Does anyone else feel like this?

Yesterday, my summer officially began. My plan was to use part of my Mother's Day present and get a massage since I'd already paid for Katie Anne's daycare for the full week, and she's totally happy to be there. Unfortunately, due to technical errors on the spa's website, they did not get my online appointment request (even though I got a confirmation email -grrr), so I couldn't get in yesterday.

So, I spent the day cleaning. Even though that's not my ideal way to spend a free day, it is nice to start the summer with a clean house. I cleaned like a maniac - picked up and put away (which took forever... the house goes rapidly downhill during the last two weeks of school, and clutter takes over all flat surfaces), and then swept, mopped, vacuumed, did lots of laundry, and cleaned all the bathrooms. The only thing I didn't get to was dusting, and I'll do that this weekend. I also got to eat lunch with my hubby at a great new restaurant, and I got my car washed and detailed... so it was a productive day, even if it wasn't the relaxing day that I'd planned.

Which brings me to the title of my post... is anyone else astonished, happy, and yet horribly disgusted when you see how much crap a new vacuum cleaner pulls out of your carpets? Yesterday, I used our new vacuum for the first time. Good grief... I had no idea our floors were this nasty! What was the old vacuum cleaner doing? Obviously, nothing. I just went back and forth between "Thank goodness we got a new vacuum! So fresh and so clean-clean!" to "I wish I had never seen that filth rolling out of my didn't-look-so-dirty-before floors! Someone call DFACS - my kid's been playing in this!" I was so amazed and horrified by the amount of dust, dog hair, and general filth sucked out of just our three bedrooms and area rugs that I had to take a picture of it. Click here to see the nasty ball of dust that rolled out of that new vacuum cleaner when I was done cleaning ... gross! I'm so glad the carpets are now so clean, but I hate to know that, as of this time yesterday morning, we were walking around on and breathing in all that junk! I'm surprised Katie Anne didn't have a little cloud of dust around her feet like Pig Pen.