1. Begin staining process. Convince husband that he really has to do the staining himself because you would mess it up.
2. Start to believe it yourself.
3. Realize this process is taking four times as long as you had planned.
4. Feign normalcy by inviting friend and three-year old daughter over to lunch in the basement. Reassure three-year old, upon urinating on the floor, that she wasn’t the first to pee on the floor that day.
5. Resume role filling scratches and holes with wood putty because you are an equal partner in this project.
6. Go ladycamping while husband stays behind to stain. Decorate your own coozie and drink vodka-spiked Capri Suns. Talk about periods.
7. Realize giant pimp tent is less claustrophobic than basement, smells better.
8. Return to beautiful, untouchable floors.
9. Clean up basement dog pee, vomit, poop, and shredded personal items.
10. Repeat #9.
11. Repeat #10
12. Referee countless rounds of Basement Dog Thunderdome.
13. Thank Baby Jesus for awesome husband as he seals the floors.
14. Agree to do all tangential helper-type activities until floors are finished.
15. Do that shit with a smile.
16. Relax in clean, fresh, carpet-free bedroom. Breathe.



Please to ignore our bare bedroom. We’ve only moved essentials thus far. More pics on Flickr.

Chris threw me a super-fun party for my birthday at Saratoga Lanes in Maplewood. It’s the oldest bowling alley west of the Mississippi, a second-floor joint with eight lanes (hand scoring) and lots of room for food, boozing, pool, and watching the World Cup final, which was less-than-exciting. And, of course, bowling. Many of my friends came and I thought we had a blast. Thanks to all who came out and rolled.

In addition:

• Our charter school had our review with the Mayor’s Advisory Panel Wednesday, and it went really, really well. I didn’t even make any wiener jokes. One member of the panel (who is the superintendent of one of the largest and most lauded districts in the state–where Chris works) said our curriculum and instruction plan was the best he’s seen from a charter. Things are starting to move, and hopefully we’ll have a facility finalized by the end of September, if things go as planned.
• You probably think I forgot about hardwood floors part 2, but oh, ho, ho, no sir. We just haven’t even stained yet. Maybe tonight. Things have been crazy around here, and if we wait any longer, the floors are going to be stained with two solid coats of dog pee and then where will we be?
• If you are in St Louis and you blog and have a vagina (or wish you did), come to our Pre-BlogHer meetup. I can’t say for sure, but a little bird told me there may be swag from Metamucil. Iron Stef says that digestive health is important at any age. Anyway, details are at that link, and please do RSVP. I highly recommend you come if only to try Schlafly’s AIPA if you haven’t already. It is so choice.
• So! Remember when I was flying Southwest and the flight attendant said not nice things about liberals and Spanish-speakers? And I got some canned replies from Southwest with a “we’re sorry if you were offended, but we’re just having fun!” non-apology? This week, I got a real, not-canned, e-mail apologizing in a pretty sincere way and acknowledging that maybe I was right to be offended. Plus a $150 travel voucher. So we’re all squared up, and I salute Southwest for how they handled it in the end. Honestly, I wasn’t out to get anything free. I just wanted them to know that that type of noise isn’t okay, and I think they got the message and I’ll continue to fly them.
• It’s so, so, so hot in St Louis. There’s no point in showering. Once you step outside, you’re damp from head to toe. Obviously, this means my friends and I should go camping this weekend. We went in this kind of weather last year and it was actually pretty fun. We even had a fire and didn’t melt into the backwoods of Iron County. The key is that we’ll spend the entire day Saturday at the lake in the state park where we camp watching mothers in jorts yell at their Dakotas and MacKynzies and Mercedeseseseses to put down the cigarette butts that wash up on shore. It’s like People of WalMart, but at the beach. Floating cooler for the win. Thank you to everyone today on Twitter who suggested syringes for getting vodka into Capri Suns. I’m sure someone at the beach  will have a few we can borrow.

While you are at it, check out my piece on that piece of shit Mel Gibson over at MamaPop, as well as my piece about the upcoming film adaptation of The Help. And, come back Monday, because I HAVE SECRETS.

After a trip to the Mac Store, my worst fears were realized: RIP, hard drive. No data recovery possible. HUZZAH! While they installed the new drive, I went to Sephora and bought one of those acne skin care sets and lip gloss to make myself feel better. I never retail therapy, but the loss of my hard drive prompted me to do so. I hope someone I know saw me, at the mall, buying myself zit medicine for my 30th birthday and unsuccessfully trying hard not to cry because my hard drive crashed. Even I would have made fun of myself. I hope my mom is proud.

So I stayed up late, trying to work on my paper. My professor said I could have a few days, but that’s a slippery slope with me, especially since Sunday is the World Cup final. And, ahem, my 30th birthday. So I’m planning on working today, flying to Minneapolis, going to class, then working tonight and tomorrow morning. Wish me luck. This class ends this weekend, so hopefully life will return to somewhat normal after that.

In case you missed it, check out my stuff elsewhere this week:

• At Draft Day Suit, The German Soccer Coach Needs Home Training
• At MamaPop, Party Down’s Last Hurrah: Take That, Vanity Fair
• At MamaPop, Don’t Front. You Totally Cried At Bethenny Frankel’s Wedding.

Recently I joined the new Young Professionals board for Safe Connections. If you aren’t familiar with Safe Connections:

As the oldest and largest locally-founded agency serving abused women and teens in the St. Louis region, Safe Connections is essential core of resources and support for survivors of violence. Safe Connections is the only agency providing integrated services for women who have been victimized by domestic violence, sexual assault, rape and/or childhood sexual abuse. (from Safe Connections’ About Us)

Safe Connections provides vital services for women and teens in the area who are survivors of violence, and their work is an area where the need for help is almost always greater than what they can provide. The Young Professionals is a new group formed by Safe Connections to gain volunteers and supporters in the 21-40 age group who can help Safe Connections expand their mission and services.

We’re hosting a happy hour to raise awareness about and gain membership for Safe Connections and our Young Professionals group.  This event will be held at Pi in the Central West End on Wednesday, March 3, from 5-7. Chris Sommers, who owns Pi, is also a member of the Young Professionals group, and Pi will be offering half-price appetizers and drink specials for those in attendance. You should come.  You need no reason to go to Pi and have a cocktail on a Wednesday, and this gives you free reign to claim it as your good deed for the day or week should you see fit.

Domestic violence is an issue that does not discriminate based on race, socioeconomic status, political affiliation, or religion. I’d love to see you guys come out, particularly my lady-blogger friends.

When I left my job helping unqualified people become underwhelming teachers (I KID, at least five of them were competent. Ashley, you’re one of them), I went to work with a friend, helping her with the small business she owned. When I started working with her, we set a three-month trial period, at the end of which either of us could withdraw from the arrangement, no hard feelings.  Unfortunately, due to a really crappy economy, she really couldn’t afford to keep me after three and a half months, which I expected. Therefore, as of Friday, I have no substantive incoming coming in regularly.

Which kind of sucks.

The Good News:

I have a fallback: I can teach. However, one generally doesn’t find teaching jobs in February, at least not for current employment. If I decide to go back into the classroom, overwhelming odds are it won’t be until August.

I was reading about this new film Lemonade, about advertising professionals out of work due to the shiteous economy, and how many viewed unemployment as an opportunity to pursue real creative projects. And I thought to myself, I’ve many times dreamt about various aspirations that I continually postponed to “when I have time”.

And now I have time. It’s about all the currency I have right now.

I’m still in school; two classes this semester, as well as snail-like inching towards the start of my dissertation process. This will be my Project #1, my main focus. But in the last two months or so, several opportunities have kind of floated my way that are leading to me inevitably taking tangible steps to make some of my  until-now only hypothetical plans come to fruition.

First, my friends introduced me to their neighbor, who is also in education and was in the beginning stages of starting a charter school here in St Louis.  He and I met for coffee, talked shop, and I decided to join his small team of individuals committed to founding a college preparatory middle/high charter school here in South City. We’ve been busy thinking, planning, and writing applications for both grants and various steps of the approval process. In just a few weeks of work, I’ve already learned so much about how the charter school process works and exactly what goes into each aspect of starting an institution.

I have ideological issues with charter schools, namely that they take resources away from public schools and also allow public officials to ignore the desperate need for public school improvement in cities just like St Louis. Unfortunately, there seems to be no end in sight to the problems plaguing the SLPS, not to mention the fact that their elected board has no power, and kids need good schools now, so this is why I decided to become involved in the project. So, yeah, project #2: I’m starting a school.

I was also asked to join a young professionals (snort…see introductory paragraph where I lose main source of income) board for Safe Connections, an amazing, well-established non-profit here in St Louis that provides various programs and services about and for victims of domestic violence.  We’ll be having a few happy hour-type events here in St Louis and I’ll be blogging about those events, as well as the work Safe Connections does, in the near future. Project #3.

Finally, I recently became friends with a couple our age who’ve turned their modest home into a working farmstead, complete with crops, livestock, and bees, all less than three miles from our house. Because of our shared interest, Justin from Yellow Tree Farm and I have been plotting and scheming, and we’re collaborating on a new venture. We will be putting in kitchen gardens at a few restaurants around town. We’ve got a few people we’re already working with, and we’re in the midst of planting and planning. Truth be told, Justin knows so much more than me about growing food, so I’m over the moon about how much I can learn from working with him and being around what he and Danielle have already done. Chris is excited because I won’t try to get him to talk about seeds and garden planning all the time. Win for everyone. Project #4.

And, of course, I’ll still be working on the blogs and Novice Foodie.

So while I’ll be incredibly broke, I’ll be incredibly busy doing things I’m passionate about. I’m feeling pretty lucky.

It takes an e-mail from BlogHer Ads for me to realize I haven’t posted in two weeks. I’m here; I’m fine. I just haven’t been able to succinctly say…anything, really. I think I burned myself out by spending three solid days writing my case study for class this semester. But I’m not leaving or anything. You can check my pulse over at Twitter. I promise I’ll post for realsies next week.

Until then, you can read my last two Novice Foodie columns to tide you over…

ANYWAY, onward to our new season.

9:01 Opening montage of tonight’s hoarder, Augustine.  So far, it looks like far and away the worst Hoarder house ever.  That’s saying a lot, since last season we saw a lady with multiple rotting pumpkins in her dining room.

9:02 We meet Augustine’s son, Jason, who was taken out of Augustine’s home as a child.  Cut to dog shit dried into the carpet and a cat conquering a veritable mountain of trash.

9:03: Black Screen of Justice informs us that in the past two decades, Augustine has paid more than $30,000 for city-mandated cleanups.  Think of all the dog shit she could have bought for that.

9:05 Augustine’s daughter informs us there is no working stove or laundry.  And that her mother has no teeth.  I guess she didn’t hoard toothbrushes.

This house is fucking disgusting.  I mean, I’m down, to a certain extent, with clutter of useless junk bought at clearance sales, but straight up squalor?  This is unreal.

Jason informs us that he had to sleep with the fan on as a child because if he didn’t, he’d hear the rats in the trash and it would scare him.  And he was the smelly kid because of all of this and got picked on.  Lord.  He had to go live with the sister when he was in 8th grade.  Sister was in early 20′s.

9:06 Jason: “I mean, how hard can it be to NOT fill your house with garbage?”  Black Screen of Justice informs us that Jason hasn’t seen his mom in four years.  He up and moved to Seattle.

9:07 Augustine blames her own mother, who also sounds like a gem.

Sister’s name is Susan, and she’s been trying to help Augustine for years. Susan claims Augustine’s blames Jason’s father, who didn’t want to be in his life, for the progression of her hoarding.  Susan: “But Jason’s 28 years old.”  Right.

The neighbors are obvs not having any of this noise.  Or smell.  Or rats.

9:09 Jason and Susan know her health is failing, and if she dies, they have to deal with the “nest”.  His words, not mine.  <shudder>

Cut to shot of Jason feeding his pet rabbit a carrot before he leaves to go to his mom’s.  I just lost all sympathy for him.  How the fuck do you grow up in squalor and then have a FILTHY, DIRTY, CONNIVING rabbit as a pet?  You wrong for that, Jason.

9:14 Jason looks like a slightly-skinnier Hurley from Lost.  Susan just started crying.  Both children know that their mom’s house will get condemned if they don’t clean it out.

9:15 Please welcome Suzanne (pronounced Su-ZAHN, yeah, I know, whatevs), the therapist who will *help* Augustine with her hoarding, which is a manifestation of OCD.  Augustine just said that she couldn’t pick up the clothes in her bedroom “Because they are both summer and winter clothes mixed together, and I haven’t washed them, so they smell.”  That kind of rationalization will get you…well, it will get you a house full of trash and animal feces, I suppose.

9:16. Wow.  Augustine has no plumbing.  Also, when it rains, her bathroom floods.  This seems really ironic.

They are also bringing in ANOTHER hoarding expert.  Dayum.  Defcon 5 in here.  No really, Augustine is a “Level 5 Hoarder”.  That’s the worst.  You aren’t even allowed on an airplane.

9:18 Did I mention that Jason looks suspiciously like a larper?  Was he in Monster Camp?  Who cares?  He’s still, far and away, not the most fucked up person currently on my screen.

9:19 Damn, Augustine used to be a stone fox back in the day.  Tragical.  Jason just pointed at a pile and said “I have sat on that couch in my life.”

WHOA.  WHAT IS THAT?  Did he just hold up a bottle of pee?  Really?  WTF?  Please, editors, why are you not telling me what that jar of yellow stuff was?  You can’t just skim over that?

9:20  Dayum.  Looks like a dookie-bomb went off in the bathroom.  This is almost bad as The Road, y’all.  Except there are no cannibals on Hoarders.  Yet.

9:26  I get the distinct impression that Jason wants nothing to do with his mom and he is only in town to support his sister.  Brutal.  She’ll never clean up unless she has a reason to live.  She’s like passively and slowly killing herself.

9:27 They have a crew of straight DOZENS to help out.  The OCD expert says Augustine should throw everything out.  Augustine replies, “Don’t touch mah bottles, or my crochet.  She tried to throw out my crochet booties.” (points at Susan). Susan: “What do you need booties for?” Augustine: “I sell them for ten dollars apiece.”  Somehow I doubt that anyone with a child would pay you ten dollars for said child, knowing it came out of your house.  Just sayin’.

9:28. Augustine wants four of the cleanup dudes to sift through her living room to find one of two lost sets of dentures.  No, seriously.  She wants her teeth back from her shit/piss/dirt/mold/trash-laden living-room floor.

9:31 This lady gets on some serious misdirection.  She just got into an argument with her daughter about her mouth-breathing.  I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.

Black Screen of Justice informs us that the cleaning crew has already removed 3,000 pounds of trash from the den alone.

A worker just found half of one set of dentures, and Augustine has the nerve to complain that he didn’t find the other half.  Stay classy.

9:32  Aaaaaand, they just found a dead cat.  Like, 1/3 of a dead cat.  A mummified dead cat.  A DEAD CAT!  Su-ZAHN asks why she had a dead cat in her house.  Augustine says, deadpan, “because I wasn’t here.”

Apparently, Augustine mouth-breathes really hard when she gets upset.  Other than that, she has no change of affect.  This lady needs mental help.  Pronto.  Like, inpatient care.

9:34 Jason: “This is like an archaeological record of the past decade and a half.”  Um, sure.  Just like when they dug in a landfull and found a newspaper from the 50′s, right?

9:36  Another dead cat.  At the bottom of a pile. So, probably ten years old.

9:43  So the truth comes out.  Augustine has never thanked Susan for taking in HER 13 YEAR OLD BROTHER WHEN SHE WAS 25.  Has never admitted wrong-doing in all of this.  Again, I say: DAYUM.

9:45 Cut to her kids, wearing masks, sorting through squalor, while Augustine rocks on her chair.  See, this here is a problem, because this is just going to reinforce that all hoarders are simply too lazy to clean.  While I believe that this is part of Augustine’s shitstorm of issues, some of the hoarders legitimately want to change and don’t know how.  I’d like to see more in-depth psychotherapy for people like Augustine, who seem more fucked up that your average computer-duster-huffer on Intervention.  I mean, she has no affect whatsoever.  I honestly think the cat-pee fumes have fucked up her brain, and I don’t think she had much of one to begin with, along with a host of mental disorders.  How could you NOT be depressed living like that?  I mean, depression is probably the least of her issues.

9:52  Black Screen of Justice tells us the cleaning crew has mere hours to get the house up to code.  What is Augustine doing during this time of intense rush and stress?  Rocking on her porch, bitching about a tablecloth.

9:54  The cleaning crew had to “walk away” from the bathroom.  The dookie bomb was too much for even the 1-800-GOT-JUNK dudes.  One guy bravely soldiers on.

Wait, what?  Jason says this is the SECOND time an outside cleaning crew has come in here?  So you’re saying this is really only HALF of the nasty?

9:56  So, one of her living room chairs decomposed under garbage.  No, really.  And the 1-800-GOT-JUNK dudes pitched in and got her a new one.  I thought she’d zombie-out again, but after sitting in the chair, Augustine actually sheds a tear. “It feels nice to have someone care for you.”  So. Sad.j

9:58  OMG they panned through the clean house and Augustine has a hand chair a la The Ladies Man.  And they kept it in the room.  That’s awesome.

The house actually looks really clean.  It won’t last, unless she gets serious help.

Post-script: They removed 8,000 pounds of trash and fixed the plumbing.  The son doesn’t ever want to come back.  Augustine is getting long-term therapy.

So, who wants to shampoo their carpets, clean the litterbox, and scrub the grout with a toothbrush?

I think A&E must have heard from enough viewers that they needed to provide the subjects of the show with long-term therapy, which I think is desperately needed.  Even those on Intervention get at least 90 days of treatment.  This problem almost seems more severe, emotionally.  Not to downplay drug or alcohol addiction–it is brutal.  But this type of problem requires at least the same amount of care.

Hoarders isn’t the best show to live-blog, because I have somewhat of a conscience, and it’s hard to snark on people so obviously and painfully fucked up.  Even my standard rule of you-went-on-reality-tv-so-you’re-fair-game wavers in the face of people whose lives are taken over by filth, physically and emotionally isolating them from everyone who was every important to them.  I don’t know that they can top what they showed tonight.  The other thing that sucks about Hoarders is that there is rarely a happy ending.  There’s never some update of the people smiling and laughing and glad to be sober.  Nope.  Usually, they just revert back to hoarding.  I suppose I’ll have to pick a show filled with much more vile, deserving assholes at whom’s expense I make jokes.  Hoarders just leaves me feeling dirty and depressed.

Carry on.