Mold Your Children Before They Mold You

The damage is done. We fought valiantly to save the carpet in the master bedroom after L's little incident with the toilet paper roll, but it wasn't to be. Despite a wet/dry vac, five fans going full bore (Thanks Wayne & Donna!), a couple pounds of baking soda, and Stacy's unending vigil with the hairdryer, the mold and mildew won out. I think at this point the carpets on the Titanic would be more salvageable. I recall forgetting a gymbag with dirty clothes in the trunk of my car out in the hot sun for about a week once; the parallels are striking.

So today after church I spent my day of rest pulling up the carpet and the unspeakably foul padding underneath it. When I was in college I sometimes worked as a volunteer with a group in inner-city Atlanta that gutted old abandoned crack houses in prep for refurbishing them. This afternoon I thought I was on a particularly bad crack flashback. When tearing up putrefied carpet there's just no doing it at arm's length. I need to go soak in boiling water now.

At least now we've got good clean concrete slab under our feet. I'm trying to convince Stacy that it's probably good enough for a year or two...