How Fare Thee? Two Lighthearted Conversations + A Fast Test To Determine Your Stress

May 20, 2025 / Ally Bean / 208 Comments

LAUGHING

A delightful former neighbor stays in touch. She moved across country and usually emails or texts, but one day she called me to talk.

Like old-timey friends.

In the process of catching up on who we each have stayed in touch with she asked me about, let’s call her, Martha.

While it’s been well over a decade since either heard from her directly, Martha is sometimes in the local news around here.

In fact I was able to explain to former neighbor that Martha, a state government employee, has been accused of failing to disclose a conflict of interest involving a corporate lobbyist. She has denied the accusations, but resigned from her job.

Upon hearing this my former neighbor shouted, “she didn’t do it.”

I asked, “how do you know?”

“Because there’s no way she’d do anything illegal.”

I persisted, “it’s been years since we talked with her, how can you be so sure? She may have changed. People do, you know.”

Former neighbor said, “because I sang with her in the church choir and no one in that group would ever do anything wrong.”

To which I replied sarcastically, “well there you go! As we all know singing your heart out for Jesus is a valid legal defense against criminal accusations.”

As if! 🙄

LOVING

I overheard this.

While this isn’t the first time I’ve written about a kid who got lost in the bottom of the ravine behind our house, this succinct little plea for help charmed me. Girlfriend was NOT happy and knew exactly who was to blame for her predicament.

Here’s what happened. I walked into our kitchen at the back of the house around 5:00 p.m. The windows were open and I immediately heard a LOUD kid voice [maybe age 5 or 6?] shouting from below.

“Find me,” the voice said.

I stepped outside onto the deck to see if I could see who was shouting.

“Find… Me…,” the voice commanded.

Squinting through the leafy tree branches I looked down into the ravine, but couldn’t see anyone. However I could hear a small person whose tone of voice didn’t suggest panic, just increasing irritation with the adult powers that be.

“FIND ME!”

I was about to shout back when I heard a dad say, “Katelyn? Is that you?”

“FIND ME, NOW!”

Picking up on the irritation in her voice I heard the dad start laughing as he asked, “where are you?”

Then in one of the best deadpan punchline deliveries ever our Miss Katelyn replied stating the obvious, “DOWN. HERE.”

She sighed loudly implying, I believe, that it took all her effort to not say *DUH* to this dimwitted dad person whose job it is to rescue her from predicaments like this one.

And with that her father, still laughing so loudly I could hear him, maneuvered down the side of the ravine cheerfully saying, “I’ll get ‘ya!”

And he did. 🥰

LEARNING

I stumbled over this Psychology Today How Stressed Are You? Test and decided to answer the 20 questions.

From my test results I learned that I’m at 24/100 and the average is 59/100. This means I’m “Not stressed” which came as a surprise to me. Not that I’m jonesing to be more filled with stress, mind you— just that I thought I’d rate a higher score.

I feel a bit like an underachiever.

However, I attribute my relaxed attitude to the fact that FOR ONCE our annual spring home maintenance that requires 5 scheduled visits from 4 companies has happened WITHOUT INCIDENT. This means that the landscape beds and the lawn sprinkler system and the gutters and the windows and the AC system have been mulched or activated or cleared or cleaned or serviced BEFORE Memorial Day.

A personal best! 😃

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

Do you know anyone who is currently in trouble with the law? Is or was that person part of a church choir?

Have you ever called out for someone to rescue you? If so, did someone rescue you?

Had or overheard any funny conversations lately?

If you took the test how stressed does it say you are? Does this jive with how you feel?

~ ~ • ~ ~

A Text Not Meant For Me, A Game Not Played By Me

March 18, 2025 / Ally Bean / 257 Comments

IT WAS AROUND THIS TIME 5 years ago when I lost touch with, let’s call her, Kathleen the Control Freak— a natural born queen bee, uptight and competitive.

The Covid-19 pandemic lockdown had just begun. I’d texted her to make sure she was doing okay and got a terse reply something to the effect of: “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

I responded with a polite “Just checking in” and left it at that.

During the next few months I tried a few more times to text her, our usual way of communicating, but got no reply.

Crickets make more noise.

Come December we didn’t receive a holiday card from Kathleen the Control Freak which confirmed I no longer existed in her small world which, truthfully, I was happy to not be part of anymore.

I’ve never been good in the role of a wannabe to a queen bee.

• • •

FAST FORWARD TO A FEW weeks ago when Kathleen the Control Freak texted me, including me in a group text to friends who play pickleball at her club. This seemed odd because: 1) her previous behavior over the last five years suggested I am persona non grata; and 2) I don’t play pickleball.

I believe I was accidentally included.

At this point, fun as it would have been to text a group reply about this queen bee’s error, I did not do that. Instead I watched in real time as everyone, a group of women who’d never give me the time of day, texted among themselves.

From this I observed that these women, who gushed and fawned over each other, waited dutifully for Kathleen the Control Freak to establish dominance by dictating where and when they’d be going to breakfast together the next morning after she finished her 8:00 a.m. pickleball game.

Queens gotta rule all the courts.

• • •

NOW AS YOU CAN IMAGINE this experience left me with a few things to consider.

• I wondered why Kathleen the Control Freak, a perfectionist along the lines of Martha Stewart, still has my phone number, presumably for some reason, in her exalted list of contacts.

I admit this seemed odd to me but also not worth dwelling on. Her number is no longer in my contacts and that’s what matters to me.

• I wondered why I’d ever considered Kathleen the Control Freak to be a friend. Was I wrong when I thought she was fun to be around? Or have we both changed over the years— she getting bossier, me getting mellower?

That’s the conclusion I’m sticking with because I see no need to overthink why someone ghosts you.

• But most importantly, and this is where the snark is, I wondered about whether I should be mischievous and show up to join the group for breakfast the next morning.

After all I knew the details of the plan to get together, didn’t I?

But I didn’t go. For one thing it’d have been an hour drive to get to their side of town and that seemed more bothersome & petty than worthwhile & victorious.

And for another thing despite contemplating this way to upset them, in reality I didn’t care about whatever the heck was going on with this group of grown-up mean girls.

Under the circumstances, would you?

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

Thinking about these last five years, has anyone ghosted you? Have you ghosted anyone? Details if you please.

Have you ever found yourself in a group text where you didn’t belong? If so, what did you do?

Who’s the most control freaky person you know in real life?

Do you play pickleball?

• • 🪴 • •

I’m Pleased To Announce That Miss Nettie Briggs Has Entered The Chat

March 4, 2025March 4, 2025 / Ally Bean / 217 Comments

Give attitude, get attention, right?

I like that saying, it explains many things.

I prefer, and I think you’d agree, that the attitude be positive spunk [aka signal] rather than negative junk [aka noise], BUT the result is the same: the attention is on you.

Not that giving attitude is anything new.

In fact back when the world was a more genteel place free from 24/7 news and social media, I’m sure people gave attitude— just in more subtle ways. They may have been irritated by events and other people, but seemingly they tolerated that irritation with more grace than today*.

Case in point is Miss Nettie Briggs. She is featured in the professional portrait seen at the top of this post. She is looking placid, mildly amused by what she is doing.

Or so it seems to me.

I found this photo mixed in among the boxes of family photos that I sorted last summer and wrote about in Confessions Of A Reluctant Family Historian: My Kingdom For A Shredder, my most popular post of 2024. [Go figure?]

I don’t know for sure who Miss Nettie Briggs was: my mother had written her name on the back of the photo so she knew who she was. But there’s no one left from any generation that’d be able to tell me Miss Nettie Briggs’s story.

However I have an inkling of who she might have been.

I remember my mother talking about a nurse who came to live with her family for a year, tasked with looking after my mother’s older sister who’d had abdominal surgery. Something that at the time was a dangerous procedure that required months of bedrest in order to heal.

Nettie lived with them and when not looking after her charge, who slept a lot, she read books to and played games with my mother and her younger sister.

Mom liked Miss Nettie Briggs, as I recall. Enough, I would guess, to keep a photo of Miss Nettie Briggs around in a ratty cardboard box full of dusty old family photos for me to find one day.

I adore Miss Nettie Briggs because I find her charming.

Thus it has come to be that Nettie’s photo is now framed and hanging on the wall in our study where I do my blogging, old-school style on a desktop computer.

Meaning that whenever I do anything related to blogging Nettie is looking over my shoulder, keeping my thoughts mostly civil, my sense of humor firmly intact, and my vibe jovial enough.

At least most days.

Questions of the Day

What’s your attitude today? Are you receiving the kind of attention you want?

Do you have any old family photos of somebody who is a mystery to you?

Do you have any old or new photos of people framed and hanging on your walls? Once upon a time that was frowned upon you know!

• 🤎 •

* Last month in various places online I, a kind-hearted person, was criticized for:

watching TV shows rather than reading books
suggesting that not all men are worthy of adoration
noting the demographics of people who got in my way
proposing that not all old things are worth saving
not obsessing constantly about The Donald and his First Buddy

A Chance Encounter In The Cereal Aisle, An Unexpected Act Of Probably Legal Kindness

February 18, 2025 / Ally Bean / 219 Comments

Something weird happened. Please allow me to explain.

A few weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon Zen-Den and I were shopping in Kroger. It was busy but not chaotic, for the most part shoppers were aware of each other. In fact the biggest annoyances were the extra temporary displays clogging the aisles.

Thus it was a slow process going up and down the aisles, but we weren’t in a hurry so we moseyed happily along, Z-D pushing the cart, me following behind him.

In the cereal aisle we came to a full stop when we encountered a couple in their 70s who were looking for one particular cereal. They’d abandoned their cart in the middle of the aisle and, with paper coupon in hand, were laser-focused on finding the right cereal on the shelf, wherever it might be.

We just smiled and waited.

Eventually they found their cereal and looked up to see us standing there, unperturbed. The woman, who was wearing a sweatshirt that said “You Are Enough,” apologized to us for holding up traffic.

No problem say we and go on our way continuing to shop.

• • •

Eventually we got what we needed and went to stand in line to use the U-scan machines. After a few minutes we scored a machine and went to it.

Doing our usual grocery shopping two-step, I handed the items to Z-D. He then scanned and bagged them.

Welp, while we were doing this I noticed the older couple was now in line for the U-scans. Then kind of out of nowhere the “You Are Enough” sweatshirt woman walks up to Z-D, who is in the process of weighing fruit, and says: “Excuse me sir, these are for you.”

At which point she hands a surprised Zen-Den three flowers [seen in the photo at the top of this post]. He looks at me, like I should have a clue about why this is happening, but I shrug.

Beats me.

So he thanks her while taking the flowers that he then hands to me. She smiles and goes back to standing in line with her husband by their cart of unpaid for groceries and a bouquet of flowers.

We finish checking out, pay for our stuff, and walk out of the store with me holding what was TECHNICALLY, from a strictly legal perspective was probably, STOLEN MERCHANDISE because at that minute while we walked to our car the flowers hadn’t been purchased by the older couple who was still standing in line waiting to buy them.

I hope.