Bless this mess

I'm baaaaack! Sorry I've been away for so long, but it's taken me a few days to get back on track after traveling the last 2 weeks. I've been in 3 times zones and missed countless hours of TV. I was in the beginning stages of withdrawal. Let's get to it!

"Hoarders" (A&E, 10:00): Had I not designed the page in The Seattle Times with the story about hoarding, I may have missed this second-season premier. "Hoarders" has become A&E's hottest new show and I'm one of those people who got sucked into the vortex of junk these people have accumulated. Tonight's episode featured Augustine, a 68-year-old woman from Louisiana whose house is on the verge of condemnation.

Augustine's children, Susan and 28-year-old Seattleite Jason, are at the end of their rope with mom. Jason was removed from the home when he was in 8th grade and sent to live with his sister - a three day stay that turned into 10 years. Both feel mom chose garbage over raising children and the level of resentment they have towards her is palpable. Neither one of them have an emotional attachment to Augustine and feel they have to help her as a moral obligation.

Augustine wasn't taking the blame for anything (Mom, is that you?). She had excuses coming out the wazoo about how she ended up living in a state of squalor. And the stuff she was saving was ridiculous: diapers, crochet kits ... I had to get up and go brush my teeth when they found her dentures underneath a pile of garbage - and she wanted to keep them!! Augustine is classified as a category 5 hoarder and it did, indeed, look like a hurricane had blown through that house.

This was the first hoarder house that was actually cleaned to the point where you could see the floor. The cleaners removed a total of 8,000 lbs. of trash and even chipped in their own money to buy her a new chair to plop down in front of the TV. Pause it: The last thing this woman needs is a new nesting place. She barely told the men 'thank you' for the hard (and possibly toxic) work they had done.

Do you have any hoarding tendencies? I hang on to receipts and greeting cards, but they don't keep me from finding my bed at night. I'm just saying ...