Sunday, November 8, 2009

"I have to think these things up, you know"


The kids and I spent the weekend with my mom, helping her do things like open jars and wash dishes because she had surgery on her thumb and her arm is wrapped up like a burrito, a giant, gauzy, arm-y burrito.

The weekend has been an opportunity to take over and secretly throw away some of the papers my mother passively collects. So far a bunch of coupons for carpet cleaning, a stack of 30 or so catalogues for cheap crap (singing Christmas bath mat anyone?), and a pile of brightly colored pamphlets about Honduras she picked up at some political rally have met their fate in the recycling bin.

I dutifully kept the newsletters from every non-profit she's ever given money to, and made a neat pile of the remaining 143 mail order catalogues (self-warming toilet seat anyone?)

My fever to sort through her junk mail started last night, after we watched Grey Gardens and I started to get a creepy feeling. My mother is about a 100 cats and as many marbles away from being even close to Big Edie. But still, a stack of expired coupons and a collection of old real estate listings is a slippery slope. Pretty soon we could be wearing old sweaters on our heads, sharing a tub of melted ice cream and throwing our cat food cans in the fireplace. I'm just saying.



1 comment:

Amy Jensen said...

If you like that you should check out the A&E show Hoarders. Modern day crap weasels. It's both disturbing and painful to watch, but interesting.

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