Well... THIS is not going to end well.

I am making a prediction, and I do not need any gift of prognostication or psychic ability.  I predict things are NOT going to end well.  As you know, this is not the first time I have made this prediction.

This weekend my hoarding mother's backyard neighbor was passing through my area with her significant other, and they stopped to have dinner with me.  This has been a lovely couple of weeks, as I had a high school friend stop by a couple of weeks ago with her family and now this friend.  Although I no longer consider where I grew up as 'home', it is nice to connect with those who have known you for years, if not most of your life.  I have been totally removed from that since I moved to the state in which I reside 16 1/2 years ago.

I heard more stories about my hoarding mother and her behavior.  I will spare you most of them, although my high school friend asked if my mother was dating anyone, and stated she has been in the local Walmart (in which my friend works) and she seemed sure that my mother seemed awfully 'cozy' with a particular gentleman.  Okay... may the odds be ever in his favor if that is the case!  But the fodder for this entry is apparently my hoarding mother is calling the police on the neighbors as a form of harassment and giving false addresses (like her neighbor that visited me) so she must have a 'burner phone'.  She also is shooting her gun in the air when she perceives there to be 'prowlers'.  In a suburban area.  She has tried to get the neighbor to shoot her gun in a similar manner, which she has refused.  

Bullets that go up, must come down.  I encouraged the neighbor to call the police when she hears gunfire, and I am at a loss at what to do.  She is a menace.  

Monday I called her to check in after 3 or 4 blissful days on no contact, and she ramped up on a discussion and stated that she thought they should bring back hanging people on the town square or burning them at the stake 'like they used to" and I got off the phone quickly after disagreeing and attempting to shut that nastiness down.  She constantly states things like "I could just watch someone beat [that person] to death and do nothing" or "I would like to see someone chop that lying ... pick your vile adjectives to depersonalize someone... [body part or body parts- usually tongue, hands, genitals, etc.] off" and I quickly shut it down.  

She has a concealed carry.  Someone gave this person a concealed carry permit for a firearm.  Any interaction she has lately is fraught with conflict and petty misunderstandings that explode into a full fledged confrontation.

And the hail damage that happened last March?  She still does not have the roof fixed on her house or on the garage.  And there has been lots of rain.  Bet that is lovely in a stage 5 hoarded home.

She continues to escalate, and deteriorate.  And she has not fallen far enough to get anything done despite herself.

Hoarding.  No one wins.  No one.

She found an unidentified [poo] object in her basement.

Sometimes I am at a loss for words.  Not often... but sometimes.  Last week I called my hoarding mother to check in.  And so the fun began.

"The weirdest and craziest thing happened today.  It was UNREAL."

[Okay.  That statement instantly makes me tense up, since I know that it is going to be one of two things, both that I allow to make me angry:

1. It will be something so mundane, something that is not an issue or a problem, that she will magnify to the 1,000,000,000,000,000th degree or more...
2. It will be simply... batshit crazy...

So I brace myself mentally...]

"Aren't you going to ask me what?"

*crickets chirping*

"...[Long monologue of her trying morning and what she meant to do spoken as if she were Sisyphus pushing the rock, which is basically 1/10th of what most folks accomplish in the AM before coffee] and then I went downstairs for the first time in a week and I found it.  [Silence- waiting for me to ask or show interest.  She finally continues on...] It was there at the foot of the stairs! I went outside and checked all the windows, and there are no openings!  It was like a curled up leaf, and it had birdseed through it! [I will spare you the back and forth, but it was apparently poo of some sort.  And her cats never go down stairs.  And she simply would not say the word poo, turd, shit or any other word that describes feces.  When I asked her more than once directly - she would say, weakly... "I guess" but would not call it what it was.]"

"I picked it up with [long boring monologue of the extreme precautions she used to pick up the poo] and it did not have a smell."

Did you smell it?  

"Yes!"

Okay, you have no sense of smell.  So it would have to be horrifically smelly for you to determine an odor, correct? 

"I guess."

No way it is a cocoon that hatched?  Is it hollow?  Is it poo?  Could there be birdseed you forgot about in the basement?  [Keep in mind, this is the 14 block basement that is hoarded completely to only 18 inches or so below the ceiling.]  

"No..." And the denial begins.  And the weird description of the poo without using the normal poo-like terms.  She asserts she knows every stick of what is in there.  Every item, every piece.  

I ask if her recollection of that is similar to the recollection that resulted in the harvest of chocolate chips dated 1983 in her freezer (yes- she writes the date on each item in a sharpie, and has as long as I can remember).  Or the steaks she found dated 1991 or 1992.  She got annoyed at that point.

Our conversation evolved to her continuing her escalating monologue of asking herself questions and answering... talking about mice, rats, and other vermin and what their poo looks like.  Well- her conversation.  I looked in my review mirror and realized I was speeding down the highway with a godawful grimace on my face.

She has been throwing all kinds of bread, cereal, and other crap down 'for the birds' and it has been drawing skunks, possums, raccoons and other types of vermin into the yard which she thinks is 'cute'.  She also feeds many feral cats and has found possums and skunks in the jacked up, hoardy set up she has for them.  Surprise, surprise, surprise.  NOT.  About 10 years ago she had a plastic can on the porch with birdseed in it, and field mice chewed through it, and there were about 40 mice on the sun porch at any time, and she refused to do anything about them since they were 'cute'.  Until she saw one go up the foundation and disappear under the siding.  Then she got poison and killed them, claiming none made it into the house.  I call BS on that one.  She also continued to speculate that rat poo looks like big mouse poo.  I replied that depends on what they have been eating:-)

I reminded her of the many warnings I have given her about encouraging the 'critters' to use her yard as a feeding location, and advised her that houses with a lot of stuff in them like hers often end up with some sort of infestation.  She was absolutely beside herself denying that was possible.  She stated the cats would want down there if anything was there, and upon hearing that the stairs would stink of human, the house, and the cats, and most rodents, et al are nocturnal, and she takes her hearing aid out, and confines the cats to the bathroom-gulag-hell at night... The denial went into overdrive.  

She started getting angry when I suggested that a possum or something could have found its way in like the mouse tried to.  [Evil I know, but sometimes passive aggressive turnabout is one of the few benefits I get to these conversations.]

Finally, I asked if there was a State University Agricultural Extension Office in her town.  She could take the 'item' there and possibly know what it was.  Or, stop by Fish and Game.  [They can throw money, I know they will want to thank me!]  She did not say it, but I could almost hear her mind churning ... doing that would acknowledge she had something in her house!  The HORROR!

That was the only solution I offered.  After the Debit Card Debacle... [see a few blogs ago] I am not giving her any solutions.  It is a waste of effort.  She started complaining that she did not want people in the house because they steal everything and no one will do anything right and no one wants to work... Yadda, yadda... BOO.

I advised her that it would be nearly impossible to exterminate the basement with the amount of stuff that was there.  Her response?

"Well.  The only reason I do that is to block the windows so {the hated neighbor in the turn} can't get in here.  It is my security system."

Um- it was that way before {hated neighbor} returned to the area.

"He is escalating!  He will get in here!  It is just a matter of time!"

I am concerned that if you have something in there, the house is a fire/deathtrap anyway with all the stuff and the wiring that has not been updated since the house was built in 1966 or 68 or whenever, and has not been maintained.

"I need to keep those windows blocked!  I have to..."

Okay.  Here.  Gotta go.

______________

Subsequent conversations?  The mystery poo has not been mentioned.  And I am not asking.  

Northern Virginia Daily Article on Hoarding... My worst fear for my mother

Warren County Fire and Rescue Services firefighters survey the damage after fire destroyed the home of Pauline A. Hockett last week. Joe Beck/Daily

^ Posted 1 day ago

A fatal fire last week in Warren County prompts action to make residents aware of hoarding's dangers

By Joe Beck

Warren County fire officials are planning an education initiative about the risks of hoarding in the aftermath of a fire in which a 72-year-old woman died as firefighters struggled to locate her amid a vast amount of stored items in her large home.

Firefighters arrived at the home of Pauline A. Hockett, 72, of 220 Locust Dale Road, Front Royal, at about midnight Thursday and found their efforts to rescue her slowed by a considerable amount of clutter, some of it reaching as high as 6 feet.

"Throughout the first floor of the home, these guys were actually walking or climbing over material in the home trying to locate the victim without knowing a definite area where the victim was at the time of the 911 call," Fire Marshal Gerry Maiatico said.

Maiatico estimated it took about 25 minutes to find Hockett in the basement where she had died from smoke inhalation and thermal inhalation.

He said it was impossible to know whether she could have been saved had the fire crew reached her sooner, but there was no doubt that "conditions in the home greatly hampered rescue efforts."

"They were tripping and falling over these items, they were running into roadblocks every couple of feet," Maiatico said of fire crew members.

Hockett's death was the first by fire in Warren County in five years. Fire Chief Richard E. Mabie has ordered his department to begin contacting several agencies in the county that would work with the Fire and Rescue Services on educating people about fire risks associated with hoarding.

Maiatico said Mabie is committed "to preventing the loss of life in the community and making sure this type of thing doesn't happen again."

Hoarding's dangers extend to emergency calls for medical attention when every second counts for paramedics trying to save a patient's life, Maiatico said.

"They cannot get in, and they have to remove the patient from the environment before they can start the treatment process," Maiatico said, adding that hoarding can also imperil first responders.

"We don't want to commit people to areas where we don't know what conditions they will find," he said.

Hockett's sons, Glenn, 40, and Jeff, 46, will be joining the education effort.

"I told them I'd be happy to be of assistance in any way we could," Jeff Hockett said of Fire and Rescue Services. He added that the family is asking that people donate money to the department's smoke detector program in lieu of flowers.

Maiatico said the smoke detectors functioned properly during the fire at the Hockett home. He elaborated on the source of the fire, which began with improper disposal of smoking material.

"Basically, this fire stemmed from cigarettes being placed in a trash receptacle, dumping ash trays into a trash can" he said. "The Department of Fire and Rescue Services wants to remind everybody to fill ash trays with water, then dump them into a receptacle to make sure all smoking embers and cigarettes themselves are extinguished."

Maiatico said all cigarettes are required to be fire safe, which means they carry an additive that allows them to extinguish themselves if no one draws air through them.

"Even though that is a safety measure, it's not 100 percent," Maiatico said. "So we still say before you discard a cigarette, soak it with water."

Maiatico said the department's response to hoarding problems will focus on education and obtaining mental health support when hoarders are posing risks to themselves and others. No new enforcement actions or laws are planned, he said.

"We want to be respectful and focus on safety issues, not judge people on how they live and why they do the things they do," Maiatico said.

He said he was especially pleased that the Hockett family is prepared to participate in the education campaign.

"The family is taking the position that if the story of Pauline can save someone else's life, then potentially some good can come out of something like this," Maiatico said.

Contact staff writer Joe Beck at 540-465-5137 ext. 142, or jbeck@nvdaily.com

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Mental health professionals treating hoarding as mental disorder

^ Posted 1 day ago

By Joe Beck

Mental health professionals are about to formally recognize hoarding as a distinct mental disorder in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to be published this spring.

Jeff Szymanski, a clinical psychologist and executive director of the International Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Foundation, said Tuesday the impending change is based on years of research and the experiences of therapists who have been treating patients for the affliction. The DSM, published by the American Psychiatric Association, is widely considered the most authoritative book for understanding mental disorders and potential treatments.

Szymanski estimated five to seven million people in the United States are hoarders, and more of them are coming to the attention of the rest of the public.

"Fire marshals are a great example because people who hoard in many instances hoard until their homes become fire hazards," Szymanski said.

Neighbors complain to authorities and landlords try to evict hoarders because they see a safety hazard to their property, Szymanski said. Complaints and pressure from outsiders are often the only way to persuade hoarders to get help, he added.

"Those who hoard typically don't seek treatment on their own," Szymanski said.

People should not confuse hoarders with pack rats and collectors whose tendency toward untidiness is a more manageable and less troubling personal trait, Szymanski said.

"Collectors have a lot of stuff, but collectors have their stuff organized," he said, adding, "pack rats may have cluttered households, but they use their possessions the way they were intended."

A pack rat may have a cluttered kitchen counter, but it's still recognizable as a counter and used for that purpose. But a hoarder may end up sleeping on a couch because the bed is already occupied by too many objects, Szymanski said.

"It's just the amount of clutter they have," he said. "It's impairing their functioning. It's interfering with their ability to use space around their home like they would like to do."

Szymanski said researchers and hoarding therapists are spearheading about 75 task forces around the country aimed at educating the public about hoarding. The task forces and more information about hoarding are listed at the web site Helpforhoarding.org.

Contact staff writer Joe Beck at 540-465-5137 ext. 142, or jbeck@nvdaily.com

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