This Simply HAS To Be Child Abuse

[matcom]

:rofl:

CALL THE AUTHORITIES!



:hide:

[flvegan]

1. Ooooh...when LaraMN sees this...

[auntAgonist]

2. she's gonna beat you to a BLODDY pulp

mark my words :rofl:

yer bad.

aA

[matcom]

3. she can't

she can't find her computer under all that :spray:

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. I'd agree that asking one's children to live in filth and squalor should be considered abuse.

Of course, one picture does not an entire story make, and that is not what I'd call filth and squalor. It looks like my place after 80-100 hour workweek. :7

And I'm getting some :popcorn: while I await the asskicking coming your way. This is gonna be good! I just hope she doesn't get any of your blood on my popcorn.

[matcom]

5. or one of your famous meth-binges

:P

[Rabrrrrrr]

19. Nah, this is what it looks like after one of my famous meth-binges:

[LaraMN]

6. You asswipe!

:wow:

That's not dirty (except where SOphieMN wrote on the tv), it's horrendously cluttered, and thanks to you, I now feel compelled to restore my semi-dignity by posting the "after."

You are SO wasting my precious organizing time, and vengeance will be swift and unexpected.

[matcom]

7. ORGANIZING??

BAH!!

:rofl:

not with a room looking like THAT!

hope to HELL you aren't expecting company of ANY KIND tomorrow! :rofl:

:rofl:

:rofl:

[LaraMN]

8. HAH:

Note that this is ONE HOUR later. That is how much I RULE!

[matcom]

9. your TV is a dusty mess

:hide:

[LaraMN]

10. Nuh-uh. I dusted it.

That there's crayon.
Hubby's dealing with THAT.

[matcom]

11. why don't you buy hubby some paper?

then he won't be tempted to draw on the TV :eyes:

[LaraMN]

13. Weak. That was like a four on the funny meter.

You are totally slipping.
I am disappointed.

[Little Wing]

12. Both chairs are facing the wrong way. That's because you can't be on

meth and watch television at the same time because it overloads your already fragile system.

[matcom]

14. she only listens to the TV

she can't watch it because her meth kitchen faces the wrong way

[LaraMN]

16. Well, that and you keep blocking my signal with your streaming Matcom porn

channel.

It's really wreaking havoc on my appetite.

[matcom]

18. naked purple hippos don't make you hungry?

who knew

[LaraMN]

15. Your skills of observation are sharp as finely-tipped daggers.

:rofl:

[LostinVA]

23. Ummm... I think you missed a spot

[Midlodemocrat]

31. Wow. One hour? You DO rule.

I wish I could get you out here to help me with my friend Jennifer's *ahem* problem.

Her house honestly looks like the pics Rabrrrrrr posted from Ebaum's World. :scared:

[Left Is Write]

17. Frankly, I see nothing wrong with having a console TV. It's not exactly abusive!

:silly:

[matcom]

20. are you fucking CRAZY?????111

NO REMOTE!! :cry:

[Oeditpus Rex]

21. I don't think that qualifies as chi...

Is that JackMN sleeping in one of those plastic bags?? :scared:

[Rabrrrrrr]

22. A green rug in a beige room? You're damn right it's child abuse!

They're gonna grow up thinking polyester is appropriate for professionals to wear, or write their Christmas cards with a blue ballpoint pen?

I mean, seriously - what a handicap to start out with. I think the goverment needs to intervene.

What's next? Putting the kids in short-sleeve "dress" shirts? Brown shoes for job interviews? Button-down collars to church?

OH, THE HUMANITY!!!!

[matcom]

25. WITH lapel pins

:scared:

[The Flaming Red Head]

24. Mother's Day

5/12/2003 7:43:53 PM | melanie burke]

Mother's Day Court

And she waited and she watched
As seasons changed and parents died
And lovers moved away
And she began having children
She had a boy baby
Every other year for eight years
And all of her possessions grew encircling her
Like the rings in a tree.
You could walk into her house
And see by the layers of dust and old clothes
Where one child left off and another began
Even if it didn’t work or had grease stains
Each little thing was too precious for her to discard.

She had endured so much loss in her life
That for her collecting odds and ends and clothes and furniture
Was a kind of like her own private bargain with God
A prayer uttered long ago and buried deep in her sub conscience.

She hedged all her bets in old playground equipment covering her yard
Knowing some things are irreplaceable.

The stacks of things kept growing
Some of it was as tall
As the child that it had originally belonged to
And you could measure their heights
in stacks of clothes, toys, and cast off tennis shoes.
Outsiders coming in and observing her home
Couldn’t see the logic to her storage system
at least not the way she saw it in her head.

I could see it and understand
some of the intricacies of her life
In the careful pathways and passages that wound throughout each room
A maze of interesting objects and odd, eclectic things
that caught your eyes shining or sparkling or spinning in the corner
Broken children’s toys still being banged on , twisted, turned, and played with.

And surely post partum depression played a role in the collection
It takes several years for your hormones to settle down
But she didn’t have that time between each child
But she did have artifacts of each stage of their childhood
Laid out in hallways and closets
like archeological layers of previous civilizations.

You could see her employment history, too
Cast off uniforms from jobs she no longer had
Her Grandmothers precious ceramic ashtrays
were piled high with plastic name tags
From just about every restaurant and retail store within a 50 mile radius
Jobs she had, had over the past ten years

In her eagerness to scale the lofty heights of welfare to working class.
And jobs she had eventually lost
Because of one of her children’s chicken pox, fever, or tricycle accidents
And in the bathroom and medicine cabinets was the booty and loot collected
From various emergency rooms and doctors offices throughout the city
layers of gauze, silk tape, and Scooby or Mickey band-aids
Old duck taped crutches in the corner that had belonged to her
A reminder of retrieving one of the boys
From the top of a swing set
He landed on his feet and she hit the ground on her ankle.


And the boys grew up, and built forts, and played cowboys, and police,
In the kitchen, bedroom, foyer, hall closet, and family room
And they fired water pistols at working appliances,
Televisions, computers, and VCRs
that soon joined the circle
Of junk that continued to grow with each year
as new birthday party gifts were received
and broken the same day the packages were opened
Cast aside in their boxes with the shiny silver wrapping paper crumpled up next to them.
Bright red and green bows smiled out next to headless Santa figurines and tangled lights
In boxes marked Christmas and never put away because there was no room in storage.

But you know she'd tell me,
the stuff was too good to throw away.
I always had to agree with her on that point as I surveyed the room
And laughed.


There is something everywhere you look
Filled curio cabinets, kitchen drawers, dressers, bureaus, cardboard boxes, and paper bags
Things on the tops of things like tables, kitchen counters, book cases, and couches
broken crayons, kool aid logged coloring books whose pages won't open,
Old crafts never finished or started, bags of material and half hemmed pants,
school projects with sticky popsicle sticks, petrified fast food french fries
take up lots of space in garages and attics.
Faces smile out at you from rusty refrigerator magnets,
Graduation and school pictures

Messy mother and child-hoods
are always more interesting and boisterous

And more irritating to the neighbors, teachers, police, and social workers
Who try to hide their own roots
And have forgotten about their own eccentric Aunties, Grandmothers, Sisters
And their own hard working class Mothers
People who filled up their childhoods
with hand me down clothes and boxes of broken toys
If they were lucky.

[Control-Z]

28. That was powerful.

Should I know who melanie burke is?

[JVS]

26. Is that a crack-house?

[Manifestor_of_Light]

27. Extreme clutter can be life threatening

My mom was the world's worst packrat and wouldn't throw anything away. Had a whole junk room full of stuff. I couldn't have any birthday parties or invite friends over, because I didn't have my own room and a spare bed. Her junk took up one of the bedrooms. I shared a room and a queen size bed with my older sister. She wrapped everything in plastic with a twist tie on it, like appliances, because there were roaches everywhere.

Then when her mom died, she moved into grandma's house and filled it up with crap. Then she died over four years ago, and I've spent a hellacious amount of time just throwing out junk, first, and then sorting crap to sell and putting it into boxes, to send to an auction house. Because mom was irresponsible, I'm pretty bitter about her illness. I think we filled up about 400 large plastic garbage bags of crap we threw away. This is in an 1800 square foot house!!!! WE've also given away a lot of stuff to the local charity thrift store.

Once I climbed over a five foot tall layer of junk in a 10 x 20 foot bedroom, opened a window, and tossed stuff outside to sort it. Then she came out and started screaming at me and calling me a nasty bitch. She already had Alzheimer's. Several months later, she had no memory of screaming at me, and we figured out that the stress of my attempting to declutter the worst room in the house, had caused her to dissociate and split into another personality we were unaware of. That was scary. I thought, great, I knew she was crazy and demented, but I didn't know she had a split personality. She and Dad stumbled constantly on the trails through the house.

Extreme clutter can turn into filth if you're not careful. I keep myself, my clothes, sheets and towels clean. And my food. And I have a dishwasher that sterilizes the dishes.

Anybody that needs help determining what to throw out, please get Don Aslett's books on decluttering. They are great. One of my letters about my mom's problem, which I wrote to him before he died, was published in one of his books anonymously so that makes me a published author.

The best book for figuring out how to sort stuff is "Not for Packrats Only" by Don Aslett.

[dropkickpa]

29. I come from a long line of packrats

None of the caliber you describe, but it's a daily fight. I've learned that I just have to be absolutely ruthless and toss everything. I usually have a once a week purge and 2 really big ones each year.

Of course, with Dropkid, an empty room will become a disater area in 10 minutes flat. I DO NOT know how she does it. When I first moved to this place it was empty for a couple weeks while I painted here and packed up the old place. On one painting expedition, with only a dropcloth, 2 paintcans and pans, paint rollers, and a roll of paper towels in the entire place, Dropkid managed to somehow make the dropcloth and papertowels explode all over the house. She's like Taz, I swear. I asked her why there's always little bits of paper all over the place even right after vacuuming and she said "I like to shred paper" :nuke:

[Midlodemocrat]

30. Says the man plying TeenMidlo with scotch and cigarettes.