A Story and a Stern Reminder

December 31, 2009

First, a little story for you.

Last night I was clocking a couple miles on the treadmill. Maggie was happily swinging away, and I was watching full episodes of A&E's Hoarders on my laptop. I was plodding along, gasping at the conditions of these peoples' homes, blatetly judging their character based upon the height of their shiz piles.

Heaven bless any of my readers who might be struggling with a moderate to severe hoarding issue, I hope to not offend you, but I absolutely have to tell it like it is:

These people were over the top.

Allow me to grace you with an example. One of the families, a family that lives in super cold Boston of all places, moved out of their house and in to a tent in their backyard. You see, they had crap up to the rafters and kept losing their children in the piles. The solution? Uhhhhh, du-uh! Obviously a tent. In November. In New England.

Or how 'bout the guy who built an entire barn to house his collection of 300,000+ not rare and not valuable beer cans? I've got a place for those Budweiser cans, sir--it's called Bea's Recycling shack, and you'll walk away rich.

Another family, a really sweet bunch, lived in a teeny little trailer with a postage stamp yard and somehow managed to squeeze twenty-nine cats and seventeen dogs into their nooks and crannies. There was a lot of love in that house. Perhaps a little too much love.

Then, as if the messes weren't enough, these people would do things like jump on Dr. Dianne (the clinical psychologist who specializes in obsessive behavior) from behind when she'd toss an empty soup can into the dumpster. They'd be like, "I THINK MY WEDDING RING WAS IN THAT SOUP CAN!" or "I WAS EATING THAT SOUP THE FIRST TIME MY BABY ROLLED OVER IN 1979. YOU CAN'T THROW IT AWAY! IT'S VERY SPECIAL TO ME!"

Like I said, my judgement was flowing like the rain--a real self righteous byotch if I do say so myself.

I was running along, every once in a while saying things to my baby like, "Take this as a lesson Maggie, hoarding problems start at Target's dollar display. When you see it, do not veer over. Trust me on this one. It starts with a furry pen, and before you know it, you're sitting on a four-foot mountain of holiday-themed dog sweaters."

This side of me? This evil non-compassion? I never said it was cute.

So there I was, running along, judging and condemning, when my greyhound made her way down the stairs. She casually walked across the basement playroom, stopped next to an enormous pile of clean, unfolded laundry--by that point I believe it had been sitting there for at least nine days. She let out one of those super cute dog hmmphs, climbed into the pile, and fell asleep.

When I finished my workout I literally had to wake my dog in order to find a clean towel. And that my friends, is the moment I vowed to shut my mouth and let the hoarders hoard in peace.

And now, a very stern reminder.

If no one sends me their butt photos, then The Fantastic, Asstastic Photo Challenge of 2010 will have to be cancelled.

That was almost too sad to type.

My husband and I sat down to address the lack of entrants, and we came up with three solutions:

1. Everyone should become a fan of The Fantastic, Asstastic Photo Challenge of 2010 on Facebook. Right now I only have two followers--me and my mom. Just type it into the search box, click the "become a fan" icon, and you're set to go.

2. Everyone should grab the asstastic button in my sidebar and put it on their blog. I mean really now, how fun is that? For some reason, Blogger isn't letting me paste anything into this post. So you can either take it from over there --->, or copy the HTML code from the Facebook fan page. (Are you starting to see how this all fits together?)

3. Everyone should join in on the fun. Remember, even if you opt for anonymity, you're still eligible to win one of three fabulous prizes. Details for entering can be found in the next post, and thanks to Jared's encouragement, the deadline for submitting pictures has been extended to Tuesday, January 5th at 11:59pm. Jared says that allows enough time for the guilt and poor self-esteem to set in.

Well that's that. Happy New Year's Eve, everyone!

And please, don't drink and drive--drink and dial!