Objets D'ust

You know all of those little items that sit around your home on desks, or side tables, or the piano? All of those decorative knicknacks and pattywhacks you have collected over the years?

I call them objets d'ust, which is a French term for "little decorative things sitting around your home collecting a lot of dust." I call them this because, at least in my home, they seem to be magnets for the little stuff that floats around in the air, looking for a place to settle.

Dust. You know, I think that I have blogged about this before, in my veni vedi bloggi sort of way. But, since I am a perniciously perseverating person, (don't you just love alliteration, especially when it is gratuitous and overdone) I find myself thinking about it a lot. Of course, there is a lot of dust in my house to perseverate over.

I am not sure why this is; I prefer not to think about what the dust is composed of, or why we have so much of it. Somehow, though, I am sure that it has to do with the fact that we have a very hairy dog who is old and scratches himself a lot.

I have this little wand thingie from Swiffer, the company that is slowly taking over my life with its products, and I go around the house running the wand thingie over all of my cherished memorabilia and photos, to dedustify them. But, as soon as my back is turned, they seem to grow new dust magically; it is as if there is some Dust Fairy that sprinkles each objet as soon as my back is turned. Not to be confused with the Dust Bunny, who hides big clumps of dust under the beds each Easter.

One time there was this particularly unusual little figurine that I had never noticed before, on a table. I got out my Swiffer wand item and ran it over the figurine and it disappeared. Turned out, it was actually made of dust.

Thank God I got rid of it before it organized itself into a life form, via the process of spontaneous generation, or whatever. I seem to remember something about Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, Erasmus Darwin and a piece of vermicelli, but there was no pasta involved in the creation of my dust entity.

Maybe I should just give up, and let the dust organize itself into furnishings. Now, about those dust curtains...