The trouble with clumsily kicking a glass full of red wine from the coffee table onto the grey carpet is that, by then, you may already be on your third glass, and that makes concentrating on the task at hand all the more difficult.

I always sort of knew it would happen eventually, the light-coloured carpet was practically daring the deep-red pigment of fermented grape juice to spill over it like an ink-blot painting.

It all happened quicker than I imagined. There was no moment immediately before, when, looking back, I could say I knew what was about to happen, and there was nothing slow-motion about it, like when we spilled bright purple fruit punch on Ryan’s clean white carpet when we were eight years old, when we actually had time to imagine his mother’s reaction before the mix of sugar and food colouring and artificial flavour hit the ground and it felt like the whole earth had stopped turning. No, this was quick, anti-climatic, and it only took a fraction of a second for there to be an ugly mess of cabernet sauvignon splashed over everything.

Stop.

Panic.

Take a breath.

Take another.

Google red wine stain.

Look for club soda. No. Look for baking power. No. Baking soda. No. Hydrogen peroxide. No.

Eureka! — find the carpet stain remover in the shelf above the microwave where the spare light bulbs are next to the broken clock radio. Break a wine glass while making room under the tap for a large bowl. Mix. Soak the carpet. I try to blot, but am probably actually scrubbing, which is wrong. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse again.

In the dim lighting it actually looks not too bad, and I think it will be OK. I fall asleep on the couch, and actually dream about it, hours of scrubbing and worrying and I want to wake up and have it gone, but of course in the fresh light of morning there are two brown spots the size of giant cookies, and it looks even worse, because it looks possibly permanent.

There’s something about red wine on a light-coloured carpet that looks like chaos, like it’s disrupting the normal order of things, and I tend to prefer normal order to chaos, and who doesn’t, really.

Maybe the normal order of things is supposed to be disrupted, or perhaps it’s just inevitable, like there’s no stopping it, and I’m good at panicking, but I always forget the next step: take a breath, and then another. Things have been disrupted on and off for years, switching cities, schools, relationships, careers, and now things are about to be spilled over in red again.

When you get out a wine stain it feels like you’ve conquered something impossible, like you’ve taken the chaos and wiped it clean. I woke up and went to the store, then peroxide, then more stain remover, and things are returning back to normal. When I get the carpets cleaned, which is soon, things will probably return to a dull grey, possibly the least chaotic state I can imagine.