Out Damn Spot

The 30 seconds of red dye on the rug refuses to end. Jake never imagined what a chain of events he was unleashing.

After I had worked on the initial spots on the rug, they were far from perfect but they were in a room not often used and I wouldn’t have minded leaving it at that.

But Monday after the cleaning people left, I went upstairs to find a bigger very red spot on the hall carpeting and evidence that some sort of red disaster had taken place in my bathroom. (I remembered I had left the opened package of dye in the trash can in my daughter's room, which they must have been emptying.) Why hadn’t they at least told me about it?

My attempts at dealing with the new red rug spots were futile. So I found carpet remnants in the attic and called a carpet cleaning/repair place which agreed to come out and work on my multiple problems.

Yesterday they did an exceptionally nice job of replacing the damaged red carpeting with pieces of remnants. And they also did a badly needed cleaning of all the upstairs carpeting.

They were just getting ready to leave when they asked my husband to turn on the outside water (which had been turned off over the winter). That’s when all hell broke loose because a pipe had obviously burst.

Within minutes of the tidal wave of water, my husband had turned it off. But the water had already flooded the pantry, his office, and was on its way to other parts of the house.

The carpet guys sprang into action, getting a super wet-vac and 3 giant fans from their truck. They stayed an additional half hour and kept apologizing profusely for asking for the water to be turned on. They left the fans behind to blow all night. I can’t imagine how much worse this would have been if they had not been here.

So days later we continue to pay literally and figuratively for 30 seconds of red dye on the rug. As Gewels said, it’s a good thing he’s a cute dog.

I am going to have to have a serious talk with the cleaning people. Meanwhile I need to review words like alfombra (rug), toallas (towels), cuidado de me casa!