79th Zilker Kite Festival

The day was gorgeous, sunny and windy. We met up with some friends and ate sandwiches in the park while surrounded by hundreds of kites. There were kites like ships, and their sails actually caught the wind. There was a kite with a shining metallic tail. On the competition field were the giant kites that had huge strings, a squid and a puffer fish and a giant black bat kite. There were triangles, strange geometric kites, and homemade kites. There were some kites so high you could barely see them.

Our first kite, the biplane, did not have a lot of luck getting off the ground. I think we watched for a good hour, laughing uncontrollably, as the guys kept trying different ways to get it up. Eventually they gave up and bought a new kite, a striped triangular one. This kite went right up in the air. The plane kite, it seemed to be out for blood. Anytime S. threw the kite up, it seemed to dive bomb the most unwary person in the vicinity.

The park guys are going to have fun pulling all those kites out of trees on the edges of the field.

Afterwards, we were hungry, dusty and tired. Dinner at Magnolia further wiped us out, though there was some witty conversation. I want to name my next cat Permutation Cat, or Iteration Cat. These are good names. After dashing home to shower off the fine layer of dust, I finished my evening watching Snatch and episodes of Reno 911.

I've a slight sunburn from sitting out there for hours and my foolishness in forgetting to put on any sunscreen. It doesn't seem too bad this morning though.

in here we are cryptic, but amused.

Do I need a reason? I hope not.

[Poll #940769]

compulsive hoarding

It took ages to read two days worth of my friendslist this evening. But between kites and movies and training class I didn't have any time until tonight. Today I went to an APS training hosted by a woman who works with the Harris County hospital system. It was about compulsive hoarding, which falls in that nebulous region between obsessive compulsive and impulse control disorders. Verbatim from my class materials:

While there is no definition of compulsive hoarding in accepted diagnostic criteria (such as the current DSM), Frost and Hartl (1996) provide the following defining features:

* the acquisition of, and failure to discard, a large number of possessions that appear to be useless or of limited value

* living spaces sufficiently cluttered so as to preclude activities for which those spaces were designed

* significant distress or impairment in functioning caused by the hoarding

It was one of the most fascinating trainings I've attended so far. Our speaker has immense practical experience as a medical practioner directly involved with a unique task force in the Houston area. Because hoarding is so difficult to treat and has an almost 100% recidivism rate, one agency or person alone can't fix the situation. It takes the combined efforts of such groups as Adult Protective Services, mental health workers, animal control, the fire department, local government agencies such as Zoning, City Planning and Sanitation, therapists, the County Attorney's office, and others. The task force in Houston put together a multiyear study and obtaining a government grant to do their work. Our speaker estimated an 80% success rate in their work over the past few years. That is phenomenal.

Of course, in cities you have the advantages of easy access to many kinds of specialists. In rural areas, it is so much harder. I listened to an APS worker describe how no one would touch jurisdiction over a property to handle the removal of dozens of inbred and feral cats from a client's place. There's no mental health services out there. There's not even a nearby rescue group or SPCA.

Anyhow, I learned a lot about the types of behaviors that drive compulsive hoarding. It was very interesting stuff, and not even the fire alarm going off in the middle of the afternoon could dampen my enthusiasm. (False alarm, eventually.) Modern society's extremely materialistic values may indeed be a rampaging, destructive force but there are also deeply personal social and psychological issues at play. It made me examine my own attitudes about purchasing things and saving things this afternoon as well. We discussed the difference between people who are just messy and have clutter, people who collect something valuable in some way, and the true compulsive hoarder.

Animal hoarding seems to be quite a different ball game, even as it falls under the same general umbrella. What is especially sad about animal hoarders are the scope of their delusions. It's mind boggling to see someone standing there insisting everything is fine when there are forty inbred cats runing around and the feces are piled five inches deep across the floor. One automatically assumes anyone living that way must be mentally incompetant, but this is not always the case. It is a strange, sad thing. We watched a video produced by the Humane Society that was pretty horrifying.

It is a sad, strange, scary world out there. We hear so much of the bad, that it starts to be overwhelming at times. I have to force myself to find things that are good in my daily world to shake that oppresive feeling. Even if it is just watching people fly kites with their kids on a Sunday afternoon, or puppies, or older couples in the line at Luby's having lunch.