“For never was a story of less woe than this of Karyn and her Broomeo.”*

Shakespeare, probably

On Saturday, my husband and I were watching a video on YouTube of curious otters reacting to a Roomba. I mentioned how I’ve longed for a Roomba for years, though I don’t think this was exactly news. I’ve said this a few times before.

Before the video was even over, he announced that a Roomba would be delivered on Monday.

Of course, I had to think of a name. There are many clever ones out there. You can Google lists of popular Roomba names. Ever the Shakespeare scholar, I wanted the name to be inspired by one of his plays. Of course, I mentioned this on Facebook — at the time, I was leaning toward Cobweb (a fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream). But a friend (who has a Roomba named Mrs. Hughes, of Downton Abbey fame) started making puns of Romeo & Juliet quotes, and Broomeo emerged the clear winner.

Of course, Broomeo wasn’t delivered until 7 pm last night. A bit late to test it out, but we at least set it up and let it charge overnight.

This morning, I let it go around 6:45 or so. It took two trips around the house (with the exception of the living room at the back of the house because it is down one step, and Broomeo doesn’t do stairs — he does balconies … *ba dum tss*). It ran for about 90 minutes, then went back to its charging station. I thought it was done. But about 10 minutes later, it started running again.

I should note that Blitz hates vacuum cleaners and tries to kill them. So we had a very real concern that he would try to destroy Broomeo. While it was running this morning, we had him gated off in the living room.

When Broomeo started running a third time, I stopped it and sent it back to the charger because I needed to go out and work in the garden. I set it to only run on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 8 am. So imagine my surprise when I came in from gardening at 10:30 and it was running. Again. And the dog gate wasn’t up, so Blitz had full access to the house … and Broomeo.

“Oh, Broomeo, Broomeo … wherefore art thou, Broomeo?”

And where was Blitz, for that matter?

Lucky for us, he chose to ignore it. Broomeo was in the hallway, and Blitz was sprawled out on the living room floor, looking bored. Whew.

(* With sincere apologies to Shakespeare, and to you, dear reader, for these puns.)