House Rehab Pics!

Just a few pics of the outside. There are almost 200 pics in my Facebook album Extreme Makeover:Foreclosure Edition.




The work is by no means finished. We are still working on the 1st floor bathroom, fence, and getting the garage door to work, but we are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel! Some more future projects for the spring include getting the pool up and running and landscaping the backyard, but it's very exciting to have the house finished enough that we can have people over and not feel as stressed about it each and every day! Hopefully our housewarming party will be coming up soon!

HOARDERS!

So my mom and I are obsessed with the show Hoarders on A&E. The show makes me physically ill, yet I can't stop recording it, watching it, and showing it to others.
Based off a Facebook post by an old high school friend, I set the DVR to record it. Not expecting much, I casually put it on one weekday a couple weeks ago while I was doing homework. I like to have mindless TV shows on in the background while I'm doing work. Somehow it actually does keep me focused.
I found that Hoarders is NOT something that can be casually on, however. It keeps my eyeballs glued to the screen. I can't miss a single shot of the horror and filth that these people live in.
The beginning titles of the show explain that "hoarding is a mental disorder marked by an obsessive need to acquire and keep things, even if the items are worthless, hazardous, or unsanitary."
Augustine was the subject of the first show. Augustine lost her dogs and her son more than 10 years ago because of the condition of her home. She has had no running water for 6 years!!!! The village is about to condemn her house if she does not comply with a mandated clean up. Her family members and workers come by to help clean out over 3,000 pounds of garbage!!! Some highlights from Augustine's home:

- Turntable for the microwave found in the middle of the landfill that was sitting in family room. She picked it up and put it back in.

- Dentures found at the bottom of the family room. She kept them.

- 2 CATS...flat as pancakes found at the bottom of the pile. Augustine's daughter predicted the cats had probably been dead for about 10 years.

When Berto came home from work, I immediately had to show it to him! We sat and ate dinner watching it, and I realized, it completely took away my appetite. I am not a squeamish person when it comes to eating. I can talk about pretty much anything while eating, or watching just about anything and continue to eat ravenously. But looking at Augustine's house, actually made me sick and unable to enjoy my dinner!

It's the shock factor, and I am obsessed! I highly suggest everyone watch the show! Some highlights from other episodes of season 2:

- Woman who had no where left to sleep bc her house was so full of trash, so she strapped herself in to a medical/potty chair at night.

- Same woman almost died because she fell out at night and was stuck in garbage. They found her wearing nothing but a snuggie and an adult diaper.

- Bathroom filled ceiling to floor, wall to wall, with USED adult diapers. Upon cleaning out the bathroom, workers found that the acid from her urine had actually eaten a hole through her bathroom floor!

- Woman who runs to her neighbors house to fill up a bucket to flush her toilet bc she has no running water.

- Pet goats eating through siding, insullation, and drywall leaving a big hole in bedroom wall. Possums and racoons now live in the bedroom instead of her.

- Man about to be evicted from his apt due to hoarding and roaches literally diving in a dumpster to find more "treasures."

Chicago Marathon pics

The Rhino Diet

So I noticed recently that a lot of my tweets contain some of the crazy things that Berto says or does...

11/21 Berto can smize better than Tyra
11/6 Berto wants to look like Daniel Day-Lewis in The Age of Innocence on our wedding day!!?
10/22 Berto wants to lick Padma's scar!!! EWWWW!!!
9/24 Berto just did the piggy rhyme on my toes, and he honestly thought the third little piggy had groceries instead of roast beef!
9/16 Berto actually suggested that any future son we'd have should wear a weighted helmet as baby to ensure a strong neck + athletic aptitude!!!!
9/13 Berto wants a reality show about finding the best teacher - there would be all kinds of classroom challenges and teach-offs!

Some of the more interesting things I've noticed after living with Berto for almost 2 years, however, is the random ways that he puts food together. He blames it on growing up poor. But, he still does it even though we are clearly living comfortably. I mean, I even shop at Jewel pretty regularly rather than strictly Aldi. Some examples of his crazy eating habits:

Cereal of any kind is mixed: It's almost like the same fascination I used to have with slushy machines, where I always wanted to mix all the flavors together to see what would happen. What happened was a brown-colored, nasty tasting slushy. That's what Berto's mixtures are, although he loves them. Coco Rice mixed with Fruity Rice mixed with Honey Puffs and Granola?

Bread goes with anything: This sounds harmless enough. A piece of bread and butter can certainly compliment any meal, right? But Berto eats plain, 99cent, play dough texture, "lily-white" (as my mom always used to call it) bread with everything; mostaccoli, lasagna, chili, rice, vegetables, tuna. And as you've probably guessed, this is not a simple side of bread and butter. The bread works as a tortilla, scooping up anything that can be made into a make-shift taco, or worse, palming the bread and capturing bites of food off the plate similar to the way I would hold a kleenex to capture a spider. Perhaps this was a solution to not enough clean silverware for every meal in a financially strained family of 7? It's rather barbaric the way he conquers the food from plate to mouth with only his hand. The most infamous was Berto wrapping bread around a piece of string cheese like a hot dog, even squirting ketchup on it!

Ketchup can go on anything: Again, I like ketchup a lot. I even eat it on potato chips which some have thought was weird. But again, string cheese, bread, and ketchup? Ketchup on pizza, isn't it already tomato-ey enough? Ketchup on a turkey sandwich? Perhaps ketchup was the only condiment available growing up, but that's not the case now. Why continue this madness?

I actually thought about setting up a twitter feed strictly for the gross-factor of some of the things he eats, similar to @shitmydadsays. No progress on that yet.