Domestic Geek

I'm watching A&E's Hoarders show on Netflix right now. I've seen many tweets and Facebook posts by friends that watch these shows saying they feel like cleaning after watching. I totally feel that way at the moment. It also disturbs me on another level.

I could easily become on of these people. One of the psychotherapists mentioned that hoarding is hereditary. Both my grandmother and my mother were hoarders. It seems that a lot of these people had a big trigger that started the hoarding. I did start hoarding to some extent after my mother passed. I was always trying to fill the void by buying stuff I know I didn't need. I couldn't let some things go that were obviously crap because they had either belonged to my mother or had some memory attached. I would bring home broken stuff from people's trash that I found while out delivering pizzas. I thought I was being thrifty and saving something from a landfill, but I see now that it was not the case at all. Most recently, I started doing it with yarn. I think I finally snapped out of it and I'm better now and am actually purging stuff, but a major life crisis could easily trigger something again.

First off:




Speaking of holidays, apparently my neighbors can't wait for Christmas. Yes, once again they were busy while I was at work and as I turned onto our street I see that their damned outdoor Christmas decorations are up. I can understand wanting to get the lights on the house while the weather is still warm, but the plastic angels and Santas can wait until after Thanksgiving. Seriously. I want to enjoy Fall and Thanksgiving first, you morons, thankyouverymuch. Sadly, they aren't the only ones. A couple of houses down actually have their lights on. Geez, making me sound like Scrooge here, but one. holiday at. a. time. The season would mean so much more if we'd limit our exposure to it. Same goes for elections. I think campagin season should start 6 weeks before the election. That's it.

That said, tomorrow I'm going to dig out my FALL decorations. Scarecrows, pumpkins and turkeys are all that will decorate this house until December.

I'm at that raspy, hacking cough stage of being sick. You know, the kind of cough that is so hard that you sometimes puke or pee a little (not trying to be gross, just honest). A dude at work today told me that he had heard that rubbing Mentholatum or Vicks VapoRub on the soles of your feet and putting socks on is supposed to help. Lots of Googling is coming up with people claiming it works, but no real reason why. Well, my feet are rubbed and the socks are on. We will see how well this works shortly.

One thing that seems to be helping is sucking on popsicles. Sunflower Market carries a really awesome fruit bar that is made from real pureed fruit. I had a watermelon one on the drive home from the store after work. That's my favorite flavor. I also like the raspberry one, but it has a lot of little seeds.

Well, Potomac St is back open and we're now able to drive over the new bridge. One more step down for that off ramp for 17th street off I-225 into Fitzsimons. I so don't want to live around there when that is complete.

I had to stop by King Soopers this evening to pick up some things. It was crazy there tonight. It was 9:00 pm and there were lines, even for the self-checkout. I really miss being able to do my food shopping in the middle of the night like I used to when I worked pizza.

There was this poor dude in the feminine hygiene aisle on his cell phone talking to his significant other. She had obviously sent him without being specific. He was reading all the various brand names and types to her and not having much luck narrowing down what she wanted. I really felt bad for him. It's hard enough as a woman finding what you need in that aisle, what with them changing the packaging and the design of that stuff constantly. It must be mind-boggling to a guy who doesn't have to use them. It's kind of like sending a girly-girl to the hardware store to buy screws. I'm glad that in our 18 years together, I've never had to send Marcus to buy anything like that. He says he will never buy any and I don't want to have to test him.

I realized yesterday that I need to take some time and clean up my template. There is so much broken and incomplete stuff here that it is driving me crazy. Might be one of the reasons I don't blog as much as I'd like. I tend to avoid things on which I need to work. I intended to get rid of the double sidebar quite some time ago, but have yet to do it. There are some things in a text file on my desktop that I meant to add back to the sidebars when I last redesigned, but have yet to tackle that. Also, I need a wider content area to accommodate YouTube videos. That one I posted yesterday irks me that it is too wide and I can't do anything about it. I tried messing with it today, but I'm coughing too hard to really concentrate. Sadly, my coding skills are no longer second nature.

I fear we may have some rodents cohabiting with us (and I'm not talking about my rabbit). I was clearing some processed foods out of our cupboards and came across some stuff that had been nibbled. Not overly surprising with the construction going on around here, but something I need to nip in the bud before they breed in the walls. I'll be making sure the foodstuffs are in containers and I'll be better about keeping the bird seed swept up. I hate having mice in the house.

Well, better get to bed. I have to take the back way out of where we live. They've got Potomac St. totally blocked off this week while they connect up the new bridge. Totally inconvenient and adds 10 minutes to my commute.