Why my living room smells like a salad bar

This morning seemed to be going OK... and then Mallory started vomiting... and out came the grape juice she drank last night. All over our white living room area rug. By the time she was done spewing I took one look at the rug and decided that it was ruined; there was no way we were going to get that much purple out of it.

Little did I know that ordinary white vinegar is some sort of miracle cure that can actually remove stains like that from rugs. Right now I am mighty thankful that we went with a cheaper olefin rug rather than something ritzy in wool that would have held onto the stains much more tightly. (I am also mighty thankful that we happened to have a 4L jug of vinegar in the pantry!) I would defy anyone to walk in right now and figure out where Mallory was when she lost the contents of her stomach.

So it's probably going to smell vinegary for the next week or two, but that's a price I'm willing to pay to have a white rug again. We turned down two out-of-town social engagements this weekend, and as it happens, it's a good thing we did. Because I'd far rather be scrubbing the purple out of my own rug than someone else's.