JOY ALONG THE WAY: HEY YOU, UNDER THE BEDS: PACK YOUR BAGS!

"O.K. you fuzzy, little dust bunnies hidden there under the bed dust ruffles, the couch pleats, the low-lying buffet, your time is about up.

"You think I don't know you're there, giggling to yourselves, rolling around with arid abandon, reproducing like four-legged bunnies? I even suspect that you've mastered cloning.

"While I'm suffering with wintertime ailments that have allowed you to multiply, in my uneasy mind's eye, I see that under the beds, you've piggy-backed upward to where, with one last leap you can land on the slats and then, realizing you haven't reached Nirvana, dive back down without fear of breaking your no-necks, bouncing on your fellow floor-bound beings with high glee.

"But your time of annihilation is coming. The count-down is getting perilously close -- 10, 9, 8, 7, . . . .Ever hear of Spring House Cleaning, dusties? Yeah! Capital letters as in Easter, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving?"

"House Cleaning!" comes the inaudible but dust ruffle quivering response. I can see the dusties huddling in a circle like ambassadors at the United Nations Security Council Round table. A delegate, largely composed of fabric shreds mixed with cyberspace particles shed from unseen words that transverse the airwaves, yet adept at interpreting English speak! speaks: "Ravelies and Shredies, Woolies and Nit-pieces, someone has spoken from above in a threatening voice that says, `House Cleaning,"'

"House Cleaning!" demand the other delegates, shivering. "What's House Cleaning?"

House Cleaning! The dust bunnies are not the only ones who don't understand the original meaning of the words.

Old grandmas can explain it. They usually begin with a description of how on a sunshiny day in spring all the movable furniture in one room is hauled out into the yard and while it is out there soaking up the rays and being slapped, swatted, washed, wiped, oiled and tightened, the inside walls, ceilings and floors are scrubbed with lye soap, or in the case of some floors, wood ashes. Those affluent enough to have carpets take them out, drape them over the clothesline and beat the living embryo dust bunnies out of them.

Assuming a good-old-days expression, the old grandmas go on. "Maybe even some new wallpaper is pasted onto the walls, bringing about a glorious transformation. Windows are washed. Curtains are washed and stretched in little `picky' frames. Then, if you want to be double sure that no spiders, silverfish, beetles or bugs have survived the upheaval, you close all doors and windows and burn blue vitriol overnight." "Then what?" some grandchild may ask the old grandma.

"Then you do the next room."

"Grandma! We have fourteen rooms in our home and five baths!"

"I know, my child. That's why vacuum cleaners, automatic dust eradicators, washing machines, self-cleaning this, that and the other were invented."

"Grandma, is House Cleaning in the dictionary?" "I couldn't find it, dear." "Then we no longer have to do it?" "Well, not exactly. That is, unless you want to vacuum and dust and wash and spray and polish and shine every day. Some days, maybe weeks, some folks would just rather read a book or walk alongside a creek."

"Dust bunnies, I've got my dozen books read for the winter, have walked alongside where the new Troll Bridge is, have three more swallows of cough medicine and am counting, 6, 5, 4, 3, ...."

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.