A Book Chat [Sort Of] About The Three Books That I’m Reading [Kind Of] This Month

/ Ally Bean / 12 Comments

[This month I’ve read three books.  Well, to be more accurate– I’ve been browsing through, glancing at, skimming across three books.  Because these books are not my usual fare of novels, histories, memoirs, I didn’t feel like I needed to read them in a linear way.  Kind of fun to read like this, btw.]

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•  For Christmas I received a copy of Giada’s Feel Good Food by Giada De Laurentiis.  The book is mostly a cookbook with a few pages of personal details every so often.  Over the weekend I sat down to read the personal parts of the book and found this quote on page 198: “I have curly hair, so I always brush it in the shower.”

This makes no sense to me.  I’ve always been told to never brush my curly hair when it is wet.  Yet here is Little Miss Accomplished & Gorgeous telling me to do this.

I’m confused.  More than normal, that is.  Why is she doing this?

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•  A business acquaintance gave me a signed copy of Bring Your Superpowers To Work by Darcy Eikenberg, ACC.  As some of you know, I have a love/hate relationship with self-help books.  A few of them I’ve found to be useful, but most of them I find to be stating the obvious, poorly written and ultimately defeatist.

That being said, I love this book.  Darcy is a life coach who knows how to write and provides practical ideas about how to become a better version of yourself.  My favorite witticism of hers is on page 51: “affirm the squirm.”  Meaning that if you’re intellectually uncomfortable with a new healthy behavior, then you’re growing a superpower & going in the right direction for you.

I’m still working on my Superpowers List;  but when I complete it, I’ll be epic.

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  •  I’d forgotten all about Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg until I found a copy of it when I was reorganizing our home office after the new desk arrived.  I decided that reading bits & pieces of this book, in no particular order, would be a great way for me to jumpstart my writing career.

To wit, the piece that I’m currently enamored of is on page 119 where she talks about making writing sweet:  “… always associate learning with sweetness.  It should be the same with writing.  Right from the beginning, know that it is good and pleasant.  Don’t battle with it.  Make it your friend. “

Isn’t this a lovely thought?  Who doesn’t need more friends?

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Keep Moving. Blog Maintenance. Nothing To Look At Here.

/ Ally Bean / 18 Comments

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

You looked, didn’t you?  You just couldn’t stand not knowing exactly what I was doing.

And now that you’re here you’re kind of wondering why I’m doing that which I’m doing.  I know how you think, my gentle readers.  So I’ll tell you.

I’m claiming my blog, The Spectacled Bean, at Bloglovin’.  By placing what I did at the top of this little post, I am lead to believe that I’ll have:

And with that said, I’m publishing this post.  Hoping that I’ve done that which they want me to do in a way that pleases them, so that I might have that which they tell me I can have, which would please me.

Hallelujah and pass the potato salad, let’s see what happens next.

The New Neighbor Who I’m Not So Crazy About

/ Ally Bean / 22 Comments


hourglass

Image Source: Sweet Clip Art

A neighbor clued me into the fact that there’s a registered sex offender living on our street.  He moved here, sometime in the fall, into a smaller house on the edge of the subdivision.

I went online to the Sex Offender Registry to find out what he’d done, what he looked like and his exact street address.  The information about his crimes was complete.  There were two photos of him, one taken years ago and one more recent photo.  Then Z-D & I drove up and down the street until we located his house.

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I have mixed feeling about this development.  On the one hand, he has served his time and is doing exactly what the law requires him to do by registering.  Perhaps there’s been some therapy along the way?  He might be contrite, reformed.

But on the other hand I’m judgmental enough to not trust a 30-something, college-educated male who solicited minors online and got caught by the police when he showed up for the meeting.  There’s something morally wrong with this scenario that I’m not sure I can overlook.

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Thinking about it all, my negative attitude might be a bigger indictment of my inability to forgive than it is an accusation against him.  Clearly, I haven’t yet figured out how to process this information, as this is the first time, to my knowledge, that I’ve lived near a registered sex offender.

I’ll let you know if/when I shift into a more forgiving point-of-view, but in the mean time, I think that I’ll just keep my distance from that end of the street.  There are plenty of other directions I can walk around here.  No need to tempt fate with an accidental meeting.

My Own Version Of Lady & The Tramp

/ Ally Bean / 13 Comments

I almost feel bad about this.

I mean, it’s never my intention for my actions to cause any creature to get upset.  I’m not one to stir the pot just for the heck of it.  I’m one to glue the puzzle pieces together to make things whole.

However…

Our neighbor’s dog, who looks just like Lady from the Disney movie,  Lady and the Tramp, is a pretty cocker spaniel with impeccable manners.  She usually sits on her front sidewalk, watchful and quiet;  or patrols up and down her driveway, checking out the suburban scene around her house.  

With nary a woof-woof.

Sadly, she has not taken this extreme weather in stride.  In fact, more than once this winter she has barked her displeasure with me as I trudge diagonally across our snow-covered front yard to get to our mailbox.  Granted as I’m doing this I’m wearing a huge parka, hat and scarf, so maybe she thinks that I don’t belong over here.  

That I’m a tramp of sorts.  

All I know is that she makes it clear to me that she believes that I’m breaking decorum by not using our [currently ice-covered] concrete sidewalk and driveway.  This makes her uneasy, I sense.  Worried.  And in need of telling everyone within a five block radius about my lack of good manners as evidenced by my tramping through the snow.

Who knew that this breed of dog could be so loud?  

cocker_spanielPhoto Source: American Kennel Club