The Iceberg Illusion: Reflections Upon The Occasion Of My Return To The Blogosphere

September 13, 2016August 28, 2018 / Ally Bean / 38 Comments

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WELL… I’m back.

August turned out to be every bit as hot and humid and hateful as I anticipated it would be. Just a miserable excuse of a month during which I did not do much of anything except think about what I will be doing in the future.

Planning? Or procrastinating? You decide.

Whatevs.

Bottom line? I’m here now with a renewed sense of purpose.

To wit, I’ve decided that blogging gives my weeks a bit of much-needed structure, provides me with a way to process the details of my life, and overall it’s fun.

Plus I’ve concluded that I’m doing something right and helpful here, considering how many people follow me and make the effort to comment. Thank you.

So I’m going to keep on keeping a blog.

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BUT… I’ve also realized that writing a quirky personal blog, such as The Spectacled Bean, has morphed from a hobby into an unpaid part-time job that has a certain work-y-ness to it that you, my gentle readers, don’t see.

Rather like an iceberg. Much going on below the water line to make this blog engrossing and twaddle-y, so to speak.

I’m not complaining, mind you. Just explaining that if I disappear from the blogosphere from time-to-time, it’s not that I don’t love you all to pieces. I do.

It’s just that I’m an introvert who occasionally doesn’t know what to say. About anything. Here.

Or in real life.

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Antiques + Ghosts: There’s Something Off-Key Here

July 14, 2016July 14, 2016 / Ally Bean / 42 Comments

A real-life honest-to-goodness made-me-smile conversation…

{ source }

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“I ain’t afraid of no ghost.”

I met a friend for drinks and dinner. She got talking about her part-time business, which is selling antiques.

She scouts around local Goodwills and garage sales, then takes her finds, tidies them up a bit, and puts them in a rented booth in an antique mall. She’s done this for years, turning a modest profit on her efforts.

My friend told me that a ghost is now haunting her booth. This ghost, who isn’t pleased with the way my friend is merchandising her hats and jewelry, moves items around within the booth.

And the ghost has gone so far as to break an item. Bad ghost!

Come to find out this problem is part of dealing in antiques. [Read more here.] According to my friend you learn to accept the fact that as long as you have an item a ghost has attached itself to, you’re going to have difficulties.

Once the item is gone, either through a sale or by intentional destruction, the ghost leaves you alone.

The trick, of course, is figuring out which item is the one that has brought the ghost to your booth.

So far my friend has not been able to do this on her own, so she’s enlisted the help of other antique booth renters, asking them to keep an eye on her things, in case they see a ghost lurking about.

As one is wont to do, apparently, in antique malls.

Who knew?

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An entertaining ditty for your listening pleasure!

Of Plans & Parsley Thwarted

July 12, 2016July 12, 2016 / Ally Bean / 61 Comments

“Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”

~ E. B. White

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Two parsley worms munching on my parsley.

Zen-Den and I took last week off to go on a staycation.

My plans for our staycation, which we scheduled last January, revolved around the idea that together we’d be able to do a long list of outside chores. But the weather turned hot & muggy with rain so we weren’t able to do much outside.

Like I’d planned. Carefully.

At first the weather bummed me out, but after a rather stern Come-to-Jesus meeting with myself I managed to convince me that all was not lost. That I’d adapt to this unfortunate turn in staycation weather with a revised plan and a hopeful heart.

Dammit.

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So what did we do on our staycation?

Well, I’m glad you asked, my gentle readers. We did boring things, mostly inside the house, that had needed to be done for a long time. To wit:

we cleaned out more of the basement, taking 2 carloads of stuff to Goodwill;
we sorted through clothes closets and our garage, tossing out all sorts of junk;
we shredded documents from as far back as 1998;
we cleaned out both the refrigerator + freezer, going so far as to replace the water filter in the frig;
we installed the last 3 new outdoor lights, a project we began last fall, taking the old still useable lights to Habitat For Humanity; and
we tried 2 new dessert recipes, Mexican Brownies & Apricot Clafouti.

We were productive and made yummy things to eat.

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One particularly hungry parsley worm followed the parsley stem to the end.

But much more was going on here than de-cluttering and dessert.

While we were working to make things less cluttered inside the house, two parsley worms set up residence in my herb pot, and decided to devour as much parsley as possible.

I’d be upset about this except that in light of all the current chaos and discord going on in the United States, their destruction seemed insignificant.

Charming, even.

Plus I know that if they eat enough now, they’ll be able to turn into Black Swallowtail Butterflies later in the summer. And that kind of small hope, of transformation and growth, of plans succeeding, makes me think that tomorrow will be a better day.

For them.

For us.

For everyone.

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A Rosy Sunday Morning Walk In An Amazing Park

June 16, 2016July 1, 2025 / Ally Bean / 53 Comments

Just because we were in Columbus OH overnight and just because I remembered going to this park when I was a child and just because it was a gorgeous clear summer morning, we went to the Park of Roses.

Located in Clintonville inside Whetstone Park, the Park of Roses is a 13 acre garden with 11,000 rose bushes, most of which were in bloom while we were there.

The park was as amazing + colorful + beautiful as I remembered it, but what I didn’t remember was that rose scent surrounds you everywhere you walk. All the time.

Below are a few photos that give you, my gentle readers, an idea of the scope of the park and the details of the park. Did I mention it was amazing?

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