I don’t know what got into her this week. Not only is
there no excuse for her behavior (since she couldn’t give me one,) but if she
doesn’t straighten up, she’s gonna be out of a job.
I gave her a task yesterday while I went into my office to write. I closed the door so she wouldn’t interrupt me, and we both went to work. By the time I was done, it was nearly dark. She’d already finished and returned home. I went to the living room windows to close the blinds and there, on the floor at my feet, lay my best houseplant, upside down, dumped in a heap, tendrils all twisted and broken, gasping for . . . whatever plants gasp for. Water and potting soil bled together when she fell, creating a miserable, muddy mess all over the floor. I have no idea how long this went unnoticed.
It’s not like I’m some kind of plant lady with mad gardening
skills. Most of my plants are factory warranted. Those are my favorites. They
don’t need water or food or fish gut juice, thank goodness. And gross. Their
one weakness is they need to be dusted. In my opinion, that’s just asking
too much. I prefer plants that thrive on neglect. I just don’t know where to get one of those.
But somewhere I read that if you can keep a hardy
green plant alive, it'll reward you by absorbing toxins from the air and
repurposing them into carbon dioxide or something. Don’t quote me. I may have
that backwards, but it’s close enough. So, three little
orphaned green things, which shall remain nameless because I have no idea what
any of them are, sit in their own pots in my great room, waiting for me to remember to water them. Week after week after boring week. So, I do. I don’t like it,
but it’s better than running out of carbon dioxide.
I don’t know if there was some kind of conflict that went
down this week while I was busy writing my first famous and unbelievably
successful future novel. There did appear to have been a struggle. I’ll admit,
this plant is already something of a drama queen. Even though she lay at my
feet looking sad and pathetic and possibly dead, it’s not the first time she’s
been there. If I don’t water her once a week or notice when her foliage looks
feeble, she tips over in a thirsty faint like she's Scarlett O'Hara and falls to the floor all by herself.
She’s done that twice now. She did it night before last, in fact. But I swept her
up like I was her personal Rhett Butler and carried her lifeless form to the kitchen where,
right there at my farm sink, she miraculously resuscitated. So, there’s no need
for you to go and turn me in to the local nursery or some antebellum neighborhood watch. She was drunk with water and
happy as a lark the last time I saw her.
There was absolutely no reason for her to simply fall
over yesterday afternoon, weighed down as she was by all the liquid she guzzled
the night before. It was embarrassing how much she drank. All I could think as
I stared at her twisted, lifeless form was she’d been thrown to the ground
against her will, which couldn’t have been easy as bloated as she was. Oh, the
humanity. But who was the perpetrator of this random act of violence? I sure didn't do it.
If I had to guess, it looked like the
work of a family pet, but I don’t have one. I don’t even own a goldfish. Looking
around the quiet space, my eyes finally came to rest on the only possible suspect who could be responsible for this crime. It was the silence that gave her away. There, in the corner, feigning
innocence and refusing to make eye contact, she sat quietly at home, pretending she had
no idea what had happened to my desecrated plant thing.
I leaned over to give her a performance review, smacked her with a rolled-up newspaper,
and yelled, “Bad, bad Roomba!”
I knew it was her, the cranky little floor sucker. I've watched her race around the room doing figure eights like an ice skater, sailing to and
fro between the baseboards until she bounces off the kitchen cabinets. Then she flies across the living room rug, circling the area in a pattern that can only be described as “two-year-old
scribble.” But this time she went too far. It all made sense. As she rounded the wall near my piano, she inhaled the long, formerly leafy vines that used to cascade elegantly
from my houseplant to the floor, and chewed them up, yanking the entire plant
down beside her.
The glutton. No one told me she’s a vegetarian. I would
definitely have opted for a different model if I’d known that.
Perhaps I have myself to blame. I went through the
room before I turned her loose on it, moving curtains and blanket corners out
of the way, but I never once thought about my innocent little neurotic plant.
In all these months since I welcomed Roomba into my home, she’s never before
tried to eat it.
Until this week. I guess the honeymoon is over.
The frustrating part, though, is that I can’t prove a
thing. There was no mud clinging to her exterior. No perlite pieces plugging her sensors. She wasn't even wet. My Ring doorbell could have
videotaped the atrocity, but it only invades the privacy of visitors when they stop by. I haven’t even had the courage to empty her trash compartment
yet to search for evidence. I don’t think I could stomach it.
So, what am I to do with this incorrigible machine? This purported time-saver that regularly costs me peace and creates aggravation. Vacuum my own floors? You must be kidding. Hire a real live housekeeper? How would I explain that to my accountant? Roomba didn't even flinch when I gave her a swat with my performance review. I think we all know who the real boss is here.
I'm out of options. I think the only answer is to take down my curtains, give away my throw blankets, and toss out all three plants. But if I die from a lack of carbon dioxide in my own home, promise me you’ll kick Roomba to the curb for me. And don’t let her make you feel guilty for doing it.
She had it coming.
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