Seriously - FOUR Z's?

[phillpride]

Four zees.JPG
Give me a break!!

[bwt1213]

I fail to see the problem. I see a lot of scoring opportunities, though, and a lot of points available. Perhaps if there were fifteen Zs I might have a problem, but I think such a board would never be presented.

[pdiddp]

Four Z's can be a challenge alright but a good challenge. I had a board once that had three Q's and no U's, only found two words with a Q on that one! Qadi and Qaid

[floppers]

I would have preferred that if it had an "L' and an "E" adjacent to twin "Z"...some days too many Z's can be triggering, particularly if you need to catch some zzzzz's..

(I'm quite taken by pdiddp's avatar thingy...it's cool, and kinda is an animated view of my week...I've been helping a friend move house...turns out she is a hoarder...unless you think having 15 similar kitchen graters (and we are talking tip of the iceberg..there are many more items that seem to have been breeding in her closets) is necessary, reasonable, or not odd).

[2cute]

Ooo, I'd like to try that puzzle. I've also had pdiddp 3 Qs & no U to pair w/it.

Floppers, is your friend just disorganized & didn't realize that he/she had so many graters (you know couldn't find one, so went out & bought another and so on ... )?

[floppers]

hmmm, well...that is just her personal stuff...she has maybe 30 handbags and 30 pairs of shoes...12 stripey tshirts, 11 similar frypans, 10 bluetooth speakers, 9 different comforters, 8 stick type mixers, 7 wooden chopping boards, 6 televisions, 5 iiiice cube makerssssss, 4 kettle bbq's, 3 toilet brushes, 2 adult sons, and a cockatoo feeder in a pine tree. She just has a lot of things.

Then she has her online second hand items selling items....

[bwt1213]

Hoarders always have a reason for everything, too. It was a really good price. I always liked that, You can never have too much. I forgot I had one of those (everyone has a time when they forgot something like that). It's an illness; everyone has an illness and mine is pretty harmless. It goes on for quite a while, until someone sets them straight by telling them straight up that they are SICK and need treatment, and that everyone who sees them is laughing at them and their stupid "reasons". Thing is, a hoarder who is far enough gone will reject reality, reject logic, reject help, and protest being sent to a place where they will get help involuntarily. They like being hoarders. They they they're normal.

[bwt1213]

I meant to say "They THINK they're normal."

[mdyak]

Hoarders always have a reason for everything, too. It was a really good price. I always liked that, You can never have too much. I forgot I had one of those (everyone has a time when they forgot something like that). It's an illness; everyone has an illness and mine is pretty harmless. It goes on for quite a while, until someone sets them straight by telling them straight up that they are SICK and need treatment, and that everyone who sees them is laughing at them and their stupid "reasons". Thing is, a hoarder who is far enough gone will reject reality, reject logic, reject help, and protest being sent to a place where they will get help involuntarily. They like being hoarders. They they they're normal.

Wow! Doesn't it feel great to spin out on someone else's problem that you don't happen to have! We are all suffering in one way or another, so be kind... or at least zoom out and look at western civilization. Bunch of hoarders, if you ask me. And the solution? Throwaway culture. That way nobody sees how much of the planet's resources we've used up. It's a complicated world and tough to know just what is right, but let's all be gentle while we're muddling through.

[bwt1213]

One of my uncles had that problem. He died unexpectedly. The house looked like a bargain room at a thrift store -- room after room with racks, all filled with clothes he'd never worn. There were dozens of coats, hundreds of shirts, boots and shoes beyond counting. Name it, and he had not just duplicates, but scores of them. Don't be so quick to say "no one has that problem". I'll bet someone DOES. Now think what that money spend COULD have done. The homeless it could have fed. The vaccinations it could have funded. The books it could have bought. I'm not concerned with making someone feel bad. I'm concerned with making others feel good. If you have too much money, don't spend it on yourself. Spend it on someone who needs a hand, and there are billions of such people. That's what bothers me about hoarding. Sometimes, being gentle is not being kind.

[mdyak]

Don't be so quick to say "no one has that problem".

I actually said "a problem that you don't happen to have." So much easier to think about others' bad habits than our own and to be righteous about it. I'm guessing when your uncle died, relatives saw to it that all his stuff went some place where it could be used... took a while to get there, but it made it. Meanwhile studies show that confronting hoarders does not help them change. Judgment and confrontation give a sense of satisfaction to the judger and confronter, but rarely produce any lasting change. Kindness, curiosity, openness, truly wanting to understand, all have proven track records in shifting stubborn realities. Try it... you might like it.

[2cute]

I come from a family of people who can't throw anything away. My father keep tons of paper & spent his life organizing it into binders and folders. Thats how he enjoyed his time. My mother thinks everything can be fixed & maybe so, but we don't know that skilled person. So instead of me trashing it, I store it in the attic. My uncle same thing, when he passed away it was me who had to go through this gigantic box of all kinds of items he never touched (including never opened holiday cards). They were dirty & dusty. Every couple hours I had to go outside just to breathe fresh air as I felt ill going through that box. The nurses @ his facility said he'd never let anyone touch that box. I guess those were his treasures. All of my father's siblings same thing, they kept things as a comfort to their lives. My grandmother too.

My point is that this is a mental condition & guess what? Yep, I have it too. No, I'm not as bad as them as I am aware of it. I'm really careful about what I buy. I don't accept 'free' things as I know it'll be hard for me to rid myself of it. I definitely need to own less stuff & I throw away something everyday, because I don't want to be a hoarder who can't part with these things that suffocate my life. Sometimes I watch that show (Hoarders Buried Alive), & yell @ the screen 'Get rid of it' and then after just one episode, I get up & get rid of something.

I knew a man once who owned pretty much nothing. It was amazing. I helped him move twice & we did it in an afternoon, both times. He didn't need much. He chose to live lean. He was the opposite of me & so many other people. He felt the more you own, the less free is your life. He was right. I don't think I'll ever be him, but I'll never forget how little he valued things. It was certainly a different perspective on the world.

[floppers]

The move is complete now, and my friend has been working hard at "rationalising" by...yep!! donating a lot of things to local charity stores (they give her 20 per cent off when she buys more things, but she is being a bit more practical about: what she needs, what she can sell, and where she can store it...it's a small step, but it is progress). She is getting some "psychological salary" from making donations, so that's good too.

We have had long conversations about why she feels the need to have so much stuff, and from what I can work out, it's like a "safety net"/security blanket type of thing. She had quite an unusual childhood, and there was a lot of "making do", and she was never allowed to leave the table until her meal was totally finished. That she is now securely employed as a theatre nurse, that she has successfully raised two young men, and can pay her own way - not just the basics, but for things that she wants and likes - does not seem to relieve her of the need to have that security, which at the same time causes her anxiety (moving house was quite confronting for her, because I think she had been able to make herself blind to a lot of it).

I am the opposite of a hoarder, so I was probably the best person to help her create some order, and get her through it...I was just venting a little here, because I found it fairly stressful, lucky for me, I have wordtwist therapy for the things I can't process any other way!

[Naboka]

The move is complete now, and my friend has been working hard at "rationalising" by...yep!! donating a lot of things to local charity stores (they give her 20 per cent off when she buys more things, but she is being a bit more practical about: what she needs, what she can sell, and where she can store it...it's a small step, but it is progress). She is getting some "psychological salary" from making donations, so that's good too.

We have had long conversations about why she feels the need to have so much stuff, and from what I can work out, it's like a "safety net"/security blanket type of thing. She had quite an unusual childhood, and there was a lot of "making do", and she was never allowed to leave the table until her meal was totally finished. That she is now securely employed as a theatre nurse, that she has successfully raised two young men, and can pay her own way - not just the basics, but for things that she wants and likes - does not seem to relieve her of the need to have that security, which at the same time causes her anxiety (moving house was quite confronting for her, because I think she had been able to make herself blind to a lot of it).

I am the opposite of a hoarder, so I was probably the best person to help her create some order, and get her through it...I was just venting a little here, because I found it fairly stressful, lucky for me, I have wordtwist therapy for the things I can't process any other way!

Venting.

Sometimes a useful thing. You and my wife could share stories.

Her husband is a bit of a hoarder. He has over 3,000 colored pencils from Caran D'ache, Derwent, Faber Castell, Prisma Color.

Last year he bought the Caran D'ache Museum Aquarelle wooden boxed special edition and found the pencils so beautiful he couldn't bring himself to use them. His solution? Buy another set of them. Which was also too beautiful to use. So he bought the set again in the normal tin set and left the special edition box sets to gather dust amongst the many other special edition wooden boxed sets stacked on his shelves.

Did he learn?

As soon as Derwent came out with their full lightfast line, he bought the special edition boxed set, found it too beautiful to use, etc. And repeated the process.

Not to mention the papers, canvases, paints, brushes, inks, blah, blah. He has almost 200 notebooks on the shelves in his art studio. Moleskine, Leuchtturm, Shinola. Alls sizes and colors. Most will never see pen or pencil.

She has him working in the garage now, trying to clean out the seemingly endless tools he's accumulated "just in case he needs it." Seventeen hand saws, (which, except for a couple of specialized Japanese woodworking saws are completely irrelevant in the battery operated tool age) are ready to go to the building charity store. Hammers, pliers, squares, levels, etc.

He also had a drawer filled with Felco and Japanese garden shears of every sort. She convinced him to give most of them to the kids and neighbors. Her argument, "you only have two hands and only one of them uses the shears." His argument, "they're so beautiful. Look at the precision, the craftsmanship."

My wife's best friend is also an artist hoarder which absorbed my wife's time for over a week sorting, weeding, getting her moved to California. What in the world is wrong with that woman I married? She needs to find people who are less needy.

[2cute]

Venting.

Sometimes a useful thing. You and my wife could share stories.

Her husband is a bit of a hoarder. He has over 3,000 colored pencils from Caran D'ache, Derwent, Faber Castell, Prisma Color.

Last year he bought the Caran D'ache Museum Aquarelle wooden boxed special edition and found the pencils so beautiful he couldn't bring himself to use them. His solution? Buy another set of them. Which was also too beautiful to use. So he bought the set again in the normal tin set and left the special edition box sets to gather dust amongst the many other special edition wooden boxed sets stacked on his shelves.

Did he learn?

As soon as Derwent came out with their full lightfast line, he bought the special edition boxed set, found it too beautiful to use, etc. And repeated the process.

Not to mention the papers, canvases, paints, brushes, inks, blah, blah. He has almost 200 notebooks on the shelves in his art studio. Moleskine, Leuchtturm, Shinola. Alls sizes and colors. Most will never see pen or pencil.

She has him working in the garage now, trying to clean out the seemingly endless tools he's accumulated "just in case he needs it." Seventeen hand saws, (which, except for a couple of specialized Japanese woodworking saws are completely irrelevant in the battery operated tool age) are ready to go to the building charity store. Hammers, pliers, squares, levels, etc.

He also had a drawer filled with Felco and Japanese garden shears of every sort. She convinced him to give most of them to the kids and neighbors. Her argument, "you only have two hands and only one of them uses the shears." His argument, "they're so beautiful. Look at the precision, the craftsmanship."

My wife's best friend is also an artist hoarder which absorbed my wife's time for over a week sorting, weeding, getting her moved to California. What in the world is wrong with that woman I married? She needs to find people who are less needy.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I also like the way you expressed yourself in the third person. I too had too many art supplies. In fact I had too many interests which generated too many supplies in general. It was really hard to pare myself down to just 5 interests. I miss some of the things I gave up, but I own far less stuff now. Maybe one day I'll give up gaming & go back to Astronomy as I really liked looking @ the stars & learning about Cosmology. Course the main reason I chose to delete it, as no matter how much time I spent on it, it was never enough. There was always more to learn, always more objects to observe, always more equipment to buy to see farther, clearer, sharper. That was a hard one to give up, especially when there's some kind of event. While I got rid of so much associated with it, I still own my telescope, associated pens, red lights, a couple binders & notebooks of data. I just couldn't part w/it. While I haven't even looked @ this stuff for now over 10 years, I still can't seem to part w/it. Its hard to rid 'yourself' of things that if not now, once gave joy & stimulated the mind.

You are certainly not alone in your obsessions.