Grumbling

The One About My Car Gone Wacko: My Kingdom For Some Earplugs

/ Ally Bean / 167 Comments

This is not my sweet Olivia, but it is a lovely 1908 Ford Model T car. I bet it had a heck of a horn on it. [Image via autos/yahoo.com on Pinterest]

And then this happened… 

I went shopping in a real store instead of online.  [My first mistake perhaps?]  The store was about 20 minutes from home.

I parked my sweet Olivia, my 19 y.o. Honda Accord, in the parking lot then went inside a store to buy a few things.  I returned to the parking lot and put my bags of stuff into Olivia’s trunk.

No problemo.

Then I got inside the car, began to turn on the ignition with my key, but before I could get Olivia started THE POOR DEAR WENT WACKO and began blaring her security alarm with me inside the car.

I tried getting in and out of the car, but to no avail.  She continued to produce a jarring cacophony.

I tried pushing random buttons on the dashboard, but the noise continued.

I tried using the little button on my key to deactivate the alarm but the battery in my key had gone dead. Did. not. work.

Given up the ghost.

This left me sitting inside my car in a parking lot with no way to turn off the alarm while the alarm continued to shriek in a pattern of 3 long honks, 2 second pause, 3 long honks, 2 seconds pause, ad infinitum.

Thus it came to be that I drove Olivia home serenaded by her ear-piercing security alarm system, noticed by many other drivers on the road.

Oh yes I was.

But the story does not end here… 

Once home I pulled into our garage.

You may remember that a few months ago a car was stolen at gunpoint from inside a neighbor’s garage;  the neighbor walked into his garage while the car was being stolen [weird story here].  It was the talk of the subdivision.

Unnerving.

At that time Zen-Den and I agreed that if I ever knew or thought someone was following me home, I should pull into our garage and start blaring my car horn, thus alerting him to trouble.

Which, of course, is exactly WHAT I UNINTENTIONALLY DID when I pulled into our garage because I couldn’t turn off Olivia’s rather robust alarm system.

Big problemo.

Thus it came to be that a worried Zen-Den, who was working from home, heard the alarm and figured I was in trouble.

But before I could get inside the house to tell him what had happened, he came running into the garage to rescue me from harm, not realizing it was just my sweet Olivia throwing a hissy fit.

Oh yes she was.

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

Has your vehicle [car, truck, SUV, van, motorcycle] ever set off its security alarm system for reasons unclear?

If so, what did you do?

Do you prefer to shop online thus avoiding any and all drama associated with going to a brick & mortar store?

[Gold star to anyone who understands the literary allusion in the title of this post.]

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A Short Rant About Conversations With People Who Lack Self-awareness

/ Ally Bean / 202 Comments

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BEGIN [a don’t shoot the messenger] RANT

Let’s talk about something regarding people whose lack of self-awareness and conversational style is getting on my nerves this holiday season.

To wit, of late I have twice found myself chatting with a person who says something to the effect of: Here is what happened to me, it is an example of A.

I have then replied by saying: I believe you and agree with your assessment that this is an example of A.  I say this because this is what they’ve told me.

I am not twisting their words.

I am demonstrating understanding and EMPATHY.

At which point I’ve been told that I am wrong: that this situation is not an example of A, it is an example of B.  Why would I suggest otherwise?

Then they glare or snarl at me, she who has repeated back to them that which they said.  I have not embellished what they said nor have I dismissed it.

I have paid attention to them, been STRAIGHTFORWARD– and dare I say KIND to listen to their woes.

And what is my reward for being nice?  Criticism.  As if I am responsible for what happened to them, which I am not.

What I am guilty of, however, is being a mirror that has reflected back to them, in their own words, how they are viewing their reality. And for this, I am made to suffer their crabbiness, their querulousness, their low-level wrath.

[Yes, I just used the thesaurus. Can you tell?]

I’ve no idea about how to handle this kind of RIDICULOUS conversational style, but I do find that I am less inclined to ever want to speak with these people again.

And perhaps that is what they want, for me to go away taking my ACTIVE listening skills and my mirror of truth with me.

So be it, says the introvert.

END [a don’t shoot the messenger] RANT

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Questions of the Day

Thinking about the rant above, have you ever been sniped at for agreeing with, then repeating back, that which someone just said to you?

If so, how do you handle the conversation in the moment and your feelings about it? Does this make you feel peeved, for instance?

If this has not happened to you, can I be friends with you and your friends? Pretty please. 

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In Which I Grumble, Grouse, and Gloat Because Sometimes Life Is Like That

/ Ally Bean / 198 Comments
The Code of Personal Bloggers, if such a thing exists, suggests that all blog posts shall have an image on them. Hence I give you a photo of a green rocking chair on the screened-in porch.

TODAY IS THE LAST TUESDAY in Winter in the Northern Hemisphere while also being the first Tuesday in Year Two of the Pandemic. And ain’t it a pip?

Even though there wasn’t any snow or ice we didn’t do much of anything over the weekend. It was blah and bland outside, totally uninspiring, plus Daylight Savings Time *stole* an hour of my life again. And I was feeling poorly after my second shingles shot so laying low was the way to go.

On the upside, having gotten my second shingles shot out go the way I can now focus on getting my/our Covid-19 vaccinations, which supposedly will be available to us starting in early April.

Uh huh. We’ll see. 🙄

WHILE WE CONTINUED TO STAY in our Covid-19 bubble, Zen-Den worked on his latest 2,000 piece puzzle. It’s of Pokemon characters who are large, colorful, and a bit menacing to see on your dining room table. But *hey* if it keeps Mr. Man entertained to put all those little puzzle pieces together, then it’s good.

I tried a new recipe over the weekend, but it’s not worth repeating. It was for Irish Soda Bread Muffins. The muffins turned out to have an identity crisis: too sweet to be Irish Soda Bread, too bland to be a yummy muffin. I’ll go back to making a proper loaf of Irish Soda Bread.

Like my ancestors before me. 🍀

THE ONLY OTHER EXCITEMENT HERE, if you can call it excitement, is that after months of trying we finally got all the composite decking samples we are interested in. Procuring them has been a game. You order them online where *no surprise* one sample or another is not available. Then you check back a few weeks later and one of the samples you want is available, but the others are still not available. Try again later.

However after much effort we have way too many 17 different samples from two companies. At the moment the top three contenders for Chez Bean’s new deck are: TimberTech Brown Oak, Trex Toasted Sand, or Trex Coastal Bluff. All are medium brownish with gray undertones and noticeable imitation woodgrain texture.

So huzzah! 🏡

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW: Have you had your Fauci ouchies? If so, how does that make you feel? If not, when will you get your vaccination shots?

In Which I Wash My Mouth Out With Soap Because I Did Not Think Ahead

/ Ally Bean / 176 Comments

It’s not that I swear all the time.

I only do so when the situation calls for it, according to my own moral compass. Thus when I tell you that I let out a string of curse words you may be assured it was necessary.

Here’s what happened. It’s a one thing leads to another scenario.

Winter arrived. My skin got dry and itchy so I stopped using Dial bar soap in the shower, switching to a gentler bar of soap that isn’t so intense. But because I’m a frugal woman I put the partially used bar of soap in a drawer in the bathroom cabinet near the sink.

This drawer houses items I use to make myself presentable– including, for instance, a tub of moisturizing cream and a few bottles of leave-in hair conditioner and a razor or three.

Also in the drawer there’s a box of Arm & Hammer baking soda that I occasionally use instead of toothpaste. I use the baking soda every few days so the box is open (with the little cardboard lid thingie sort of closed) in the drawer. It’s a throwback to my childhood when people sometimes used baking soda for the cleaning of teeth. [Don’t judge.]

And this is where the trouble began.

As I’m sure you know baking soda is often used in refrigerators as a way of absorbing odors in them. Very effective, good stuff. BUT did you know that if you put an open box of it in a drawer with an unwrapped partially used bar of heavily scented soap, the baking soda will absorb the scent, the flavor, the essence of that soap?

Of course thinking on it now you do, but I was not so wise. I didn’t anticipate the consequences of storing Arm & Hammer baking soda and Dial bar soap, side-by-side, in a closed bathroom drawer.

Hence it came to be that one morning I reached for the now Dial-soap-scent-infused Arm & Hammer baking soda and used the baking soda to brush my teeth, not knowing what had happened to it in the drawer. From this experience I learned can confirm that Dial soap tastes awful, rating high on the yuck-o-meter, if there is such a thing.

Also I can confirm that while I don’t swear often, it’s a skill you never forget, like riding a bike. I know this to be true because between rinsing my mouth out with water multiple times, I used words of the sort not meant for a PG-13 family blog like this one. Thus I’ll paraphrase what I said using The Good Place’s Eleanor Shellstrop‘s sanitized curse words instead of my own.

Holy mother forking shirt balls! BLEECH!

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Happy Weekend, everyone. Try to keep it clean.

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