Love of my life

I’ve met someone, Readers.

Imagine Freddie Mercury singing “Love of My Life.” That’s how I’m feeling these days.

His name is Dobby.

I like a tidy, clean house. Even when my children were little, I’d vacuum every day, because they’d be crawling around and trying to eat bits of grass and cat food kibble (Dearest Son succeeded in the latter and developed quite a taste for it). In addition to human children, we’ve always had a dog and a cat, sometimes two dogs or two cats. McIrish tromps in every day with sawdust and dirt and soot on his person. Even so, it was always easy enough to keep the house clean.

As my career ramped up, McIrish, who does not love the vacuum clearer as I do, and I decided to hire a housecleaner to come in every other week. It just made sense—I am more than able to fling my laptop aside and decide that every wastebasket in the house needs to be scoured, or the baseboards are crying out for Murphy’s Wood Soap, or that every piece of wooden furniture must be lemon-oiled this instant. It's easier than, say, writing a book.

Even so, I like to clean. Rebelling against McIrish’s wishes, I bought a Dyson battery-operated vacuum cleaner because I despise the awkwardness of the plug-in types. “Ooh,” I said, pivoting this way and that. “It’s like a dance partner. A really good one.” McIrish was insulted, maybe a little threatened, since I refuse to let him forget the time he dropped me when attempting a dip, or the time he almost broke my arm trying to spin me, or the time we got kicked out of Beginning Salsa. My Dyson is wonderful. So quick and easy to use! So graceful!

And then…then we got Buttercup, the World’s Most Beautiful Dog. Oh, my God, there is nothing on this earth cuter than a Golden retriever puppy, or more elegant and lovely than a full-grown GR doggy. She sits with me at night, follows McIrish around during the day, deposits hideous toys in our laps—a twisted rope, a gutted stuffed animal, her stinky, torn fleece blanket. She is perfect and loves to cuddle.

Also, did I mention she has fur? Sure, we’ve had pets before, but Buttercup’s fur is…special. If you get a Golden retriever or a mix thereof, be aware that shedding season starts on January first  and ends on New Year's Eve. Buttercup’s fur is bunny-soft and floats hypnotically through the air like milkweed seed. I brush her every day with one of four special brushes and a special comb. She gets a vigorous bath once a month, which she loves. Nevertheless, her fur is like a virus, multiplying rapidly, spreading with astonishing speed, immune to any treatment. After I brush her, I take the clumps of fur—we call them “puppies”—and put them in a hanging wire container so the birds can line their nests with Buttercup Grade A cashmere fur.

We call Buttecup’s tail the Tail of Doom, because it’s the perfect height to sweep your coffee cup off the table—or to sprinkle your beverage with fur. She trots over to us like Pigpen, a cloud of light blond fur surrounding her. My love of vacuuming, the satisfaction of Swiffering, began to grow weary and old.

Enter Dobby. Dobby RoboRocks Higgins. Oh, if McIrish was irked with the Dyson, he thought Dobby was ridiculous. “These things don’t work! Where will it dock? You haven’t thought this through, honey.” He was wrong, readers. I had thought of nothing else since Buttercup was four months old. Named, of course, for the house elf in Harry Potter, Dobby was something of a challenge initially, in that he had parts, and I am not great with parts. However, my pride would not let me ask Doubting McIrish husband for help. With the help of several online videos and a Reddit thread devoted to RoboRocs, I set up the charging dock in my bedroom, downloaded the app, and fell in love.

“Starting cleaning!” says Dobby in a British schoolmarm voice, firm and authoritative. The pizza-sided robot glides around the house, negotiating over the rug, the heating vent, the island stools. Also, I can start Dobby up from my phone, modern miracle that he is. I don’t even have to be home. Given Buttercup’s generosity, Dobby has to return to the dock to empty every thirty minutes, but my God! The satisfaction of seeing all that fur! Dobby glides under the coffee table, over the heating vents in the floor, back behind the little table next to the couch, over the rugs, into the kitchen. “Staircase detected,” Dobby says, and I praise hi for his genius.

“Look at all this fur!” I said to McIrish, showing him Dobby’s haul. “Look at it! Dobby works so hard for us!”

“That’s a lot,” he admitted. After the second time I launched Dobby, he said, “My socks are cleaner. I can tell Dobby was here.”

“I’m hearing you say, ‘You were right, honey,’” said I, ever eager to hear those three magical words from my husband’s lips. “You mean, 'You were right, and Dobby has changed our lives for the better, and I’m sorry I ever doubted either of you.’”

“Okay, okay, settle down,” he said, or words to that effect.

Buttercup loves Dobby, too. She wants to play with him, yet also has the appropriate respect. She presents Dobby with her hideous blankie, then leaps out of the way when he keeps coming at her, spinning, spinning, his little feelers scooping up dustballs of her fur. When Dobby announces another return to the dock or a low battery or a staircase detected, Buttercup tilts her head, wondering when this Dobby creature will tell her how pretty she is, or throw her a tennis ball or play tug of war.

Of course, the inevitable day came when Dobby got hung up on the base of a stool, and McIrish picked him up and set him back down away from the stool. “Dobby is free!” I said, and we both laughed. You don’t pick that name without hoping to quote that sentence, after all.

I’m not usually one for gadgets. We don’t have Alexa, I don’t use Siri, I will never own a smartwatch, AI is a slippery slope. Except when it comes to Dobby. Dobby is perfect. Just like Buttercup.