Sunday, July 10, 2011

That's disturbing...

Anybody who has been to the house I currently live in knows about the patch of rather unsightly, well-tracked, mangy gold-colored carpet in the middle of the house. That patch of carpet that, for reasons of asbestos and other things apparently more hazardous than noxious 30-year-old shag, can't be removed at this time. You also know that really, I couldn't care less what happens to it, other than doing what is necessary to prevent it from becoming a complete biohazard.

So when these tracks appeared on the carpet, I was hardly motivated to race off for the bleach bucket and rags to deal with them.

A week ago, my parents showed up at my place with an ice cream cake to celebrate the 4th of July. The cake was your standard Dairy Queen variety with chocolate and vanilla ice cream, some chocolate crunchies inside, and decorated with some appropriate red-white-and-blue-yay-for-freedom design. We sat and ate our cake under the watchful eye of our 8-year-old Labradoodle, who was determined he wasn't going to let a plate go without a proper cleaning to ensure complete consumption of all served ice cream.

He completed his own patriotic duty well enough, but we didn't notice that in the process of getting every last lick, he had placed his paw on one or more plates now covered in melted blue frosting. Then he trekked off across the gold carpet shag.

As I said, I wasn't disturbed. Frosting, whatever.

But today I made an attempt to decontaminate the carpet, and the blue paw-print stayed. Even after some extra rubbing, they didn't so much as smear. Now, I couldn't care less what happens to this carpet, and no, I did not run off for the toxic cleaning chemicals. The point is: what on earth are they putting in this blue frosting and where is it in my body now? Do I need to drink some bleach in order to get it unstuck from my own insides? If it permanently stains a carpet, do I want to be putting this stuff in my body?

I'm filing this under Things I Don't Want To Think About, except that now every time I walk through the house, I think about it.