You can’t help but watch. I was a little addicted to Intervention for a while, but it just made me too sad. Then my talented friend Cici told us that she was working on a new show (in a hazmat suit half the time) called Hoarders. Cici does camera work and before I’d ever seen an episode, I caught a whiff of what she’d had to endure through her Facebook posts.

I missed many of the first episodes because I forgot to set my TIVO, and many a Monday night would get swallowed up by football and trying to get a good night’s sleep. Once I did see an episode, I was hooked. The show respectfully reveals how hoarding is a mental disease but how many, with help, can find their way out. It’s shocking but inspiring. I’ve cried watching it (but at least I know where my ONE box of Kleenex is).

So you can imagine my horror as I prepared to get some gift wrapping done this last weekend and had to face my own craft room. Yeah, the good news is I HAVE a craft room. The bad news is it looked like this:

Can you hear the tune from Jaws?

Camera pans left.

Camera pans right.

I can tell you how this happened. For starters, we cleaned out the guest room for my father’s visit and all the “extra” stuff got thrown into the craft room. Secondly, I used to actually craft, even professionally, before we moved and I got a full-time job, had to put in extra hours wracking my brain how to take off thirty extra pounds that appeared overnight, started to enjoy a city where there were actual things to do, hung out at Happy Hours neglecting our home and adult lives. You know, stuff like that.

But it’s better now. The whole room needs to be turned into a yoga/workout room some day, and I really have been giving away stuff. We used to have a bigger house. We had more walls. The walls were drywall instead of unforgiving plaster. I have a million excuses, I know. My name is Carbzilla, and I’m a hoarder.

But check this out:

2 and a half hours, some painter's tape, an extra trip to Lowe's, some marriage counseling and Voila!

I got all my books off my bedside table with Chris’ help (he’s not particularly a fan of West Elm so much anymore. Not so much)! It’s a baby step, I know. But a step all the same.

Hoarders airs Monday nights on A&E.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/st/gallery/images/340/tostribble3.jpg

Dates are taking over the blog world like Tribbles, and Medjools are probably the ones you know best.

Katie uses them in most of her fab bars/babies! (Katie, you know I love you even though you’re the only person I know who measures in grams.)

Heather uses them in her CD-wooing Heather Pie!

And Marissa just got a delivery from yours truly in exchange for some Food Saver bags (in Seattle we trade in the old style tradition, though we’ve moved up from rocks, feathers, and Dreamcatchers).

While visiting Mother of Carbzilla (MOC), I got to visit the date mecca of Indio, CA:

That's MOC. She's fancy like that.

Are you hearing angels singing yet?

Shields Date Gardens has been in business since 1924, and I could walk there from MOC’s house, if I were so inclined. They sell your common Medjool, of course, one of the larger and sweeter dates available, but it’s their other varieties that are so exciting (I don’t mean Medjool Schmedjool, but you can get those at Costco). Shields has hybridized their own dates to come up with Blonde and Brunette varieties, and carry lesser known varieties such as Barhi (super soft and sweet), Khadrawi (soft and dark), Thoory (“bread dates”), Honey (what do you think those taste like?), Halawi (rich with a thicker flesh), Zahidi (less sweet), and Abbada (a rich-flavored black date).

Not only are they super generous with samples, but they’ll also show you a movie about the romance and sex life of the date! (Come back! You don’t need to book your plane tickets right now! Though I can get you a cheap place to stay *cough* MOC’s house *cough*).

As if that weren’t enough, Shields is also pretty famous for their date shakes:

Talk about a steal of a deal!

I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never had one! Can you believe it? I’ve been visiting the desert since before I could walk and have never had a date shake! Crazy! But with lactose-intolerance and reactive hypoglycemia (Oy), it’s probably just as well. (That reminds me that EVERYWHERE I went with my mom on this trip I overheard people discussing their health and what hurt and who’d just passed and who had what disease, etc. My Reiki lady would say they should discuss their good health more and the bad stuff less….but I digress).

So, yeah, I’m a shake virgin.

But it’s not like I didn’t drop some dough:

So I’m a date pusher, an enabler if you will (except to HEABs who listened to Nancy Reagan and just said No). I know these are going to end up in some yummy creations. What they ended up in on this visit was raw pudding which my mom thought was vile. Even I had to admit it was better with prunes. Whatcha gonna do? There’s not exactly a world-class prune store down the street from my mom’s house.

So it’s Saturday and my big plans are to get my eyelashes dyed and maybe start addressing Christmas cards if I’m not blinded at the salon.

For your weekend amusement, I offer up the PET POST (Dunh dunh-uh Dunh…trumpets sound…):

Who dat?

You think kids destroy furniture! Just take a look at the right arm of Cady’s couch (yes, it was “the loveseat in the living room” until the dog made it her own over the last three years). Apparently, she also had fort building in mind just as soon as she makes her way out of the blanket.

Sometimes I just look up from reading a magazine (sitting in the chair not occupied by a cat) to find her in such poses as this. She kills me every time with her creativity and blanket-hiding prowess.

More craziness, as expected.

She had her treat with her under the blanket. Was probably hiding it from the cats. Mia’s been known to eat dog food right out of Cady’s bowl. But even a dog gets tired:

Now imagine her moaning at me.

Normally when the camera makes its little whirring noise, she lifts her head but this morning she just laid there and moaned at me, sorta like me and Chris after Thanksgiving dinner. We could have played the Moaning Game for quite some time, but I’m kinda busy these days!

We have one set of stairs in our house, and you’re lucky if you get to navigate them without animal interference. You will see that Mia is right paw dominant (please make a note), and she’s the queen of swatting stuff around the house and paffing (that’s the technical term) anyone who walks by her. She actually keeps herself busy, unlike this guy:

I see you.

Sometimes I’ll wake up in the morning, look over, and there he is with this expression on his face. I never know how long he’s been staring or what he’s actually been plotting. Knowing Derby, it’s nothing. He’s just a pretty face with slow creaky cogs turning inside that head of his.

His secondary position is on the heated bathroom floor across the heat vent so you have to tread lightly when getting in the shower.

So that’s who we’ll be hanging out with this weekend. What are you up to? Tomorrow I vow to go to spin class. You heard it here!

It was a great Thanksgiving. I have to say, as much as I love our big family Thanksgivings, it was really nice to have a peaceful quiet evening. We really enjoyed the stress-less silence.

But let’s start at the beginning. After my morning yoga class, I came back to Cranberry Sauce oat bran:

Yummers!

Last year’s cranberry crack sauce came from our favorite market, Central Market. It was so good I could not stop eating it. This year’s sauce came from PCC, and it was good but not my favorite. Yes, it probably had less sugar, but it was a little too orangey for me. I’m just not a fan of a lot of orange mixing it up with my cranberries, you dig? Don’t get me wrong – cranberry sauce oat bran is still going to be one of my oat bran highlights of ’09!

Um, lunch was a sampling of mashed potatoes and stuffing as we cooked them. This is how much mashed potatoes Chris made for the two of us:

I think the whole dish weighed about 14 lbs.

That is one HUMONGOUS Corningware dish of mashed potatoes! I don’t know who he thought was hiding under the couch needing to be fed, but he just cooks BIG like that. I haven’t eaten a whole white potato all year, but he didn’t let that curtail his mad mashed potato making skillz. For the record, he does make excellent mp’s, but they’re just not AS good when they’re made low-butter with rice milk. Plus they’re just really not my thing anymore, if you know what I mean.

Dinner itself was excellent! Shrimp scampi and caesar salad (which had an awesome vegan dressing, but once topped with a sprinkling of Asiago was no longer vegan. Hey, that’s how we roll. We’re a work-in-progress).

I had a SodaStream sparkling water, and Chris had a red wine, which really doesn't go with seafood but we're adults and can make our own rules.

So there we were all pretty with our healthy Thanksgiving, appalling family members from coast-to-coast that we weren’t having Turkey (Chris just couldn’t resist telling people we were having shrimp instead, calling us out for the freaks that we are.), and then the second course went like this:

That's a small salad plate, in case you're wondering.

Fortunately, we had a little digesting time since we were in charge of some house bunnies while my co-worker was visiting her family.

Upon our return, I really outdid myself by digging into the star of the night (sorry, no pics), the Pumpkin Marscapone Bread Pudding from Costco. Let me just steal a quote from an online review that reads “Have been AMAZED at my recent find – a Pumpkin Marscapone Bread Pudding ($9.99 for 39 oz – a steal!) that you heat up in its own container. By far a gourmet dessert and with a smidgen of good vanilla ice cream, this will win raves from your guests.”

I couldn’t agree more. Oh. My. God.

I immediately shoved all remaining 34 oz. back into the freezer where it would be safe. I have arrived at a place of dignity where I will NOT be found hacking away at a frozen dessert to satisfy my sinister cravings. For the most part. On a good day. When I’m not on my period.

No, for reals. I was already trying to recover from the fact that I, Carbzilla, loser of ten lbs, had eaten stuffing (twice counting lunch), mashed potatoes, AND NOW bread pudding in the same day! The horror. And it will show up on the scale, friends. If not tomorrow, the next day. But Thanksgiving is behind us, and for breakfast this morning, I recovered with this:

That'd be your post-Carbstravaganza celery, spinach, pear, E3 Live Green Monster.

There, much prettier!

And what’s that shining in from the right – SUNSHINE!!! Just like I asked for yesterday! Hooray! We immediately planned a day trip to enjoy the sun. Here’s to the day after! Hope you all had a great one!