TV Confessions: Hoarding, Coupons and Collecting Weird Stuff

I have a confession to make. I’ve become slightly fascinating with slightly disgusting reality shows.

I blame the networks. During the summer, just like in school, summers are considered vacation time. This means my usual TV viewing of Grey’s Anatomy, Vampire Diaries (no mocking), Top Chef, and Gossip Girl (again, don’t mock) are all on hiatus along with other shows I watch every now and again. In an effort to fill the gap, there are other summer shows but nothing I remembered to watch in time to become invested.

So, I’ve been filling my summer in other ways. I did a lot of reading. I just now wrapped up all five of the Song of Fire and Ice series by George R.R. Martin as well as various other books I’ve borrowed and been meaning to read and return for months.

I’ve also cooked a lot. Thanks to my slight addiction to farmer’s market’s, vegetables have been the focus of my summer dishes. I’ve perfected my caprese tart, become slightly obsessed with beet salad and found a ton of ways to prepare veggies using a grill.

I also published Emmy Goes to Hell. I’ve written some short stories as well as conceptualize my new novel.

I’ve spent a lot of time with the dogs.

In short, my summer has been quite productive and fun in the absence of TV. It’s just that, well, as a fan of a good serialized show…I’ve missed TV quite a lot. I’ve substituted by rewatching all seasons of Top Chef. I’ve also been rewatching one of my all-time favourite shows, Gilmore Girls. Yet…I’ve seen them before. They’re not new to me the way a new episode of, say, Grey’s Anatomy is new. I did have Game of Thrones for a while and what a great while that was but at only 10 episodes in the season, it didn’t last long. Now it’s True Blood and that has been greatly disappointing this season. I still watch it out of habit but, well, it’s just not very good and thus, not very fulfilling.

So, as summer has started to wane, I’ve been turning on the TV and seeing just what’s on. Thanks to my parents, I already knew about Billy the Exterminator. This is a show that follows, you guessed it, an exterminator in Louisiana. Trust me, it’s funnier than it sounds because Billy looks like someone who fell of a 1980’s hair band with a penchant for the Harley Davison look. It’s actually quite funny especially when Billy has to don his mask (looks a little like Skeletor from He-Man) and his feather boa (helps prevent bee stings. Trust me, there’s nothing quite as bizarre and hilarious as watching this tough exterminator in a long black trench coat wearing feather boa and Skeletor mask fighting a swarm of bees. Billy has a brother too but he’s not very bright although he, too, looks like a 1980’s hair band reject.

I try not to watch Billy at home. I did slip once and caught myself watching it but it was about Canadian geese and I find those quite interesting anyway. Since my parents record it on their DVR, I normally wait until I got there for a weekend and see if they have any new episodes to watch. It makes me feel slightly less guilty of watching bad TV if it’s not on my DVR.

However, it doesn’t stop with Billy. A couple of weekends ago, I was caught between tasks and errands and I flicked the TV on and caught myself watching Hoarders: Buried Alive. I confess. I’m a little hooked. I wrote a blog once about how much the show Clean House annoyed me because slobs are rewarded for their…slobbishness by getting someone to help them clean their house. Hoarders is different. I find myself watching it for the psychological aspect of it. These people have actually to some psychological problem where they literally cannot throw things away. While the show tends to be a little vile at times, particularly when the house is so cluttered that rats are living beneath the mounds of stuff, it’s still oddly fascinating to me. I also caught just regular Hoarders this weekend. I don’t like it as much as the Buried Alive version because I think it tends to be a little too dramatic with the Black Information Cards of Doom that they use to inform viewers of additional information. However, does tend to be a little more disgusting. For example, there was a woman this week who was clearly severely mentally ill who fancied herself a cook. She had no working fridge, dead rats buried underneath trash and she apparently bakes cookies with mealworms and doesn’t tell people. Also, she left a dead squirrel in the butter dish once.

I can’t help it. Disgusting as it is, it’s also fascinating. We’ve established that I have a dark streak- it’s most attracted to the darker side of human nature. I’ve always been fascinated with personality disorders. Hence my fascination with Hoarders.
From there, I saw another show being advertised: My Collection Obsession. It featured a lady who is obsessed with baby dolls and treats them like real kids. Worse still, her husband and daughter let her do this and think it’s interesting. Well, the husband likes it because it means she leaves him alone but…still. There was also a boy who loves vacuum cleaners and collects them. He loves them and has a side business fixing them. I think he was 15. Apparently, he loved vacuums since he was a toddler. While I think it’s a bit odd, I actually think it’s pretty interesting to have a ‘calling’ in life that’s actually quite useful even if it does mean a large collection of vacuum cleaners to go along with it.

Then another day, I came across Extreme Couponing. I didn’t like this one so much. I find that, psychologically, extreme couponers are just another variety of a hoarder. Sure, there are the decent ones who clip the coupons to create care packages for the troops or to give to a homeless shelter. But every couponer also has “a stockpile” which is a very well organized room/closet/basement filled with shelves that are so full, it looks like a grocery store. One man was proud that he had 1000 tubes of toothpaste that he had for free. Then there was a lady who wanted to help her daughter-in-law get a stockpile of her own. So she went to the store, managed to get over 30 bottles of laundry detergent FOR FREE with her coupons and then gave her daughter-in-law five of them. Yes, five. How generous.

They might be well organized but these extreme coupon people are still hoarders. They spend 35-40 hours a week clipping a coupon. They have GIANT binders full of well organized coupons. Their stockpiles boast more of each item than a store generally keeps on the shelves. Sure, they’re saving money but they’re doing it for the sake of getting stuff for free not because they really need the stuff. It’s a different form of hoarding. It’s usually born out of needing to save money and I respect that but if you can go to the store, get a weeks’ groceries for free, do you really also need to get ten more of each item just because you can? Do you really need 71 bottlesw of mustard because you have 71 coupons? Do you need a cart full of diapers because they end up being free EVEN THOUGH YOU DON'T HAVE A BABY????

It just seems like Extreme Greed to me. Plus, where the heck do they get those stacks and stacks of coupons to begin with? Also, if I got stuck behind an extreme couponer in the grocery store, I think I’d be annoyed. It takes them FOREVER to check out because they watch the cashiers like hawks. Also, if I went to a store to use my SINGLE coupon for a bottle of detergent only to find out that some greedy cow had just bought 30 of them and didn’t leave any for me, I’d be annoyed. LEAVE SOME FOR THE NORMAL PEOPLE!

That’s it as far as my guilty TV goes. I think once the regular TV season starts up, I’ll cut back on my crap-TV viewing. However, I will say as a writer, I do find it insightful and interesting to study the personality types of these people.

Of course, the side effect is that I’m very, very conscious of how much stuff I have in my house. Also, I’m even more conscious of making sure my house is clean. Also, if I see some clutter, I immediately declutter the area because I have a secret fear that I might be becoming a hoarder without realizing it.

Also, after seeing the disgusting Fridge Lady, I did immediately go to my own fridge to make sure everything in it was fresh and not blackened, dirty and 20 years old. Oh, and yes, she actually ate the things from her fridge that were literally 20 years old. This is especially vile because, as I mentioned, her fridge wasn’t working and hadn’t been for many years.

Sorry. I’ve probably disgusted you now, haven’t I? I apologize. Blame the Hoarders.
Although, really, since I’m the one watching the show, I’m really too blame. Oh dear. Maybe that means I have some psychological problem where I’m some form of voyeur for watching these people. Will that be the next show: Voyeurs: Buried Alive by Disgusting TV. Perhaps I ought to go back to reading, writing and cooking and just wait for the real TV season to begin.

Although perhaps I ought to wipe that show I saw advertised about Waiting for the Apocolypse off my DVR first.

I have to face it. I’m a hoarder of a different nature: I hoard things in my brain about freaky people to write about as characters in my novels.

Can we call it research instead? I like that better.

Happy Thursday!

Ladybird, Ladybird, Fly Away Home

It's Monday again. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we changed the week a little and reorganized all the days. I mean, what if we decided to go backwards and rename Monday to Friday? Would it still feel like a Monday morning or would it be better because it was Friday? I suppose it goes back to that eternal 'what's in a name' thing. I suppose we could rename all the days completely and have things like Daffodil or Chocolate. Then you could say, "I have a meeting at nine a.m. on Daffodil morning," or "let's have happy hour at 5 p.m. on Chocolate." It has a much nicer ring to it than Monday, doesn't it?

I realize I might have let you in a little too far into my psyche. You'll be thinking I'm weird. We can't have that now, can we?

Anyway, so the title of this blog has to do with ladybirds, ladybugs as they're known in these Midwestern parts. My problem is that they are everywhere at the moment. I live in an apartment building. I've had my windows open because it's been nice and warm lately but I have screens on the windows. I have a patio door but I always have the screen across it unless it's for the twenty seconds it takes for me to go through out onto my little balcony. So, really, there isn't any open spaces in which lady birds can get into my apartment.

Except they do. They're everywhere. Yesterday, I had a horrid little gathering of the creatures in the upper corner of my room. And by a gathering, I mean there were about fifteen of them, just huddled there. You know in those horror films in which a giant bug is the villain and there's always that evil little fluttering sound like a giant moth's wings beating together? Well, that's what it sounded like in my room. There were more of the little bugs, crawling on my ceiling, on their way to join The Gathering. I looked and there were more on my blinds. It was not pleasant.

Here's the thing. I appreciate ladybirds. I appreciate the fact they eat the nasty bugs that are bad for us. I appreciate the fact that they're cute little things and I especially appreciated them when Denis Leary does the voice of them like in A Bugs Life. They one of the nicer bugs that could invade my apartment.

Except they were having a swarm and I despise swarms. I can handle a few bugs together. Yet swarms....well, they disturb me. A lot. In my previous apartment, we had an ant infestation. I kept finding ants alone. I didn't like them but I was ok with that. Then I accidentally found their source and...well...it was nasty. There were thousands of them. I had a bit of a girly screaming fit. Thank goodness for my roommate who was brave enough to drown the creatures for me. It took me weeks before I wasn't constantly on the lookout for more ants, just in case it would lead to a swarm.

Ladybirds aren't as bad as ants because they're not so sly. They don't creep around in the dark spaces and then crawl on you when you're least expecting it. At least, I don't think so. I just don't like it when they get together. I'm a bit suspicious by nature and I like to know what's going on. I like to know what's in a box. I like to find out the source of that scary noise. I like to know what time guests are going to drop by. You get the idea. When there's a gathering inside my apartment, I'd like to know what it's about. So when the ladybirds are clustering suspiciously in my bedroom, I have to know why.

So I looked it up on the internet because it wasn't like the stupid bugs were going to tell me what they were doing. It turns out that infestations of ladybirds are very common in the Midwest during this time of year. Apparently, since it's winter, they are looking for a place to hibernate and so they invade homes. The strongest advice on the internet was to search and destroy.

I could have figured this out for myself, obviously. But I'm an internet junkie and I like to research. It's nice to know the truth, even if it's from Wikipedia.

At first, I wasn't sure if I could kill them. I mean, they don't mean any harm. Ok, so apparently they smell bad if they gather together. Apparently, they make a bit of a mess with that yellow goo they emit. But they fairly peaceful creatures.

And then I read that occasionally, they do swarm at people, especially when threatened. I took another look at The Gathering. It had become at least 20 ladybirds. I pictured them flying at me, landing on me all at once and that's when I decided they should probably go away. Also, I have some of those lamps that have a curved shade that points at the ceiling. I looked in there and discoved quite a few ladybirds had either gone there to die, committed suicide by throwing themselves on a hot lightbulb or been murdered by their own kind. Also, I had begun finding corpses around my apartment and I realize that they would never live in my place during the winter without succumbing to the dark shadow of Death.

So, I decided to aid them. I scooped up as many as I could. Not from The Gathering of course because that would have meant getting close to a lot of ladybirds all at once and I wasn't ready for that. But there were some stragglers and so I scooped them up and led them to the freedom of the outdoor air. The only vaguely alarming experience during this was that I got a bit avid in my scooping; I saw something crawling in my lamp and I came very close to scooping that up too. Fortunately, I hesitated and that's when I realized that it was a spider. It wasn't big and so I wasn't too alarmed but I also wasn't about to scoop it up. I've watched too many DEADLIEST SPIDER! episodes on Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel. So I looked that up. It turned out to be a jumping spider, common to Ohio. I was ok with that when I realized it wasn't venomous. At first. Then the word "jumping" registered and I pictured myself sleeping and having that little jumping fiend land on my head. So, he had to go too.

I hate killing spiders. My philosophy is that it's not their fault they scare us. They're just doing their thing, being a spider. It doesn't mean I'm about to keep them as pets and feed them though. So, I always attempt to let them go alive. Unfortunately, this involves scooping and putting them into a little container of some sort with a lid and WAY too many spiders have me their maker when I've been skittish enough to accidentally squish them in my rescue attempt.

Fortunately, Mr. Jumping Spider managed to get out alive. I scooped him up without squishing him and let him go on the patio below mine. I even watched to make sure I didn't kill him by dropping him a storey more than I had planned. He crawled away so I assume he's ok.

So, then it was time to tackle The Gathering. I used a very effective method called The Vacuum Cleaner Method. It involves plugging the vacuum in, putting the extender thingy on the hose, turning on the power and sucking away at cluster of bugs. They vanished into the dark passage of the vacuum cleaner. When I turned it off, there were a couple that had somehow managed to avoid being sucked into the Pit of the Vacuum Bag despite the tornado-like suction coming from the vacuum cleaner. They tried to crawl out of the hose. I turned the vacuum on and voila! No more bugs. I put a paper towel into the end of the pipe, per a very clever suggestion I'd read on the internet, just in case the creatures try to crawl out. I found some more stragglers but I'm now pleased to report that my apartment seems to be ladybird-free.

The only problem is that I feel a bit guilty about what I did. It's not their fault they're ladybirds. I just worried that they were gather together, rise up against me and swarm. So I had to stop them.

That's probably what Hitler said. I don't think I like comparing myself to Hitler. I think I may go home and change my vacuum cleaner bag tonight and give those creatures a chance to go free. Just in case.

Happy Monday.