Easter Monday and the Anzac day holiday were in the same
week this year, which meant that if you took three days’ leave, then you ended
up with an unbroken stretch of ten straight days of holiday.

Naturally, I took it. We both did.

Which is fine, except Monday, Wednesday and Fridays turned
into a game of beat the bot.

Housekeeping is never a fun chore, it’s just something that
has to be done.  So last Christmas we
bought bots. A vacuum robot, for cleaning the wooden floor and carpets, and a
wet mop for the wet areas.

I find that robotic floor cleaners are a lot like dishwashers.  Even though you have to do pre-work (load)
and post-work (empty), it’s faster and more convenient than having to wash
dishes by hand. Even when the hand washing can be done in half the time, and
when the dishwasher breaks down, you can’t wait until it gets fixed so you
don’t have to handwash any more.

Bots are like that.  For
the vacuum cleaner to make sure the floor doesn’t have anything around that
might trip the bot up, and that the furniture hasn’t been moved so it gets
stuck, and afterwards you have to empty the dirt tray. The wet mop is even more
manual—sweep the floor first, set up the cleaner, then wash out the wet mop after
it’s done.  Even so, housework has less of
a hassle since they’ve been around.

We named our bots. As you do, of course.  Zoomba, because it’s a Roomba, and because
Zumba (don’t ask, I’m not going to explain) and Wetta, because the mop is a
Braava Jetta and because we’d just come back from New Zealand and the Weta
factory and it made sense at the time.

The Wetta is totally manual. Set it up, press go, put it
away when it’s done.

The Zoomba is scheduled to run every Monday, Wednesday and
Friday at 9:00.  We’re out of the house
by 7:30 normally. It’s not a problem. Except this week. When we were on
holidays.

Something else you do on holidays.  Sleep in.

We could, of course, have just changed the settings, but
that would be too simple.  No.  Instead, we played beat the bot.

Nine am on the scheduled days. We’re asleep, of course, because
we stayed up late last night reading, or writing, or just talking.  The very noisy Zoomba starts up. (The Wetta
is whisper quiet.)

We fall out of bed in our respective rooms. Run out, check
the cords, check the furniture, do what we have to do to be sure the bot has a
clear path.  So tired we’re both doing
the same thing, one after the other.

By then we’re wide awake. 
“You can have first shower,” one of us says. We go through the walz of “No,
you can,” a couple of times before one of us gives in and heads for the bathroom.

The other, wide awake by now of course, turns on the
computer.

I’m sure, if you could read bot-minds, you’d hear the Zoomba
laughing.