Drip Drip Drip Goes the Water

Did I mention I took a little run to the Trader Joe's and impulse bought my way through $70 of frozen foods the other day? Well I did. Tonight, reveling in my smorgasbord of frozen food options, I took out one of my two new bags of frozen berries, heated them a bit and chowed down. And on my second to last spoonful, dripped blackberry juice on my orange top. Somewhere noticeable.

Luckily my mom taught me a trick for getting fruit stains out of clothes. It probably saved my hide when I was younger and liked to climb the mulberry tree to gorge myself, totally indifferent to what I was wearing. Strangely, I remember taking fresh peas from the garden up into the tree to eat and knowing even then that while both fresh peas and mulberries were delicious, they did not compliment each other. But on to the trick, which I think she learned from our elderly neighbor, Mrs. Smilie, also the source of the great "Lemon Sunshine Cake" recipe.

How to remove fruit stains:

1. Do NOT wash, rinse, or blot them with water of any sort. Yet. Cool water sets the stain.
2. Boil water. Preferably in a kettle for controlled pouring.
3. Lay out the stained garment with the stain placed over a large mouthed jar or bowl in a clean sink or large tub.
4. When the water is boiling, hold the kettle about a foot above the stain and drip the water drop by drop onto the stain.
   
5. Watch the stain melt away. Repeat as needed, moving stains into the center of the jar's mouth.

Avoid the urge to just dunk the item in boiling water or pour the water on in a stream. The first can damage the clothes and neither works as well as the slower drip drip drip method, and can leave resisdual spots. I still don't totally understand why, which irks me. But not enough to use other methods. Naturally, the sooner the better.

Conversely, hot water sets other stains, namely blood. While I'm on the topic...
How to remove blood stains:

1. If you get blood stains on laundry, keep the stains away from hot and even warm water, or they'll set.
2. Soak the stain in ice water, either running or still. Some suggest putting an ice cube on the stain, the laundry in a dish or tub, and walking away. I prefer to run icy water from the tap if available, or using a dish of water with ice cubes in it, or just melted ice from a leftover bucket.
3. That's pretty much it. Ice water, not hot.

Beyond that, I recommend a side loader and adding oxy.cl.ean to your detergent. Although if I'm going to visit, don't use All with any scent. I think they make it out of cat dander and ragweed with the way it makes me stuff up. The unscented works ok though.

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I don't talk about books here nearly enough for the amount of reading I actually do. I just finished Emma Holly's Personal Assets and it was amazing. Scorchingly hot and satisfying, with a surprising amount of purpose. It was about people finding out where they wanted to be in life and who they wanted to be with, but oooh how they got there. It had a bit of a Judith Krantz glam to it. The threads of the plot all worked out neatly, but in that way of the movies Blue, White, Red instead of feeling contrived. Where "of course the lives and livelihoods all intertwine, it was the destination that picked the necessary characters for the story, not just some story needing the characters to wind up somewhere". One of my new personal favorite books, I'm thinking.
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This post got edited about 5 times because I'm terrible with past tense grammar, particularly matching types of past tenses within one sentence or paragraph. And I was particularly clumsy with my punctuation and typos today. So if either was driving you nuts, please post a correction in the comments because otherwise I may never know my folly and will surely repeat the imperfective.