Letting the wine flow

I mentioned we went out for a BBQ. Which was lovely, but one little act from that BBQ caused us a lot of headaches later in the evening.

Before we headed out we grabbed a bottle of red wine so we could be hospitable guests when sharing the grill. We're not heavy drinkers at all, so most of our booze is stored in a box in the top of a closet. So I reached up, moved aside a bladder of red wine, grabbed a bottle and then headed out the door. This was around 4:30. We got back home around 7 pm, with every intention of heading around around 9 pm to catch a movie.

I was just cuing up a conversation with friends in China via Skype (we're meeting them in Australia next month) so we could go and catch the movie when Cathy started yelling at me that she needed me right now! It seems there was a crisis in the closet. Which I found funny for a few seconds until I scoped at the extent of the damage.

When I shifted the bladder of red wine it must have done something to the stopper. Either at that moment or shortly afterwards the stopper popped off and the red wine began to flow.

All of it. Which amounts to roughly 10 bottles of red wine exploding in your closet.

You know how people react in horror when you spill a drop of red wine on your new shirt or pants? Because red wine is almost impossible to get out, right? Now imagine 10 bottles of it. We have two closets in our bedroom. The wine was in the smaller of the two, but we still kept all of our pants in this closet. Black pants, brown pants, khaki pants, blue pants (jeans)....all manner of pants were doused in red wine. Cathy kept her scrap booking material in that closet, which was soaked in wine.

And, oh yes, there was a suitcase in there where Cathy had put about half of our summer clothes in preparation for the trip to Australia. A good percentage of this got hit by the wine as well. Oh, and there was wine on the walls and the carpet was soaked.

As we were pulling all of this out and sorting all of the clothes it was all we could do not to hit our heads off the wall. If the wine stained all the clothes then we were looking at hundreds, if not more than a thousand dollars worth of clothes. Replacing it would be expensive, but we were also not sure we could do it in the time we have left either up here or in Ottawa.

So yeah, there was stress in the penthouse last night.

So we did triage on the clothing into levels of necessity and how badly they needed to be washed. A quick look online offered up some suggestions. So we treated the first load with Spray and Wash, threw it in the washer with hot water, lots of Tide and some Epsom salts and then prayed.

Lo and behold, the fates favoured us last night. The first load came out of the washer and there were no stains. The same thing happened with the second load. And the third load. We probably annoyed our neighbours running the washer until a little after midnight, but I'm sure they understand. We didn't run the dryer because that really is loud, so we dragged the clothes into the apartment and had it hanging all over the place to dry.

So yes, that's how we spent our Saturday night. Running around in a panic, lengthy thoughts of doom and gloom, followed by enormous relief. The only reason I can think that all that wine came out is that the clothes were still soaked when we threw them in the washer. If the wine had time to dry, I think we were dead. But it was still wet, so we dodged the bullet.

By the way, as loathed as I am to mention this given how annoying the commercials are, we did have a "Sham Wow!" in the apartment and used it on both clothing and the carpet in the closet. And yes, it did work and certainly seemed to absorb a lot of the red wine. So yes, the bloody thing works. Now if someone could kindly shoot the guy making the commercials, that would be awesome.

Anyway, I think I'll be looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. It'll be more relaxing than last night, that's for sure.

Last Five
1. You gonna quit me - Bob Dylan
2. Another one bites the dust - Queen
3. One after 909 - The Beatles
4. Come crash - AC Newman
5. The barricades of heaven (live) - Jackson Browne*