Knormal Joined: Nov 11,
2001
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/title-knormal.gif)
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Edit:
Pictures down in like 5 minutes Edit2: Restored, thanks
n0tqu1tesane
My mother is insane. Like, one of those
ladies you see on the local news insane. Since it's inevitably
going to come up I'll get out of the way that I am too, but at
least I take a full dose of my medication. I've been meaning
to make this thread for about the last year, but the longer I
waited the more interesting the situation became. Also, I'm
incredibly lazy. Case in point, these pictures are about three
weeks old. Anyway, lets take a tour of our house.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house01.jpg) Here's the house from the outside. Looks a bit
overgrown, but fairly normal. Come inside, won't
you?
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house02.jpg) Okay, about here's where things start to look a
little off.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house03.jpg) Behind the door is one of many piles of boxes. At
the bottom of that pile is a chair that used to be for sitting
down to put on shoes, now it's just structual support. Note
that you can't actually open the door all the way anymore, it
hits that box with the Target bag on it about 2/3s of the
way.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house04.jpg) A look into the living room. There's no way to
get over to any of that stuff on the far wall, so when that
light bulb burns out we're screwed. That wood on top of that
birdcage is so my mom doesn't have to spend money on sticks
for the birds. And yes that first cage is empty. But we'll
visit the birds later.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house05.jpg) Have a seat on the couch- Oh, there seems to be a
few things on it, sorry. That Christmas stuff in the forground
is from at least last year.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house06.jpg) A look out into the living room. My mom likes to
buy old glass crap, and also other old crap that's not made of
glass, off of eBay. In fact most of the stuff you can see is
from eBay. That chair in front of the desk and most of the
drawers can't be pulled out, as they are blocked by
boxes.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house07.jpg) The couch, a.k.a. one of only three places to sit
down outside of my room. The footstool is always on the couch,
since there's no room for it elsewhere. All those books on the
ground are old boring coffee table books from eBay. You've
probably noticed the wall of boxes in the background. This was
built specifically to prevent people from being able to tell
if the kitchen light was on, enabling my mom to hide out from
anyone who might stop by. No, I don't know what's in any of
the boxes.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house08.jpg) The twenty-year old TV and the ten-year old VCR.
The picture tube on the TV is dying, and the image is dark,
blurry, and tinted. That pile of US Mail boxes with the
"fragile" box on top can be pivoted to the left to allow a
wider viewing arc. You can see some of my 3rd-grade artwork on
display there above the TV.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house09.jpg) The birds. My mom has five parakeets, and is
looking for a sixth. Only the first two cages have birds in
them. The third was bought about a year ago and was never set
up. Notice that even the inside of the bird cages are
crowded.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house10.jpg) A view behind the wall of boxes, at what used to
be the coffee table. You usually can't see back here, I had to
hold the camera at arm's length around the edge. As you can
see, she saves empty birdseed containers.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house11.jpg) The other side of the living room. My mom was big
into glass paperweights for a while, though usually bottles
and dishes are here thing. You see the disruption in the layer
of dust on the chair there? That's where she fell a while ago
when trying to climb over stuff to open the window just off
the left of the picture. There's also at least two broken
bottles back there somewhere that have fallen but there's no
way to get back there to clean them up. I'm assured all this
stuff in quite valuable, by the way.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house12.jpg) A full view of that wall. You can see the
dangerous window here. Those plants on top of the bookshelf
died because there was to way to water them. They've been
sitting there decomposing for a few years now.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house13.jpg) Under the tables is full too. In the front are a
bunch of old Popular Sciences she bought off eBay a while ago.
The rest of the floor space is filled with more
dishes.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house14.jpg) The other bookshelves. More books, more bottles,
and assorted small toys. Most of these books are outdated old
college textbooks from the 70's.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house15.jpg) The hallway to my mom's bedroom and the bathroom.
The two opposing doors are closets that you can't get to
without spending half an hour moving all those boxes. Behind
that chair and flag is the water heater. Hopefully we'll never
need to get to it.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house16.jpg) And here's my mom's bedroom. You were probably
expecting a bed or something. It's there, somewhere underneath
all those boxes. My mom decided storing this stuff is more
important that having a place to sleep. So where does my mom
sleep? Remember that 2/3rds of a couch back in the living
room? Yep, every night. No I don't know what's in any of these
boxes either. Most of them are from eBay and have never been
opened, just put straight on the pile.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house17.jpg) The view from the other door of the
bathroom.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house18.jpg) A view from the back of the room, down that
little path visible two pictures up.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house19.jpg) My mom's shirt pile. There's no accessable
drawers in the room, so this is where she keeps her clothes.
Now that I think about it, I don't know where she keeps the
rest of her clothes, since that's just shirts. I'm guessing
they're in a box somewhere.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house20.jpg) The bathroom. It's only remarkable in that it's
the widest open space outside of my room. It's the only place
you could actually stick your arms out and spin around. You
know, if you wanted to.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house21.jpg) Back out of the hallway, a shot back towards the
front door. That's an old mink hat sticking on the left there,
not a random wild animal.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house22.jpg) Into the kitchen. Underneath the center pile is
the dining room table, and underneath the dining room table is
more boxes. A bunch of the food in here is several years old,
and from a dollar store, but my mom still won't throw it
away.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house23.jpg) The magnet collection. At least this is kind of
normal, in things to collect. I probably should have taken a
picture of the inside of the refridgerator, but you can
imagine it. It looks just like the rest of the house, but with
food.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house24.jpg) The other side of the pile. That one box is full
of cereal, all of it expired except the Frankenberry. In fact,
everything in that front box is expired too. I don't eat any
of this expired stuff by the way, it's all hers.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house25.jpg) The sliding glass door is right to the left
there, about two-thirds blocked by boxes. The boxes are placed
specifically to allow just enough room to let the curtains
open and close. That chair in front of the computer is the
second of three places to sit.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house26.jpg) My mom's computer. From here she buys all this
shit. The tower's the current computer, there's just nowhere
else to put the desktop. That TV's a little black and white
one that cost $20 on clearance at Target. It broke after about
a month, and only the sound works. It's still there though.
Those buttplug looking things on the monitor are old glass
insulators they used to use on telegraph and telephone lines.
I'm assured they also are quite valuable.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house27.jpg) Under the table is just enough room for her feet.
I guess she has to move that boxlid every time she sits down,
I don't know.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house28.jpg) The calendar wall. You might have noticed a bunch
of calendars all around the house. Early this year they put a
calendar store in the factory outlets by our house, selling
out all the old current calendars. My mom bought several
hundred of them, because they were cheap. Some went up, a few
were given out as gifts, a bunch are still around in boxes
somewhere. No, she won't throw them away when the year's over.
Also notice they're all on different months.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house29.jpg) A sink with a bunch of crap on it. There's cups
full of hotel pens, old postcards, a bowl full of old fortune
cookie papers, and I don't know what else. I see some corn
holders in there. That yellow bucket on the end has candy from
two Easters ago.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house30.jpg) Down there's my mom's "desk". Most of those boxes
on the right are filled with old newspapers and magazines.
Fortunatly we don't get any newspapers or magazines anymore,
so that collection's stagnant.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house31.jpg) The third place to sit. That's all old mail on
the left. She also stole my SA mug and filled it with pens.
Not like I drink anything from mugs anyway I guess. On
somewhat of a tangent, we live in Folsom, CA, home of the
famous Folsom Prison. One of the perks of living in a prison
city is we don't have to seperate out recycleables from our
garbage. We just throw everything away, and they drive it up
to the Prison and make the prisoners dig through it. As a
result of this, my mom will never throw anything away with her
name on it, since she's convinced one of the prisoners will
steal her identity. I try to explain to her that not only are
the odds of someone choosing her identity to steal are slim on
their own, if someone is going to try to steal an identity
they're probably not going to pick someone in the lower middle
class. Still, she insists on cutting up everything, down to
the address tags on every piece of mail we get. So most of
those pieces of paper there are old pieces of junk mail she
won't throw away. She originally used to go through and cut it
up every couple of weeks, but now I think we have a few years
built up.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house32.jpg) The dishwasher. That jack-o-lantern bucket's a
recent addition, but I don't expect it to be going anywhere
anytime soon. Note the phone has a cord, and the answering
machine uses tapes.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house33.jpg) This is the washer/dryer nook. Whenever she does
wash she has to spend about an hour disassembling this pile
and moving it to the middle of the hallway. She won't let me
do my own wash, because she's convinced I'm going to break
this stuff in the process of setting it five feet to the
left.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house34.jpg) Photographic proof of a washer/dryer. I don't
know what that thing on the right is. I think it's a roll-up
blanket or something.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house35.jpg) Turning around from the hallway is the bubblewrap
pile. This is all taken from incoming eBay packages. She keeps
it for packing in the event she ever actually gets rid of
anything. She never does. That Scooby-Doo's again from at
least last Christmas. That's a Lego Darth Vader fighting a
Lego Obi-wan Kenobi on the back of Lego dinosaurs in the
middle there. That part's pretty cool. That plastic thing
above the gay plush lizard is an old candy tray mom's keeping
because she thinks it looks pretty.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house36.jpg) Okay, before we head into my room let me explain
a few things. I moved back down here from Seattle a few years
ago to go to college. It was decided I would get the master
bedroom, since it had cable and phone lines. My mom, who only
has the one TV and never talked on the phone in her room
anyway, moved into the other bedroom. You saw what happened
there. Right before I moved down she assured me the bedroom
was cleared out. So imagine my surpise when I get down here
only to find there were still three dressers in the room,
still full of her clothes. Not only that, but there was no
room in the garage to put any of my boxes, so everything I
owned had to go into this one room. She said she'd clear out
some room in the garage, but as you can guess that didn't
happen...
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house37.jpg) So here's my room. That pile of boxes right in
front of the door is some of her stuff that has been creeping
in. That bubble wrap above it is covering the "displayed" part
of my Transformer collection, since anything that's not
covered gets coated with a thick layer of dust in a few weeks.
The bed was hers, but would have been too much trouble to
move. That thing I agreed to have left in the
room.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house38.jpg) More of my room. Most of my boxes are all full of
old schoolwork, childhood toys, and electronics that in a
normal house would be in the garage, but not here. I get to
live with them every day. Also I have a large fuzzy mushroom
with a pillow on top.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house39.jpg) This is something you might have seen in some
other parts of the house but it's most visible here. In
addition to closing the curtains, my mom covers the small
windows with cardboard to "keep the heat in/out", depending on
season. I'm not sure how that's supposed to create any
measureable affect on the total temperature, but she got mad
whenever I took them down so now I just live with
them.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house40.jpg) The other side of my room, leading to the
bathroom.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house41.jpg) The closets are still full of her old clothes,
since I don't need closet space. The thing is they're both
just as full as this all the way down their length, and I'm
pretty sure she doesn't fit in most of these clothes anymore.
A lot of these clothes are from the 70's and 80's.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house42.jpg) My bathroom. The exercise bike showed up while I
was gone one summer, then the vacuum a little later. The bike
is useful as a clothes rack. Time for a bathroom story. One
time I ran out of toothpaste or floss or something, so I
opened the medicine cabinet looking for more. Instead, I found
the bathroom cabinet full of my old prescription bottles. I
then realized I'd never thrown a prescription bottle away, I'd
get new ones, and the old ones had just disappeared. I'd never
thought about it. I confronted my mom, and she told me she was
keeping hers too, and was saving them to cut the labels off so
the prisoners wouldn't know what medications we were on. I
told her that was crazy, and that I was going to throw mine
away. A few days later I went to do that, only to find they
were all gone. Mom took them all, and hid them in a box
somewhere so I couldn't throw them away. They were out of my
way, so I didn't pursue it any further. I make sure to throw
my old bottles away now though.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house43.jpg) The master bathroom's shower. Since the door when
opened would drip onto carpet, my mom decided not to use this
shower. So she did the only natural thing and filled it with
boxes. We use the shower/bath in the other
bathroom.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house44.jpg) On the way back out of my bedroom, just a quick
look at a small fraction of the crappy books gotten from
eBay.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house45.jpg) Okay, into the backyard. A house down the street
was having a moving sale, and gave my mom that table for free
because they didn't want to move it. It's solid oak, and two
people can barely lift it. She put it there to keep it out of
the rain, which is also why there's a piece of cardboard on
top. It didn't work, and now it's spliting. You can see some
more saved birdseed jars on it there.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house46.jpg) The backyard. My mom didn't have it landscaped to
save money, and now it grows wild. Normally it's all brown,
but there was rain a few days ago. That clump in the middle is
the compost pile, and the stuff off to the right is the
remains of her garden. Those are old fence boards proping up
tomato baskets, if you're wondering. She also used old fence
boards to surround the strawberry patch, for some
reason.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house47.jpg) This is some of the neighbor's groundcover she's
letting grow into the yard. I don't know why. In the summer
it's full of bees.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house48.jpg) There's pallets along the back of the house,
because in winter that part turns into a mud pit.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house49.jpg) The garage. This thing has looked pretty much the
same for the last couple of years, since there's no room for
anything to be added to it.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house50.jpg) More of the garage stuff. That used to be a path
to the back, but now it's too narrow to fit
through.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house51.jpg) Chairs in the rafters.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/house52.jpg) Behind our garage is part of a streetlamp post
stolen from a demolition site. It was going to be a support
for the gate across our driveway, but proved to be unsuitable.
Now we don't know how to get rid of it. That bush back there
is some kind of giant weed, by the way. There's a couple of
them in the yard.
So that's my mom's house. As for why
I'm still living here, I'm a full time student who's too lazy
to move. I'm getting pretty close to moving in with my grandma
though, since these boxes keep creeping further and further
into my room. And since it was on the same card as all of
those house pictures, here's a picture of a sculpture at my
campus that looks like a butt.
![](20040303The Awful Forums - My mother is insane (~5M of photos)_files/butt_sculpture.jpg)
I will now open the floor to questions.
Knormal fucked
around with this message at Dec 15, 2003 around
09:07 |