In Less Than 24 Hours, Two of Our Rugs Were Ruined

WHAT ARE THE CHANCES.

It all started the other night after dinner, when we were saying goodbye to Matt and Beau. We were in the front room seeing them off when PJ picked up a candle that was sitting on our mantle. It was a candle we had going all night and I had just blown it out. He didn’t know that.

He picked it up to smell it like he’s done a million times, because he has a thing with smelling candles pretty much everywhere he goes, and thought nothing of it. The only problem is, like I mentioned, it had been burning all night, so there was a lot of fresh, hot, liquid wax sitting in it. He picked it up so swiftly that the wax went everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere.

It splashed onto the side of his face and hair, creating a big gooey glob of a mess that trickled down onto his chest and finally onto his stomach. Besides all over PJ, the wax also made its way onto our green velvet chair and our sisal rug. Both the chair and PJ were able to be cleaned quite easily. The rug on the other hand, is most likely a goner. Matt sent us a trick to try and get it out and we’re going to do that and hope for the best, but at the end of the day we may just turn the rug around so that the wax is hidden underneath the couch.

Meanwhile, the next day, as PJ tells me he is so over all the rugs in our house and wants to declutter everything, he notices two huge piles of throw-up in our room on our white jute rug. Ugh. If you know anything about jute rugs, you know that you can’t scrub them or it will make it worse. When something stains them, that’s pretty much it. We always figured our bedroom would be safe because no one else really goes in there except us. We were wrong apparently. I’m not sure why Meryl, our dog, decided to make her way into our room to throw up, but it happened and now we’re in the process of taking that rug up.

What are the chances that both rugs, two of my favorites might I add, would be ruined in less than 24 hours? When it first all went down, I felt angry and like our life was spinning out of control. Why was this happening? Why is our house so disgusting? Does life have to be so hectic all the time with kids and animals and everything else going on? My mind was racing and trying to put it all together.

The next day, however, I gained some clarity. These things, all of these things, are just stuff. Stuff that can be replaced, and if they can’t, then they can’t. And it’s okay. It will all be okay. Life won’t feel hectic and overwhelming forever. It’s just the season of life we’re in right now and we have the power to change it and make it easier. And so we will.

Moral of the story: Don’t pick up a freshly blown-out candle with a bunch of hot wax in it too quickly. It most likely will never end well.