I usually start early, about 6:00 AM, on a day when my wife is traveling. This way I can vacuum the carpets, and shampoo them in one continuous operation without interruptions of conference calls and other realities of real work.
The first thing I do is check the vacuum cleaner. We have one of those bag-less wonders. It’s really cool….unless the hose from the head of the thing to the container of the thing is clogged, which it always is. I don’t understand this. How can a mechanical thing be so consistently fouled up. Anyway, quickly disassemble the vacuum, clear the entire path from snout to stern, and carefully reassemble the vacuum. Vacuum the entire room, being careful to dump the container because one false move and the damn thing is choked again. I am aways impressed with the amount of stuff that comes out of a carpet.
Next, retrieve the
carpet shampoo thing from the garage, and start trying to remember
where the cleaning fluid might be. Examine the cleaner, and note it
is quite dirty and clogged in places with junk from prior uses. A
prudent man might say, “hmmm…..I probably ought to clean this so
it doesn’t fail while I am working with it.”
So, I
begin to disassemble the cleaner, noting how creatively and
ingeniously it as been engineered. I take each part of the path from
the carpet head to the water collection vessel and carefully clean it
with hot soapy water. I reassemble the cleaner. It looks like new.
I let the dogs, Dixie and Maggie, out and give them raw-hide bones to chew on. This is so I can take the dog gate between the living room and kitchen down. The area right there at the gate is in serious need of cleaning. It’s almost black.
As I survey our beautiful white carpet, I note with some sadness that it displays the evidence of a life with two large, dark dogs who run in a back yard of red clay. Some say the carpet is now a subtle shade of orange, others claim it’s pink. I don’t know. I’m color blind.
As I’m about to pour the cleaner fluid into the dispenser, it occurs to me that my old friend Oxyclean might be of use. Do you remember the commercials where the guy would shout “Billy Mays here” and proceed demonstrate how Oxyclean would safely clean anything? I do.
I read the label, and then I put one full scoop of Oxyclean into the hottest water I had, and stirred. It looked just like the stuff in the bowl on the commercial. I poured all that into the fresh water container on my carpet cleaner, and topped it up with more hot water.
I began to clean. Forward I pushed the machnine as it dispensed detergent, Oxyclean and hot water, and back as it sucked it back up. My machine is pretty large. It holds about two and a half gallons of hot water. After about 15 minutes, I notice something odd. The machine does not appear to be picking up much water as I pull it back. I stop to check the machine. The dogs are barking now.
In seconds I notice a troubling fact. It has not been sucking water back up at all. I felt the carpet. It wasn’t just damp, or wet. It was soaked with water, detergent and Oxyclean. I quickly took the machine apart again. There is an ‘o-ring’ the is cleverly hidden behind a lip of plastic that runs around the big piece of plastic that is on top of the vacuum head. With an old toothbrush, I clean the o-ring and reassemble the vacuum. Ever since I caught my little brother cleaning golf balls he got out of the Country Club pond with my toothbrush I have made it a practice to always keep an old toothbrush around.
I start it up, and it works for one pass. Now, when you pull the cleaner back toward you on the ‘suck it up’ pass, it makes a horrible noise. I stop again. One of the plastic plates that form the ‘sucker’ head has come loose. The dogs are barking like mad. I decide to take a minute to figure this out. I put the dog gate back up, and let the dogs back in. they are very excited about the new smells, and Maggie expresses this excitement by barfing up not only the raw hide bone she just ate, but also the contents of the last 5 or 6 meals she ate. She’s feeling much better, and Dixie is deciding that this is a bonanza.
With dogs back out side barking loudly, I clean up an extraordinary amount of dog puke from our tile floor. I turn to go and put a big clump of dripping dog vomit in the garbage can. I stride with my right foot, and plant my slipper into a puddle of dog drool. Dixie had experienced a Pavlovian response to Maggie puking and had created a small but very slick and deadly puddle of drool. Dog drool is slicker than K-Y jelly. My right foot hit the puddle and took off at the speed of light for the other side of the room. My left knee gave way, and I tried to grab a kitchen chair on the way down to break the fall. To some degree, I was successful. I was not injured by the fall at all. I got up and viewed with some amazement the result of the fall.
Somehow, I managed to sling dripping dog vomit across both the kitchen and the living room in one graceful effort. Not only were there chunks of oozing slime on the counters in the kitchen, on the vent-a-hood, and yes, on top of the refrigerator, but it was also found on the couch, the china cabinet, the book case. I wasn’t concerned about the kitchen. It’s tile. The living room is carpet. White…well…either pink or orange…carpet….soaked carpet….covered with chunks of dog vomit.
It is now 9:30AM.
It’s gotta be 5:00 somewhere, right?
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