Every Leaf Is A Flower: 6 Links To Share As Autumn Begins In The Northern Hemisphere

September 23, 2025September 25, 2025 / Ally Bean / 207 Comments

I am nuts. I woke the other morning and the first thought that drifted into my mind was “crisp and clean, and no caffeine.” That’s a 1980s slogan for 7-Up. I haven’t had a 7-Up in years, nor have I seen any ads for it lately. So why was I thinking about it when I woke up? This is worrying me more than it should.

I am amused. I watched the Netflix TV series Nobody Wants This starring Kristen Bell and ~~Aidan~~ Adam Brody. It’s a predictable romantic comedy about an agnostic podcaster [Bell] and single rabbi [Brody] who fall in love despite their differences: families meddle, miscommunication happens, hilarity ensues. It is Bridget Loves Bernie updated for 2025. Funny, yes— but also filled with stereotypes.

Little me not smiling for the camera.

I am vindicated. I’ve never liked having my picture taken. As a child I considered a camera an intrusion into my little world, a way to slow my roll. As an adult in our selfie-obsessed world, I am an outlier who doesn’t take selfies. So imagine my joy when I read about a photographer who doesn’t ask girls to smile in their pictures. Not everyone wants to smile for the camera and don’t I know it.

I am empowered. As a kindhearted person who struggles with how to deal with some [shall we say?] willfully disagreeable people in daily life, I found this short YouTube video, Forgive Assholes | Have a Little Faith, inspiring.

The premise, as explained by Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber, is based on the idea: “What you did is so not okay that I refuse to be connected to it anymore.” After acknowledging this, you get out your metaphorical bolt cutters and intentionally break the chain that tethers you to that person/situation. It’s wisdom with a skoosh of badass attitude.

One orange fish drawn by adult me.

I am tickled. Have you tried this online dealio where you draw a fish then make it swim? Doing so is fun and silly and the perfect diversion when daily news gets to be too much. Some people draw beautiful fish. I am not one of those people.

I am chuffed. In honor of the arrival of autumn I made a pie using this Easy Sweet Potato Pie recipe. It was outstanding, if’n I do say so myself. My change to the recipe: I didn’t use the rum substituting 1 Tablespoon freshly squeezed orange juice + 1/2 teaspoon orange extract. Because Cool Whip is the work of the devil [my hill to die on], I topped the pie with homemade whipped cream.

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

If you drink soft drinks, which carbonated beverage is your favorite? Do you remember its advertising slogan from the 1980s?

As a child did you like posing for a picture? As an adult do you like having your photo taken, either by yourself or others?

Can you draw a better fish than the one I drew?

Where do you stand on the controversial issue of Whipped Cream versus Cool Whip? [There is a right answer.] What culinary issue is the hill you’re willing to die on?

+ • + • +

Meandering Thoughts About Grittiness While Meandering Through A Bookstore

September 9, 2025 / Ally Bean / 226 Comments

✅ I WAS WANDERING AROUND Barnes & Nobles enjoying the positive vibe that comes from being around people who like books when I saw a copy of the latest book about Gwyneth Paltrow. I’d ~~read~~ skimmed a few reviews of Amy Odell’s Gwyneth: The Biography, so I knew it existed, but hadn’t seen it in the wild.

Yet there I was face-to-face with Gwyneth’s smiling face.

Or at least a portion of it.

• • •

✅ SEEING THIS BOOK sent my addled brain into overdrive.

My first thought was decidedly practical: I wonder what brand and shade of eyebrow pencil/powder Gwyneth has on. As my blonde hair has gotten grayer on its way to, I hope, silvery white, I’ve had a difficult time finding very pale blonde/light warm gray eyebrow colors.

My second thought was happily snarky: I wonder if she knows she looks like Janice on The Muppet Show? The resemblance is amazing to me. I bet Gwyneth can play an electric guitar as well as Janice.

My third thought was idly curious: I wonder what it’d be like to be a Hollywood nepo baby who’s lived your entire life with a financial safety net under you.

Not that Gwyneth hasn’t been successful, but is it because she knew she couldn’t fail, free to give her career her best shot unencumbered by the soul-sucking tedious financial realities most people face?

Is it because she’s so innately talented, filled with drive and grit that regardless of anything in her life she was destined to be a star?

• • •

✅ THIS LAST THOUGHT REMINDED ME that years ago I read psychologist Angela Duckworth’s book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. According to Duckworth:

Grit is passion and perseverance for longterm goals…. Talent and luck matter to success. But talent and luck are no guarantee of grit. And in the very long run, I think grit may matter as least as much, if not more.

I remember feeling empowered and comforted by her sensible assessment of what it takes to succeed— and how grit, something I possess, plays into a person’s success.

Back when I read the book I took a free online 10-question quiz that is still available for you to take. It is the GRIT SCALE QUIZ. From my results I learned that my Grit Score is 4.20 meaning that I’m grittier than 80% of Americans.

Discussion about whether this grittiness has helped me become the swell blogger I am today is something I’ll leave for another time.

• • •

✅ I DIDN’T PICK UP the book about Paltrow because, as you my little chickadees can probably guess, my interest in biographies of Hollywood stars is nonexistent.

Do. not. care.

But seeing it did remind me that I was in this store to buy a book and that if I was going to read a book about a real person I’d best mosey meself to the memoir section of the store where I could find books that are presumably truthful, blessedly idiosyncratic, and often inspiring.

That’s what interests me.

Thus I ended up buying and enjoying Peggy Orenstein’s funny thoughtful pandemic memoir, Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World’s Ugliest Sweater.

Which, as fate would have it, also had a compelling up-close photo of a face on the front cover.

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

Do you enjoy shopping for books in a brick and mortar store? If so, do you meander around like I do enjoying the atmosphere before purchasing anything?

Do you ever read biographies? Or memoirs?

Thinking back to where you were 5 years ago when we first started grappling with + adapting to the new Covid 19 pandemic realities, what did you do to keep yourself sane, assuming you stayed sane?

If you took the quiz, how gritty are you?

+ • + • +

Highlights From August: I’m Not A Flower. I’m Not A Fork. I’m Not A Foe.

September 4, 2025 / Ally Bean / 179 Comments

~ • ~

The Flower Part

Late one afternoon while sitting outside on the deck, I was ~~viciously attacked~~ dive-bombed by a hummingbird who mistook me for a flower. Why, you may be wondering, did this little piece of flightiness think I was a flower?

Here’s the scene: I was wearing a pale pink baseball cap [similar here] + a medium pink fleece top [here] + raspberry-colored moccasin slippers [on sale now here] whilst drinking a pink grapefruit Italian soda [from here] that I’d poured into a clear plastic tumbler [here] with a bright red travel lid [here].

My basically pinkish-reddish ensemble + beverage were not intended to attract hummingbirds, but I nailed it. And that little birdie with the fluttering wings couldn’t take his sparkly little eyes off me.

I was startled, but flattered.

The Fork Part

Zen-Den and I finished watching Elementary, a TV series about Sherlock Holmes re-envisioned for modern times starring Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock and Lucy Liu as Dr. Watson. I enjoyed it and thought the final episode was a good way to end it. Apparently not all fans liked the ending, so I just wrote something potentially controversial here.

Anyhoo, like many TV shows or movies, we sometimes focus on one line that we find absurdly funny and start saying it to each other— like a goofy inside joke. And this show gave us a good one.

In a scene where Sherlock and Marcus, a NYC police detective assigned to work with Sherlock, are kicking back after a difficult day, Sherlock who is often quite full of himself tells Marcus that he knows why Marcus is so taken with him.

It’s a scene of arrogance gone wild.

Sherlock starts babbling on about how his astounding intellect magnetizes people who are then drawn to him. It’s a burden Sherlock must live with.

Marcus, who has the patience of Job when dealing with Sherlock’s ego, replies: “You’re not a magnet. And I sure as hell am not a fork.”

Thus I, too, want to establish the fact that I’m not a fork. You can’t magnetize me. Don’t even try.

The Foe Part

A friend, who seemed sincere when she said this, told me that she wanted to change something about her behavior so that she’d have more free time.

I was surprised BUT I am one to help others when they decide they want to change. To be clear I don’t believe I need to fix people, yet will help you fix yourself when you’re ready to do so. Think of me as your personal cheerleader.

A few weeks later I see this friend and compliment her on how she has changed herself, how she has followed through on doing that which she told me she wanted to do in order to have less stress in her busy life.

Welp, she lays into me for mentioning she was doing things differently now: things she told me she didn’t want to do anymore.

This was her idea, remember?

She got on her high horse and lectured me about how her well established M.O. was what she was known for and no way would she ever change it for fear of not being known for it.

This was slightly unhinged thinking— and a complete 180º from what she’d confided in me a few weeks earlier.

Obviously at this point I had a decision to make: do I remind her of what she told me about how she wanted to change? Or do I let the conversation drop knowing the more I say, the more she’ll think of me as her foe.

Thus I let the conversation drop, realizing that being a cheerleader for some people is a sure way of irritating them.

Go figure, huh?

~ • ~

SO I’M BACK

WHAT’S NEW WITH YOU?

TELL ALL IN THE COMMENTS BELOW

I NEED TO KNOW!

~ ~ • ~ ~

The One About An Empathetic Chatbot, A Crazy Quilt Garden, & An August Blogging Break

July 29, 2025 / Ally Bean / 230 Comments

A REMINDER THAT COMMUNICATION CAN BE TRICKY

Thanks to Marie I learned about a TV series called Astrid. It’s a drama about a woman [Astrid] with Asperger’s syndrome who works for the police in their library. She loves puzzles, remembers everything, and helps the police solve crimes.

The series does a good job of presenting Astrid and all her quirks in a thoughtful way. She’s socially awkward but not mean-spirited. She is neurodivergent, not always catching onto the subtext of conversations or situations.

Social cues escape her, strict habits keep her sane.

It’s fascinating to watch her and has made me more aware of the communication divide between neurotypes.

To wit, the other day I came across an article in Reuters, ‘It’s the most empathetic voice in my life’: How AI is transforming the lives of neurodivergent people. The gist of the article is that AI-powered chatbots, such as NeuroTranslator, can help neurodivergent people communicate more clearly, reducing misunderstandings.

All one has to do is ask AI about your quandary, then it’ll explain what’s happening from a neurotypical point of view.

Below is a screenshot of a conversation in which Micheal who is neurodivergent asks AI to help him understand why his wife, Jennifer who is neurotypical, took offense at his comment about her shirt. The chatbot tells him that “Neurotypicals often expect more positive feedback…” than his direct comment, thus she was peeved.

Welp, here’s the thing: With all due respect to the chatbot, I don’t see anything wrong with what Micheal said to Jennifer.

So does this mean I’m neurodivergent and don’t know it? I could envision me saying something like what Micheal said, direct & to the point. No harm, no foul.

Or thinking about it in a different way, I wonder about Jennifer’s state of mind. She seems a little neurotic to me, maybe insecure.

Granted I don’t take much of anything personally and I know to consider the source, but if Micheal told me his honest assessment of my shirt, unlike Jennifer I’d have smiled and said “thanks.”

No big deal.

~ • ~

A LOOK AT MY CRAZY QUILT GARDEN, A WORK IN PROGRESS

I’m calling my latest attempt at creating a butterfly garden as a Crazy Quilt Garden.

Crazy quilts were popular in the late 1800s. Victorian women created them using a patchwork of irregularly-shaped fabric piece sewn together then embellished with embroidery, ribbon, beads, and lace. The resulting quilts were idiosyncratic works of art with no repeating motifs like you see in Amish quilts.

Because I wasn’t happy with our rigidly organized flower garden with its repeating motifs, last fall I pulled out most of the perennials with the intention of creating a less organized ‘country-style’ garden for the butterflies and bees. I wanted a purposely mixed-up garden like a crazy quilt.

I left the roses, salvia, Russian sage, and milkweed because they were/are thriving and make a good backbone for this little area. Then this past spring I planted some new perennials [bee balm, daisies, Pentas, and rudbeckia] plus a few herbs [basil, thyme, mint, dill, and rosemary] that I knew were popular with butterflies and bees.

I also tossed in some marigolds, an annual, to add dots of color. Plus scattered some zinnia seeds for fun. So far everything has grown [except the dill] and is looking a little wild and raggedy like I’d hoped it would. But there’ve been no butterflies only bees which is good, but not cool like having butterflies around.

Still I am hopeful.

~ • ~

A PLAN TO NOT BE HERE IN AUGUST

If you’ve followed The Spectacled Bean for a while you know that I often take a blogging break in August. I don’t like August. The heat & humidity + the pollen makes me itchy, twitchy, and bitchy.

While I admit that being bitchy can be a great catalyst for interesting blog posts, the itchy and twitchy part requires that I get cozy with the girls— Pat, Vertie, and Flo. I’m talking about Pataday eye drops, Alavert antihistamine pills, and Flonase nasal spray.

Meds for seasonal allergies, ‘ya know.

And the thing is that the girls make me tired so that writing seems like a chore instead of a joy. And I won’t let blogging become a chore. That would never do.

Soooo I’m ducking out of blogland for the month of August. I hope to return in September after allergy season is history for me.

Later, kids!