Slacking, hoarding
Man I really have been tardy with my Christmas shopping this year. I have barely made a scratch in it. There have been a combination of things that have kept me busy and distracted from this chore but “just not feeling like doing it” surely is a large part of it.
I have already told Ali that she really should keep any Christmas shopping for me at a minimum if she is serious about allowing me to get a Camaro in 2011 which would be the Xmas present to end all Xmas presents. Likewise I don’t think Ali wants me to go nuts spending money on her since throughout the year we pretty much buy what we want/need anyway.
That still leaves a list of people to address. Last year my siblings agreed that we are now old enough (we were old enough 20 years ago) that buying presents for each other is no longer necessary and instead we would just focus on the children in the family. I am hoping my siblings have not forgotten the plan this year.
I need to get my ass in gear and get it done. The problem is my schedule is pretty much full until next week. I am running out of time to use online shopping as a viable option due to time constraints.
Speaking of buying “stuff”, much of which is not needed, I said I wanted to expand on Hoarders. I have seen hoarding before, I remember Ali showing me a few Oprah shows that spotlighted it. Well the show on A&E has cranked it to a new level. Unlike the Oprah hoarders that supposedly lived happily ever after once all of their shit was taken out of the house, these hoarders fail more often than not.
Hell you have to figure they are set up for failure since the entire clean up process is compressed into two or three days. Just removing all of the stuff doesn’t fix the source of the problem only the symptom. The conditions these people live in are just horrible. Quite often the hoarding is accompanied with other uncontrollable urges like compulsive shopping and compulsive eating. These people are just a mess. Most of them also were on some sort of disability, your government dollars hard at work.
Watching the show made me identify some shared characteristics with hoarders that both myself and others I know have. I have a tendency to hoard data more than anything nowadays, filling my storage devices with tons of files, most of which I will never have use for again. In the past I also was one to hoard computer equipment, cable and peripherals. I still have a bunch of that stuff but it is pretty much contained in two Rubbermaid containers. Clutter bothers me too much to allow it ever to get to true hoarder status. I do definitely place emotional ties though to inanimate objects, as evidenced by my 20 year old lunch box, 30 year old t-shirts and other items that I keep around just because they represent something to me and me alone.
A common scene in Hoarders is the hoarder going through a single box of junk for hours while the crew is downstairs with snow shovels scooping up mounds of junk. This is something Ali will often do, getting mired in minutia. She definitely has some aspects of hoarder mentality. She also has deep emotional ties to inanimate objects. An example is the huge barrel of teddy bears that we removed from a shelf a couple years ago.
We pulled down the bears with the intention of giving them away. However they have sat in the hobby room all this time because Ali hasn’t had the chance to do the famous act of “going through them”. When I suggested that we get rid of them at the yard sale she was staunchly against it. I balance Ali out in this regard as eventually I will annoy her enough that she will have to act or I will just do it on my own.
Extreme hoarding is a mental condition that can be just as debilitating as other addictions. I heard the show Interventions is just as disturbing. I’ll have to see if it is available.