#ThursdayDoors | Finding History In Front Of Us, Hello Texas Saltbox Houses

November 15, 2018 / Ally Bean / 73 Comments

Today I’m joining Thursday Doors, hosted by Norm Frampton, so that I can share with you photos of the following doors.

Using my cell phone camera that is not so great, I took these photos last month when we were visiting San Antonio.

Come to find our hotel, Plaza San Antonio, had a past. Situated on 6 acres located in a historic district originally settled by German immigrants in the 1800s, this hotel was built around old homes.

[Also, but not pertinent to doors, this hotel allegedly has a ghost running around in it. I didn’t know that when we were there, but hat tip to Philosopher Mouse of the Hedge for letting me know what I missed.]

On this hotel property, owned by Marriott, were well-kept old houses built in the New England saltbox style. These various buildings, one of which I feature here, charmed the socks off me with their small scale and sturdy vibe.

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DOOR, very narrow, on side of Elmendorf-Tyler House.

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DOOR, seen up-close, showing hardware painted the same color as the door.

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Gate on property surrounding Elmendorf-Tyler House.

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DOORS, maybe still used as such, opening onto long porch on what I guess was the front of Elmendorf-Tyler House.

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Brick sidewalk between long porch and hotel rooms.

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DOOR, rarely used it would seem, leading into small shed attached to side of Elmendorf-Tyler House.

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A Halloween Review: In The Rain With The Usual Suspects

November 1, 2018 / Ally Bean / 105 Comments

The Usual Suspects waiting on the deck behind the house before going on stage in front of the house.

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IT DRIZZLED THEN RAINED HERE last night, starting at about 6:00 p.m. just in time for the trick-or-treaters. The temperature was in the 60s, about as warm as I’ve experienced in late October. The night was in a word, unusual, and our reduced trick-or-treat count proved it.

In years past we’ve had anywhere from 120 to 220 beggars at the door, but this year our head count was only 60 kids.

Unheard of.

Despite the rain and because of the warm temperature, Z-D and I sat outside on our front stoop where we plopped ourselves onto two chairs he’d brought around front from the deck in the back.

There we waited to hand out candy, holding umbrellas over our heads, watching a slow parade of cute, polite kids shuffle their way across our yard, ignoring the precipitation.

Trick or treat!

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YOU MIGHT BE WONDERING WHY we didn’t stay inside our house, waiting for the kids to ring the doorbell. And this would be a sensible thing for you, my gentle readers, to wonder.

But the thing is, and in my world there’s always a thing, here in Beanlandia our doorbell, a diva, is broken and has been for a few weeks.

From a distance it glows and looks useful, however if anyone pushes it the middle button thing pops out and dangles down from an electric cord.

Kind of dangerous.

The doorbell has one ring in it before it has to be manually reconfigured and placed back into the wall where it resumes its role as a pretend working doorbell.

Hence, maintaining its integrity is a bother that we avoided by sitting outside under our umbrellas in the rain.

As one does.

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AND WITH THAT GLIMPSE INTO the life and times of one woman, one husband, one house, I’ll end this wordy post in which I’ve discussed the weather, trick-or-treaters, and doorbells gone bad.

Scintillating, eh?

In fact, should future historians whilst looking through old personal blogs want an example of a blog post that is the epitome of flapdoodle and twaddle, I do hope they find this one.

Because if there was a point to what I said here, I dunno what it is.

Other than to say, Halloween has come and gone. And we have a lot of leftover candy in this house.

Only 60 kids…

Where I Was When I Wasn’t Here: San Antonio, TX

October 30, 2018 / Ally Bean / 82 Comments

TO BEGIN

Colorful bat mosaic on wall at zoo.

“The world is a book. If you do not travel, you read only a page.”

The above quote, that I see every day when I’m at home, is on a framed piece of artwork that I have hanging on a wall in our home office.

I only mention this quote, attributed to St. Augustine, because I believe it to be true, a guiding principle. Thus I said “hell to the yes” when I had the opportunity to spend a few days in pleasant and pretty San Antonio, TX.

You see, last week Zen-Den was in San Antonio for a conference. Remembering how much fun we had there years ago, I joined him after the conference was over and we goofed off for a couple of days doing things in America’s 7th largest city that is celebrating its 300th birthday.

[Did not know either of those facts before visiting there. Feel that I’m a better person for having shared them here.]

THINGS WE DID

• The San Antonio River Walk which is a meandering multi-level path around an urban waterway surrounded by restaurants, shops, and hotels.

• The Briscoe Western Art Museum which was beautiful, and wherein I saw Roy Rogers’s saddle, a real Wells Fargo Wagon, and ate a complimentary cupcake.

• The Alamo Quarry Market which is an open-air shopping area filled with stores and restaurants, not necessarily unique to San Antonio but a nice place to wander around in the warm sunshine.

• The San Antonio Zoo which was lovely, with more animals from South America, Australia, and Africa than any other zoo I’ve been to.

• The Alamo City Comic Con which was our first adventure into the happy, trippy subculture that revolves around comic conventions. Here are my observations: 1) people, often entire families, were costumed like comic book or TV or movie characters [we were not]; 2) people were standing in line waiting to pay to have photos taken with and/or objects signed by celebrities [we did not]; & 3) people were buying memorabilia and posters and t-shirts from the displays set up by many vendors [we did not].

IN CONCLUSION

And with that I’ll end this post with a hat tip to St. Augustine and his travel advice, suggesting to you, my gentle readers, that San Antonio, TX, is a fun + friendly place to visit for those of you inclined to want to read more than one page of this book we call the world.

Laughing With A Friend About Her Peeping Mom Problem

October 19, 2018October 19, 2018 / Ally Bean / 115 Comments

HERE’S the dealio. Friend and her husband live in a house on a country road, with an acre front yard, situated on the top of a steep hill.

This is rural. Very rural.

Directly across the way on the other side of the road on top of another hill is Friend’s husband’s parents’ house.

From their front doors they can see each other’s houses in general, but not the specifics, such as what’s going on inside the house or who’s sitting on the front porch.

Because they’re isolated up on their hills, it is private.

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Antique wire-rim spectacles

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EXCEPT that Mother-in-Law recently retired from a full-time job and bought a pair of binoculars to watch the birds in the trees that surround her house on a hill in the middle of freaking nowhere.

However birdwatching has not been enough to keep MIL entertained. She is bored. And clever.

In fact, MIL has figured out that by sitting just so in her living room she can use her birding binoculars to look inside Friend’s house.

Or to see who’s sitting on Friend’s front porch.

To spy, in other words.

This new turn of events has put a strain on Friend and MIL’s relationship. MIL sees nothing wrong with peeping in on her son & wife’s daily life, and despite being asked to, will not stop her peeping.

Friend is peeved.

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Bowl of plastic eyeballs

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BEING a pragmatic soul I asked Friend why she didn’t shut the blinds on the windows on the front of the house. She told me she didn’t want to do that because it was unfair for her to have to do something she didn’t want to do because of her MIL’s interference in her life.

Uh huh.

So I suggested that Friend needed to do something to get MIL’s blood pressure up and offend her enough so that she’ll stop being a peeping mom.

“Amuck, amuck, amuck…”

To wit, I suggested that Friend could join a coven, dress like the witches in Hocus Pocus, and have a witches meeting in her front yard, complete with dancing, spells, and a big cauldron of boiling something, like the witches of Macbeth.

“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble.”

And you know what, my gentle readers? Friend told me that I was being silly, unsympathetic to her plight, and that I was: “NOT TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY.”

To which, between giggles, I managed to say: “You’re right, because this is not a problem. This is an opportunity to EITHER get over MIL’s interference & shut your dang blinds OR cause some mayhem.”

The choice is hers.

Question of the Day

With a peeping mom directly across the street from your house, would you buckle under and shut the blinds?

Would you stir the pot and cause some trouble to make a “mind your own bidness” point to peeping mom?

I await your insightful answers in the comments below.

#ThursdayDoors | Visiting A County Park On An Early Fall Afternoon

October 11, 2018 / Ally Bean / 69 Comments

Today I’m joining Thursday Doors, hosted by Norm Frampton, so I can share door photos + a bit more.

I took these photos when we decided to stop at Miami Whitewater Forest, a Hamilton County Ohio park. The park is in southwest Ohio, close to the Indiana and Kentucky borders.

It covers over 4,000 hilly acres, features an 85-acre lake, and is named for a Shaker community that used to thrive in this area.

On the sunny day we visited the park we went for a look-see, moseying around, not intending to do anything in particular. Here are a few photos of what we saw.

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