When A Squirrel Takes A Fancy To Your House, This Can Happen

July 31, 2013February 24, 2015 / Ally Bean / 27 Comments

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He might decide one morning to catch a few rays on the deck.

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I’M NOT GOING TO bother to tell you ALL the back story of The Squirrel Wars that go on here in this subdivision. Suffice to say, in the past, we had to hire someone, with humane traps, to remove all the little chirpy baby squirrels and their parents from our attic/roof. Then we had to get someone else to repair our roof. This kind-hearted approach succeeded in keeping the squirrels away from our property until this year.

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He might decide one evening to dine al fresco leaving the remains of his dinner for a fly.

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ON THE OTHER HAND our former next door neighbor, a retired Army colonel, decided on a more aggressive way to deal with the squirrels. He hired someone to put spring-loaded traps in the gutters where the squirrels liked to nest. Then when a squirrel stepped on the trap, the squirrel was speared through the heart, thrown over the edge of the gutter and left to dangle to death under the gutter from a rope attached to the base of the trap.

It was gruesome– and ultimately not so effective. The squirrels immediately took revenge on the colonel’s house, bird feeders and tree branches causing him more trouble than you can imagine. While I’m not a fan of squirrels, I did think the colonel’s approach was a bit [shall we say?] extreme and will admit that I enjoyed watching him lose to a bunch of squirrels.

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He might decide one afternoon to take a siesta in the pot behind the zinnias.

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BUT THAT WAS THEN and this is now. Which is to say that over the last month one lone squirrel has taken a fancy to our house. I’m not thrilled by it, but as we are past breeding season and there is no indication of a wife and family anywhere in the house, I’m trying to live in peaceful harmony with this sun-loving, tomato-eating, pot-snoozing, gutter-lounging squirrel who insists on calling our house his home.

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He might decide on a stormy afternoon to lounge in a gutter daydreaming of sunny days.

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Making A Good Pie: Ingenuity, Good Judgement & Great Care

July 29, 2013September 19, 2016 / Ally Bean / 25 Comments

My mother collected cookbooks and I still have some of them. They provide fascinating glimpses into times gone by. I never know what I’m going to find when I start looking through one.

I saw the following recipe while I was glancing through The Marion County Historical Society Heritage Cookbook published [I believe] in 1975. The Heritage Cookbook had reprinted it from an earlier cookbook.

This recipe, with its moralizing introduction and decided lack of measurements, was originally published in 1901 in a cookbook called, Recipes Tried and True by the Ladies’ Aid Society of the First Presbyterian Church.

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“WHO DARES DENY THE TRUTH THERE IS POETRY IN PIE”

~ Longfellow

There are plenty of women capable of choosing good husbands, or if not good when chosen, or [sic] of making them good. Yet these same women may be ignorant on the subject of making a good pie.

Ingenuity, good judgement, and great care should be used in making all kinds of pastry. Use very cold water and just as little as possible. Roll thin, and ALWAYS AWAY FROM YOU. Prick the bottom with a fork, then brush with white of egg, and sprinkle with white sugar. This will give you a firm rich crust.

For all fruit pies, prepare as above. Stew the fruit, sweeten to taste; if juicy, put a layer of cornstarch on top before putting on the top crust.

Be sure there are plenty of incisions in the top crust. Then pinch the edges.

Sprinkle white sugar on top, and bake in a moderate oven.

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[After a bit of research I found this: Recipes Tried and True. On Kindle. For free.]

Me, The Morning Star & The Muse Of Practicality

July 25, 2013July 25, 2013 / Ally Bean / 12 Comments

“Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”

~ Henry David Thoreau, the end of Walden Pond

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The other morning I woke up at 5:30 a.m. This is much too early by my standards, but there I was AWAKE, not worrying about a thing. So I got up, made a pot of coffee, poured myself a mug, grabbed my camera and went out on the deck to sit, waiting for the sun to come up.

It didn’t take long for the first rays of sunlight to sneak across the lawn heading for the wooded ravine behind our home.

Nor did it take long for me to become bewitched by the path of the glittery sunlight, following it with my camera into the darkest parts of the woods.

At this point I’d love to tell you that my early morning photo shoot was some sort of transcendental awakening. That the course of my life was permanently altered because of my experience watching the morning light illuminate the woods.

But there wasn’t anything spiritual about my early morning on the deck. It was all very practical. A way for me to learn about using my camera in various light. And the opportunity to ponder why it is that I can remember the last line of Walden Pond– but, for the life of me, can’t think of the first one!

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Shopping For Make-Up: Plain Jane Vs. The Kabuki Woman

July 23, 2013 / Ally Bean / 25 Comments

I’m not a fan of make-up. I think that the stuff is overrated, but I bow to social custom and use a little of it*.

I believe that for me THE NATURAL LOOK IS ALWAYS BEST**.

Combine the foregoing with the fact that when provoked I will say what I’m really thinking— and you get the following conversation between me, Plain Jane, and the sales associate, Kabuki Woman, at the Bobbi Brown counter in Nordstrom***.

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Plain Jane: (approaching the make-up counter) Hi!

Kabuki Woman: (looking blankly at me) Yes.

Plain Jane: (continuing on, ignoring her disinterested tone of voice) Yes, hello. I need to get some Bobbi Brown eye shadow. Would you be able to help me please?

Kabuki Woman: (sighing at the injustice of having to wait on me) Yes.

Plain Jane: (fully aware that I am staring at this woman’s ghostly white face + overdone eye make-up, but unable to look away) Ah, yes. I need Sable & Ivory, please. I looked them up online before I came in and I think that those would be the most neutral colors for me. What do you think?

Kabuki Woman: (glaring at me with loathing while making a dismissive gesture with her hand) They’ll be fine… on YOU.

Plain Jane: (hearing my mother’s voice in my head say: “young lady, you go upstairs right now and wash that stuff off your face so that we can see how pretty you really are”) And I need a lip liner pencil. I wear Clinique Spicy Honey Almost Lipstick and I want the pencil to blend with my lips and be natural.

Kabuki Woman: (fixating on me with a fiery hot hatred, snarling her overly pigmented red lips) You’re supposed to see the lip liner when you wear it. You can look at these here. All of them are neutrals. Just pick one. They’ll all work.

Plain Jane: (getting steamed, wondering why I hadn’t gone to Sephora where the nice gay man with too much eyeliner had helped me just a week ago) Well, I think it should be a little bit better than: IT’LL WORK. Which one do I use?

Kabuki Woman: (starting to look a bit red underneath her ghostly white face) ANY… OF… THEM…

Plain Jane: (saying what I had been thinking the whole time) Look, I HATE MAKE-UP AND SHOPPING FOR IT IS WHY. I just want someone else to figure it out for me. SO WHICH ONE DO I BUY? I want to look natural.

Kabuki Woman: (shocked into actually doing something) Use this one, Bobbi Brown Brownie Pink.

Plain Jane: (making a mental note to join a convent where no one expects women to wear make-up so that I never have to suffer through this again) Thank you.

Kabuki Woman: (tottering away from me as fast as possible on her slutty high heels without so much as a thank you or a goodbye) You can pay over there.

~ THE END ~

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*Interesting. “Would We Feel Better Without Makeup? One Woman’s Modesty Experiment”

**Adorable. “Sloth Gets Her Makeup Done Before The ‘Today’ Show (PHOTO)“

***Useful. Bobbi Brown Website