A "PACK RAT" -- except that's too "nice" of a term ...

As I look at my kitchen table I groan, it groans and we both want to vomit. (Oh, sorry for the vivid imagery there, but it fits the best.)

The table wants to get rid of everything that is burying it, hiding its beauty and weighing it down.

I just want to see my table, the whole thing, just once.

I look at this mess and wonder why my husband hasn't just tossed me and all my stuff out into the front yard. Well, I know. He really couldn't do it. He'd put his back out, probably have a heart attack and fall down and get lost in the stuff.

It would be easier for him to leave. With all the stuff here, it might actually take me a few days to notice that he was missing.

**HUGE SIGH**

His birthday was earlier this week and I had hoped to have dinner at the table with him that night. Didn't happen. We're in the habit of dinner in the den in front of a movie on DVD or some brainless tv program on dvd or he goes to use his computer while I keep typing sat mine and eat dinner.

However, we are taking his parents to lunch tomorrow. We're going to some place, not sure where, that is around here and not where they live. Which means, there is a 503 chance in 100 that they will want to come here to see the house before we take them back home. Hmmm ... gotta find the table. By tomorrow. By midnight tonight.

And yes, I am taking a break from cleaning off the table to type this because, as I was tossing newspapers into two piles -- trash and probably-mostly-trash-after-I-chop-out-that-one-article-that-I-could-file-away-for-future-reference-for-use-in-a-story -- I realized that if I was going to write this, I had to do it now. Another problem with being a pack rat is the brain is a untidy as everything else. Once I have a great idea, if I don't do something about it immediately (or an idea, like this one, that isn't so great, probably mediocre at best), it gets lost in the plethora of stuff and when found again (if ever) is so unrecognizable that it is instantly trash and I have to wonder why it was ever stashed away in the first place. (Now, how was that for a run-on sentence!!??))

Why am I even writing this? Why would a sane person admit to having such a drastically awful problem?

Two reasons.

1) Every 12-step program teaches one very simple fact -- the road to recovery begins with a confession -- "I have a problem." And I HAVE and HAVE and HAVE a problem ...

2) I want a different term for the disease. "Pack rat" and "Magpie" are just too cutesy for the extent of the problem. What is worse than a rat, though? Anyone have ideas? I want it to be so awful that it will demand attention and a cure.

HELP!