House husbands with pearl handled Swiffers is now trending. There is no lack of testosterone in this country after all. There is merely a lack of real pearls for the handles of their Swiffers. Once again, we will hear from my friend, David Williams, without whom this blog would have perished. I’ve been on the mend from moving, and pneumonia, and will post about that very soon. Until then, enjoy this little gem.

My wife says I have crossed a line. Flaws are forgivable (now she tells me), some even being  endearing, throwing their own parades. The noted philosopher siblings, aka: The Doobie Brothers, said that “What were once vices are now habits”, and if you’re being charged with flaws, that’s the line of thought you want applied.

But unfortunately,  I am not afflicted with any of those endearing flaws or happy “habits”. I am instead the thing that follows the “is” in a sentence and whispered about over coffee. “Certifiable”, she says. “Borderline”, she says. That is what she says I am.

Here’s what I think. Vacuuming is good.  Bad things happen when you don’t vacuum, and good things happen when you do. And good things happen when you change the sheets.  I’m known for saying that.

I used to not care about sheets. I washed them and all, but on no necessary schedule. Like, in college, I’m not even sure when I got around to housekeeping, much less changing the sheets. For some reason, though, in my mature years, I’ve gotten particular about laundering sheets. They shouldn’t be just clean, but gleaming white. And not just white, but pure white. I don’t like colored sheets, and I don’t know why, I just don’t.

My process goes thus: On sheet washing day I spread them out on the laundry room floor. First, I spray them down with hydrogen peroxide. Then I rub in some OxiClean. I can feel it get warm, so I know it’s working better that way. Then I put them in the washer with a little more Oxi and put them through two extra rinse cycles. White, they are.

That leaves a little Oxi on the floor, so when I wipe that up I have a really clean floor.

I don’t actually use sheets on the bed. What I’ve got are duvets. Two, his and hers, on a queen sized bed. Maybe that’s what gets to her: realizing she’s married to a man who uses the word “duvet”.

But the practicality is beyond arguing: they end the fighting-over-the-covers thing, plus making the bed takes fifteen seconds. I saw duvets for the first time in Germany, fell in love with them, and then ordered them from IKEA or someplace like that. In the winter you can use a heavier comforter inside the duvet, a thin cool one in the summer. They’re very white. Nobody has ever been able to say I’m wrong about that.

(She says this is why people don’t talk to me at parties.)

I don’t think I’m borderline anything just because I like clean things and white things. A bit focused on it, perhaps. You know how the hustler comes into the pool room, opens up his little case, and screws together his personally engraved cue stick?

I have a polished titanium, pearl inlaid, engraved with my initials, two piece, multi purpose mop/swiffer handle. Ostrich covered case. Stays in its own little glass doored cabinet. I have the only key. It’s insured.

I rewound the vacuum motor with higher gauge copper. If I’m not careful it’ll pull nails out of the floor. If I would connect the motor to the wheels I could ride it to town. It has oversized tires and chrome rims, LEDs on the bottom for show. Pinstripes. Wax it every other Saturday. Has its own little garage inside the car garage, and a little remote controlled garage door. I bundled the policy when I insured the mob handle.

For dusting, I have a proprietary solution of grease cutter, wood conditioner and glass polisher, suspended in an anti microbial solution that a friend at the Dow plant here makes up for me. The spray bottle has a nozzle from the BMW plant’s paint department, lays down an even, ultra fine mist.

My dusting cloths are ultra micro fiber, made for me by an R&D textile plant down in Hilton Head. They’re very white. My initials in blue in the upper right corner. They send me ten each month. Friends want my old ones, and I’m happy to oblige. I don’t insure those, as that is not a capital expenditure, but the spray formula is known only to me and my buddy at the plant.  I custom age bourbon for him in return, so he keeps quiet.

I get the wood for the bourbon from a peach grower in Spartanburg County. It’s taken only from the limbs, not the trunk. The center portion of the trunk can impart a bitterness, and I can’t seem to get him to cut the staves from only the outer third of the trunk. But that’s a story for next time, if you like bourbon.

Anyway, I don’t think I need a therapist. She thinks I need a therapist.  But I don’t think I need a therapist. Some more of those white dust cloths, maybe. And the formula could use some tweaking. It’s  maybe a little light on the polisher. But not a therapist.