. . . who invented berber carpet, you are hereby on my What-Were-You-Thinking list. The good news is that the bedroom is the only one that’s carpeted. The bad news is that it’s berber. The badder news is that there’s a substance stuck to the hardwood. Glue? Paint? Oatmeal? Baby Pablum?* Egg white? Whatever it is, it has no intention of breaking off its attachment to the hardwood.
Unlike regular carpet that has short little tufts, berber is constructed of loops created from one incredibly long piece of whatever carpets are made of. Unfortunately, when you cut it, the loops come up in what looks like strands of ramen noodles. Yards and yards of tough curly strands totally resistant to cutting. And, I suspect that the loops harbor all the debris they could collect over the past 20 years.
But I digress. The most fun of the day was this:
*When I was growing up, we fed babies a Gerber thing called pablum. The baby of the moment seemed to like it ok. If not, you would mix in a bit of applesauce and he/she would gobble it right up. It was made by pouring from the cardboard box via the little tilt-out metal spout a bit of flaky substance (think instant potatoes), adding warm water until it was the consistency of, well, maybe porridge. You would then feed it to the baby. However. Woe the baby feeder who did not wash the pablum dish immediately because if it dried on the dish, it would require a hammer drill for removal. Best toss the dish. But even WOE-ER the baby feeder who did not have a wet cloth at the ready to remove said pablum from the cheeks of the baby. Pablum dries to the consistency of concrete. I am sure that on the rare occasions I see my youngest brother, I can still detect bits of pablum among the stubble on his cheeks.
PS. I’ve heard that the Great Wall of China has lasted all these years because there may have been egg used in the mortar. This is just speculation, but could it be. . . baby pablum?