I suppose my first mistake was cleaning the condo.

This task cleared many flat surfaces from the detritus of my life that all seemed important at some time. This included the floor.

This included lifting a rug I had from the front door to the living room which some might call a ‘runner’. It doesn’t go anywhere, it just sits there, but people are strange and use words strangely. Regardless, I had washed it a few times over the years and when I lifted it I found the backing was no longer backing. It was a brownish grey dust in the shape of a rug. Or runner. Whatever.

A quick vacuum and mop, and I saw the imperfections of the floor as plainly as black text on white background. The text said, ‘hide me’. Granted, these are not great imperfections, but things like that bother me and I’m not ready to replace the flooring the place came with. Yet.

The dead runner that I had exhumed went into the trash. Who makes stuff you can’t just wash? There’s probably a reason that I don’t care enough to find out about, and so after 5 decades of meandering this planet I learned to get rugs I could wash.

And so, one of my missions for the last few weeks has been to find a rug to replace that one that is machine washable and is appealing. I threw in the requirement of feeling good when I wiggle my toes as well, which unfortunately I cannot test in stores without someone shouting at me or, at the least, looking at me funny.

It can’t be too dark, or it will drive me nuts with a little dirt on it. It can’t be too light for the same reason. A neutral color makes sense for me.

I did something I had not done before. I measured the floor. 39 inches by 74 inches. What an odd space. It was the odd spaces that attracted me to the condo and I like the odd angles for some reason, and being me I am convinced I can make something work.

From nearby store to nearby store, I wandered over the last week or so trying to find an exact fit in the approximations of what people want by some stores. I found some I liked that wouldn’t fit, and those that would fit I didn’t like – mainly because of the ‘toe wiggle’ test that I do with my fingers, imagining that they would be my toes.

I am not designed for this sort of thing. I absolutely hate it, but I want the result – the very definition of work.

This morning, I found myself looking at the Internet – my last resort – and found myself looking at a local website that might just have what I want.

Once more into the breech, dear friends…

I don’t understand why rug technology hasn’t increased. I don’t understand why websites don’t seem to allow you to look at products based on measurements. I think I should be able to put in my dimensions into a search box somewhere and it tells me where I can get a rug of those dimensions and with whatever attributes the rug has.

As it is, I feel like I’m sitting waiting for a rug of the right size to wander into my attention so I can grab it. Imagine, a rug I don’t have has the power over me to irritate me so much that I wrote about it.