Speechless in Shannon

I have some numbers for you
75 x 2000 = 150,000
Remember that number and here's another:
3000
And:
50


Second set of numbers
100
and
8

And one last number
10,000

Now to set the stage for the story.
I had gone to work, just like any other day, sat in my office most of the morning working on bulletins, powerpoints, spreadsheets, etc. all very normal Wednesday activities. Around 11 I started to think about lunch. Around 11:30 I decided I wanted pizza from Casey's, and around noon I got my pizza and went home. I walked in the door all ready for lunch - watch some sportscenter, talk with Kay, etc. Kay is watching a show on the DIY network called "Clean House" which (ironically enough) is about people cleaning up (or out) houses, mostly houses that are lived in by hoarders. Most of my readers will have some type of knowledge about hoarding - some of you may even have stayed in a hoarders house. As Kay and I were eating we began chatting about the show, what we thought of the people, the state of the house, and gradually the talk shifted to other shows that had been watched. Which is when she told me about Oprah yesterday.
(Quick note of reassurance: I don't really have much to do with Oprah, any person as rich as she is doesn't really know how to relate to me - although she does pick good books).
Oprah was/is also doing shows on hoarders (apparently its going to become the new add/adhd - all it needs is its own designer drug) and she had on one of the grossest, most disgusting, shameful exhibitions of American wastefulness I have ever seen.

Remember those numbers? Take a minute and go look at them

Ready?
Here's the explanation
75 TONS of garbage. Thats 150,000 lbs of junk
In a 3000 sq ft house (thats about 50 lbs of garbage per sq foot)
Thats just what was thrown out.

The cleanup operation took 100 people 8 weeks

Oh, that last number - the 10,000?
That was the size of the warehouse in sq ft that they rented to hold the garage sale to get rid of stuff. Needless to say, it was completely filled.

The lady hadn't had any visitors in 12 years. She hadn't seen the oldest son and his family in 5 years. And it took the youngest son and his sister to call Oprah in for help.
Lest you take the cheap way out and blame it on being a redneck - the lady and her husband are very nice middle class people, their house is in an older looking suburb, it has an inground swimming pool, three car garage and is generally a fairly nice house.
FILLED WITH 75 TONS OF GARBAGE!!!!!

There's so much stuff in the house its taking Oprah two days to do a show on it.
Tonight, after church, I'm watching Oprah.

UPDATE: They had a garage sale for all of the saleable items left in this house (actually a lot of this was still reasonable - it had never been touched - it was underneath 75 tons of garbage), they mad $13,000 dollars on a garage sale. This does not count the 3 semi trailer loads of stuff that was donated to Goodwill the dumptruck loads of stuff that was thrown out or the still sizable quantity of stuff that was returned.