Hoarders!

I have a new tv show that I watch:

Hoarders on A&E. If this show doesn't make you feel like the most awesome housekeeper/neatnik ever...well then, maybe you're a hoarder yourself. I'm continually amazed by the conditions in which some people live. I know that it happens way more than we think...in fact, your next door neighbors could be living in squalor (I'm pretty sure ours are, but that's an entry for another day ).

On the episode that I saw last week, there was a lady who hoards food. Her house was full of rotting food. The part that got me were the rotting pumpkins all over her living room. Now, we get a pumpkin or two every Fall for our front porch. They're really pretty and they last a decent amount of time, but when they start to rot, good Lord, is it nasty. They ooze and then finally just collapse in on themselves. We usually don't let our pumpkins get to this point before throwing them out, but sometimes one sneaks up on us and rots on our porch. They also smell gross when they rot--enough so, that every time I eat pumpkin pie (which I really do adore) I get a mild sensory-flashback of rotting pumpkin smell.

So, on this episode, this lady had multiple rotting pumpkins inside her house. They weren't even recognizable as pumpkins anymore. They were just black piles of goo. The psychologist arrives to walk through her house with her, to assess the situation, and he spots one of the pumpkins and asks what it is. She said, very nonchalantly, "That's a pumpkin". Like, duh. Then, a few minutes later, the psychologist steps on something gooey. He says, "Oh man, I think I just stepped on another pumpkin" and the lady goes..."No, that was a butternut squash". She was dead serious. It cracked me up.

I suggest tuning in to watch this show if you have a morbid fascination with humans and if you need a little ego boost, regarding the current condition of your home. I can pretty much guarantee that, even on your worst day, you don't have rotting gourds in your living room.