Tag Archives: hoarding disorder

January 6, 2016 · 4:22 pm

New Dawns for 2016

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You may recall that one of my obsessive-compulsive collection-addictions is pictures of the dawn sky over eastern Carrollton and Dallas.  So far I have only taken two.  Through Sunday I was still sleeping late with no children to drop off at school.  Just so the numbers match, here is number two;

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So, why not three, you say?  Today is Wednesday after all?  Well, I can’t take a picture of the sunrise when it is overcast and threatening cold rain.  We may have our share of clouds on the horizon this year, with El Nino raging to the West and the jet stream dipping down to Mexico to deliver freezing Arctic blasts thanks to climate change.  Does that mean I expect bad things to be coming my way?  Of course I do.  I am old.  I have six incurable diseases, and I have survived cancer once already.  I am closer now to the day I will die than I have ever been in my life.  And now Donald Trump has the technical possibility of being elected President of the United States.  Who says Jehovah God and the Greek goddess of History don’t have bizarre senses of humor?

But despite the ill omens and the badness I anticipate, life is still good and will not be repressed.  I intend to live for all I am worth.  Have I not earned it, being a public school teacher for 31 years?  Have I not earned it by raising three wonderful kids, one of whom serves this country as a US Marine?  Have I not earned it by picking up dog poop in the park four times a day, and sometimes more off the carpet in the house for the last four years?  I believe in savoring what we have been granted, and using the gifts and abilities given to me by God.  That is why I am still blogging every day for the fourteenth month in a row.  And, miracle of miracles, I am not talking to the wind with no one really listening any more.  When I was blogging on Xanga from 2005 to 2007, I only had one or two followers that even read my stuff… and they didn’t tune in every day.  Some of you have started doing more than just looking at the pictures.  I have evidence in the comments that some of you read my posts all the way to the end.  I thought I was the only blogger that did that.  And I had 276 views last week.  349 the week before.  9651 people viewed my blog in 2015.   I have 87 views in just the three days of this week so far.  I can no longer claim to be the best-written blog that nobody ever reads.  I have to compete now with the other writers who write good stuff.  Ooh… I am doomed.  But I intend to enjoy it.  I have at least one novel in the works to be published.  I have another one already published that should be available at least on Amazon until well after I have curled up my toes and went for a final bye-bye.  Bad things are sure to happen.  But for now, the sun is still coming up every morning in my little world.

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December 15, 2015 · 5:07 pm

Playing With Dolls Again

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Yes, having hoarding disorder can be a pain.  I channel it into collecting, especially things like 12-inch action figures and Barbie Dolls.  But it becomes such a mania that even the rules don’t contain it.  These mint-in-box dolls with mutant big heads and bean bodies are part of a wacky collection that has caught hold of me with about the same ferocity as the flu.  They are Monster High dolls to go along with the TV cartoons and direct-to-video movies used primarily to sell these ultra-weird toys to little girls.  Supposedly each of the girls in the series is the daughter of a movie monster.  Operetta above is the daughter of the Phantom of the Opera.  Isi Dawndancer claims to be the daughter of a deer-spirit… a Native-American-style monster thingy.  I suppose there is a benign rationalization behind these things other than trying to get little girls to identify with and emulate monsters.  Believe me, from my years as a teacher, no little girl really needs encouragement to embrace the monster within.  And that sort of thing has negative consequences.

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Yes, the picture immediately above is of my Monster High collection as it stood a year ago.   I have now added to it.  And am admitting as reasonably as I can that it is probably evidence of looming insanity.  Let me show you the new acquisitions from the current collecting year;

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Besides Operetta and Isi, I have added the daughter of the Loch Ness Monster, the daughter of the rat king, and, apparently, the daughter of the man-eating plant from the movie Little Shop of Horrors.  What is even worse, there are more dolls out there and available to this collection.  I have followed the rules and limited my spending, but I wasted birthday and Christmas money from my mother on this stuff… and probably will do so again.  I suppose it is because I don’t spend my toy-money on more manly things like guns and political donations to Donald Trump.  But I have to satisfy my lurking doubts with the notion that the most impressive collections of things like this in museums are probably put together by fools like me with raging hoarding disorder.

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October 30, 2015 · 2:04 pm

Page-Filler Friday

I have had a monumentally horrible week.  And one of the hardest things about it, is that I cannot tell you about most of it and make fun of it for the sake of healing by humor because, after all, real mental health issues are a very private thing.  So, I am left with a mish-mash of free-associations and brainstorming to fill up a page with random and unthinkable thoughts.  (When I brainstorm, sometimes it is more like a brain-hurricane.)

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Under the general heading of; Things a relatively sane older man who is battling hoarding disorder should probably not do is the new collection I started of Sparkling Disney Princesses.  As you can see above, I unfortunately acquired some of the more recent Disney Princesses in sparkle form within the rules for collecting (not costing more than $20 and not spending more than $50 in any one month).  I even added a rule to slow down the collecting mania.  (No buying sparkle princesses of characters I already have in my Disney Princess collection.)  Tiana, Merida, and Elsa add up to only $30 over the last three months.

This is actually Cowboy Mickey in the middle of the bedroom he shares with about 500 dolls and action figures, 1000 books, and the fairy in the foreground who is real.

This is actually Cowboy Mickey in the middle of the bedroom he shares with about 500 dolls and action figures, 1000 books, and the fairy in the foreground who is real.

The thing about the relentless doll collecting is more the space it fills than the money it burns.  A few years back I completed a five year stint of buying, selling, and trading action figures in which I learned how to make the obsessive-compulsive-disorder part of it turn out to be profitable.  I ran a used-toy and collectible E-Bay store that helped me pay for my mental health issue.  Of course, I did not get ahead, as all the profits are tied up in the dolls, action figures, and stuffed toys that I have kept.  Still, I learned how to do the thing effectively enough to believe I can effectively do that again if I need to, in spite of the fact that E-Bay got wise and raised their fees to make a $5 and $10 business far less profitable.

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I should note that I gave up toy-selling on E-Bay after an irate Barbie collector teed off on me in the comments section over a misidentified 80’s Barbie.  (Heck, how was I to know that the date on her neck was a copyright date only and not an indicator that she was sold in the 1970’s?)  Lady Godiva Barbie on the wingless Pegasus from the Goodwill store is a new project I put on the project table.  There is at least a month’s worth of hair-combing necessary and clearly visible in the picture.  Mane and tail alone will take weeks.

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And I am not yet done with the notion of collecting beautiful sunrises.  The recent rains and cloudiness of Texas wild weather have provided some interesting color and variety to the skyline of the park next to our house.  It all helps to keep my mind off of troubling issues that developed from dental pain and attendance woes.  This has been a very rough week, but the sunrises keep coming, and I look forward to a new day.

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