OK – here’s the part of this collection where I completely shatter any faux-cool I may have unintentionally projected.

I secretly love vacuum cleaners.

I have since I was a child and this fetish was way less closeted then.

Maybe it was riding on the old Sears Magic-Cordâ„¢ model as my mother cleaned the house when I was 2 years old.

On our weekly tea-room lunch trips to the department store, (Mom and grandma had a passion for chicken salad resembling heroin addiction), I would invariably beg not to go to the toy department,…. But housewares.

On one particularly crowded afternoon at the store, I apparently pried myself from my mother’s hand, jumped up onto a display, threw my arms around a Hoover and exclaimed, loudly, “Oh Vacuum Cleaner! My old friend!”

My embrace and childlike focus prevented me from noticing how mom and grandma explained that one to the other women who stopped in their tracks to observe my display, not to mention their subsequent looks of utter confusion they shot at my chaperones.

So here I am at age 31 and after passing my self-conscious teens and 20’s – I’m coming back out:

I FUCKING LOVE VACUUM CLEANERS.

The new “Dwell Magazine” just arrived today and low and behold on page 80 is a whole story about James Dyson and his kick-ass cleaner. I get this creepy “ahead of the curve” feeling since I bought a “DC-07” a couple of months ago as a house warming gift to myself. *DWELL kicks ass. (If you’re a modern architecture junkie, check them out).

It was probably that night strolling through the isles at Best Buy when I sauntered past the vacuum cleaners and spied the Dyson for the first time that my childhood fascination was rekindled. My pupils dilated and pulse quickened and before I knew it I had completely disregarded the $500 price tag and was lugging one up to the counter.

My friends are all terribly understanding since I seem to be compulsively obliged to pull it out of the closet and show it off to anyone who comes over to the new house for the first time. “Never mind the cool new house – how about this vacuum cleaner hu?!?!?”

They’re always kind to wax interest and I feel like I’ve done my duty spreading the good word about James Dyson’s wonderful machine.

So there you have it.

Thank goodness I’m not blogging about this because it could come back to haunt me later.