Where does it come from?

I am often completely stymied and, yes, here I am again. I cleaned (dusted, Swiffered the floors, vacuumed) before I left for skiing last week. I was away for the week. No one that I know of was here in the interim to make dust or dirt.

I have only been back five days. I walked through the dining room yesterday and the sunlight hit my beautiful hard wood floor and I saw that it was covered with dust and dust bunnies. Somewhere, probably Reader’s Digest at the dentist, I read that most of this dust is made up of discarded human skin cells. So who are these people living in my house unbeknown to me and discarding all this skin? Are there dozens of them? We never seem to run into each other. I don’t hear anyone! Is this what aliens actually do to upset the balance of the universe?

There are five people living in my daughter’s house including three little girls. And an old cat and an occasional guinea pig. You would expect that house would require regular, thorough cleaning. In fact, my daughter tells me, it cannot be left to a weekly cleaning but, in large measure, must be tackled every single day!

But I live here quietly and mostly by myself. I’m not a slob. I rarely spill much, if anything at all. And I always clean up after myself. I’m sort of fastidious if anything. I think I thought for almost forty years that most of the dust must have been my dear late wife’s fault. She was always moving, rarely sat for any periods of note, and always cooking up a storm. Does cooking cause dust?

So help me here: where o where does all this bloody dust come from?