The Grape Juice

Monday was a very hectic day around our house: I had scheduled dentist appointments for Pete and myself with a dentist that is conveniently located just across the street from Pete's office. Pete took off Monday so that we would both be able to go in for our exams and cleanings. Pete hadn't been to the dentist in several years, and I hadn't seen one since January of 2002 when I had my braces removed, so we were both hurting for a check-up. I had noticed a dark spot on one of my bicuspids several months ago, but I put off going to the dentist until after the insurance plan year started over in July because having Teagan drained our flexible spending. Pete's appointment was at 8 in the morning, and he made it back home around 9:45 with the news that he needed to have a special cleaning, a filling and a wisdom tooth removed. Luckily they were able to make him an appointment for all that at 2 in the afternoon Monday. I figured that I was in for equally as bad news as I proceeded to my appointment at 11 in the morning. To my amazement, I found out that I was in pretty good shape. Two of my existing fillings (I only have 3) were cracked and needed replacement, and the dark spot that I had noticed was just a stain that can probably be blamed on my orthodontist having ground away some enamel between several of my teeth to make space.
I dropped Pete off Monday afternoon, and he had all his work done. Unlike the removal of my wisdom teeth, his was done with local anesthetic and he didn't seem to have a terrible amount of pain as a result. I have to go back Thursday morning to have my fillings replaced.
After Pete was done, the kids and I went and picked him up at his office (he had walked across the street to show off his tooth to his colleagues) and then ran by Tom Thumb on the way home. During the shopping trip to Tom Thumb, we picked up a couple of bottles of juice, as Pete's not allowed to have soda for several days following the extraction. One of the bottles of juice was Welch's purple grape juice. After bringing the groceries in to the house, I stopped to feed Teagan who was screaming with hunger. While I was feeding Teagan, and Pete was helping put things in their place, Alex somehow managed to swipe the bottle of grape juice and proceeded to go dashing from the kitchen into the living room where he stumbled, the bottle of juice slipped from his hands, the lid burst off and spilled more than a liter of grape juice onto the carpet. Our formerly off-white carpet, to be exact. When I saw the bottle fall and start pouring, it was almost as if my life was flashing before my eyes. I know now that it wasn't my life, but rather the life of the carpet, and the dream of going on a cruise in 2008, that I was envisioning. I thought for sure that the stain would never come out, and that we'd end up having to spend thousands of dollars to replace the carpet (in leiu of saving for a cruise).
Pete and I sent Alex to his room, (we both somehow managed to maintain complete control and not beat Alex, or even spank him for that matter) and set out trying to clean up the mess. Online, I looked up methods of removing grape juice or red wine from carpet. Most of the techniques tell you to blot with this, then blot with that, then blot with this and that again. The method that I decided to try said to first use white wine or club soda to blot the stain with. We didn't have club soda, so I got out a bottle of Biltmore Estate Chenin Blanc, and proceeded to use it as cleaning fluid. I really think the best method should actually say, "To clean grape juice out of carpet, first drink a bottle of white wine, then you'll feel much better, and the stain won't matter so much." After the wine, we applied a dilute solution of ammonia in water. I'm not sure if it helped either, but it did make the stain change from purple to a bluish-gray color. Then more wine, followed by an attempt to soak up all the liquid in the carpet. I left it alone for awhile, then came back to it later in the evening with a bottle of the two-part Spray-N-Wash. I was out of Resolve carpet cleaner, but I remembered that the ingredients in the Spray-N-Wash were the same as the Resolve, so I gave it a shot along with a good deal of elbow grease and scrubbing. I was finally able to make the carpet closely resemble how it began, and after a follow up with Spot Shot on Wednesday afternoon, I think I have the stain as close to eliminated as possible.
As a result, purple grape juice is forever banned in our house, and I think that I'm going to rent a rug doctor this weekend or call Kiwi or Stanley Steemer to clean the rest of the carpet. Since I spent so much time scrubbing that stain, it's the cleanest spot in the house! Oh, and Pete and I drank the rest of the wine. It was really good, sweet and light, and because I don't usually drink, one glass still makes me giggle.