, shelves and floors or anything else other than trash cans. I still have bits of food on the carpet of my cubicle that were dropped there more than 2 years ago. I could have picked them up and thrown them in the trash, but it's a matter of principle. Either the cleaning crew will someday vacuum my carpet or the crumbs will just simply decay and disappear among the carpet fibers. 2000 years from now, archeologists will find their way into my cubicle and discover that the typical 21st century man ate Lance crackers and popcorn judging by the crumbs that were left behind. Perhaps a filthy cubicle has a higher purpose. I can leave my marks on the world in my own special way. Many thanks to the cleaning crew. I never thought of it that way before.

I can't just blog without at least mentioning my Sydney at least once every few days. She had an especially difficult day yesterday with spit up. She was spitting up more often yesterday than ever. She was irritable and went without sleep for several hours. It was very unusual. We think she is either gassy or having allergies to the formula we were using. The poor thing was upchucking white stuff all over my clothes. I had to change 3 times since coming home from work. I couldn't wait to hold my little girl as soon as I walked through the door. She looked up at me with those sweet, brown eyes, tucked her chin to her chest and ... bluhhhh, deposited a little stream of milk on my dress shirt and pants. Nice! Throughout the evening, she would repeat the scenario. Each time afterward, she would gaze intently at her work of art.

"Look, Daddy, this one looks like a white bunny!" she seemed to be musing. She would then look at me for a reaction.

"Oh, I think this one is a three-headed snake. See how the third head seems to be bigger than the others? Aren't I clever?" she appeared to be thinking another time while gazing at the grizzly white deposit on my shirt still hanging to her chin by a thin line of saliva.

"I can't think of what this one looks like but it sure is big." I can just imagine her thinking after a particularly large deposit on a fresh blue shirt that I had just changed into. She furrowed her little eyebrows while staring at me as if she was expecting a bit of help from daddy to figure it out.

"I can't help you there," I said while trying not to be grossed out by the warm and sticky substance that is making its way down my shirt along my chest. I should really, really stop jostling her no matter how much she was squirming in my arms.

Her spit ups were so disturbing to us new parents that Tracie actually woke up with a start in the middle of the night and said "She's spitting up again." When we really checked it out, Sydney was fast asleep. Mommy was having a nightmare. Funny how what seems to be the littlest thing in a baby's life can be so scary to the parents. We will just have to keep an eye on the situation before we really panic and call the doctor. We think she is having reflux issues. Tonight, we'll go to Plan B --- feed her less but more often. We'll see how it goes.