Humor

This Is What Passes For Excitement Around Here

/ Ally Bean / 8 Comments
Botanically, a tomato is a fruit. However, in ...

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[Subtitled:  Somewhat Organized Thoughts Upon The Occasion of A Hopefully Random Act of Very Minor Violence]

Our mailbox is a rectangular, black metal one that sits on top of a white wooden post by the street.  It was tomato-ed. This is a first for us.

In the past our mailbox has been: smashed with a baseball bat;  peanutbutter-ed;  egged;  toilet paper-ed;  and robbed.  [One summer I decided to put a small bracket on the back of the white post and hang a basket of geraniums from it.  Very pretty… for the few days that it was there before someone stole it.]  But we’ve never had a tomato thrown at it.

The attack of this not-so-rotten tomato occurred between 6:30 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. while I drove Z-D to work.  Our mailbox, which is large, shiny and very noticeable when pulling out of our driveway, was just fine when we left home.  But when I got back home, the door to it was hanging open and there was a small dent in the side of it.  This I saw from the driveway as I pulled in.

It wasn’t until I walked down our driveway to see up-close what had happened that I realized that we had been tomato-ed with a large, firm, red tomato that left its seedy drool all over one side of our mailbox– and its gushy guts in the grass around the bottom of the wooden post.

As I didn’t grow up in suburbia I can only guess at the motivations for tomato-ing someone’s mailbox.  Questions plague me.

  • Which came first: the tomato or the mailbox?
  • Was this planned?  And if so, where did the perp get his or her tomato?  Stolen from someone’s garden?  Purloined from Mom’s frig?  Purchased at Kroger?
  • Is it possible that our mailbox wasn’t the intended target? 

Considering there are high school kids in the two house across the street from us & in one house next door to us, I have to wonder if this is a case of mistaken tomato-ing.

Answers to these questions elude me, leaving me to suspect that the real reason our mailbox was tomato-ed has nothing to do with logic.  I imagine, that like many things in life, the real reason that our mailbox was tomato-ed is that it was in the right place at the wrong time.

Macaroni

/ Ally Bean / 6 Comments

Busy week.

√  Now that the rain has stopped and the sun is out, the work on the backyard continues.  Noisy, messy work involving lots of rocks, stones, dirt– and mulch. Heaps and heaps of mulch.  This project has dragged on for too long.  “Just get it done,” she screams inside her head.

√  I’m spending about 3 hours per day in the car driving Z-D to work and back.  It’s all interstate highway or downtown driving at rush hour.  I’m a suburban babe, so this sort of driving is a bit stressful for me.

√  We’re social butterflies this week.

  • Drinks and dinner with friends from long ago who we bumped into while walking into Lowe’s.  Go figure.  Decided on the spot that we needed to get together for dinner to catch up, so on Sunday night we did.  It was great fun.
  • Dinner with one of Z-D’s former co-workers who is in town.  Always good to hear what this guy is doing.  He’s smart, interesting– definitely not one of the sheeple. Hallelujah!
  • Ballgame as business guests.  I like suites.  I like tasty food.  I like free beer.  This event aims to be the trifecta of good times for me.

√  Got my curly hair cut shorter yesterday.  It’s more like the Keri Russell hairstyle that everyone hated years ago– which I always thought looked good on her.  I’ve got lots of layers with more curl and wave going on now.  Kind of kicky.  Less predictable… if that is even possible!

Later.

This & That

/ Ally Bean / 6 Comments

{august – monday – late afternoon}

√  No, I haven’t lost my mind.  Yet.

On Friday, after I wrote and published my earlier post, I did something really annoying; I accidentally deleted my blog template.  Not the blog contents, mind you– just the template.  So, I had to find myself a new template– right quick, as they say.  And this little banana number is the one that I picked.

It’s kind of cheerful, don’t you think?  And the price is right– as in FREE.

Someday I’ll work on putting together a more appropriate header, but until that magic day arrives I plan on sticking with this bunch of bananas.

√   The Big Dig continues.

The landscape crew is here today planting bushes & shrubs & perennials & who knows what else.  This project has dragged on for so long now, with so many revisions, that I no longer know [or care] what is being planted.  I’m beginning to think of Greg, the land planner guy in charge of this project, as my very own Eldon.

Did Eldon ever finish painting Murphy’s townhouse?  Will Greg ever finish creating a backyard for us?  Stay tuned to find out.

√  I want to paint the hutch that is in our dining room.

(Actually, to be entirely accurate and forthcoming, it isn’t a hutch– it’s a pie safe.  But no one knows what that is, so I’ve taken to calling it a hutch.)

The “hutch” has scratches, gouges and is a dreary dark brown color.  Not pretty at all. But what color should I paint it?  Therein lies the problem.

So I’ve spent much of this afternoon looking online at photos of hutches.  I now can say that my head is swimming with possibilities— none of which seem quite right to me, but all of which are quite lovely to look at in someone else’s home.

I was hoping that after an hour or two of online research, I’d  find the perfect hutch– painted the perfect color– and it’d become my inspiration.  Which would give me the confidence to go forward with this messy, labor-intensive project.

But no such luck.  Yet.

Me, Myself & Why Not?

/ Ally Bean / 8 Comments

:: Me ::

“How many hours have you wasted trying to think of something suitably witty, funny and original for your status on Facebook or Twitter?” ~ Generatus  I found this site as I was surfing along, so naturally I had to try it.  My status update, in the purple box above, is delightfully accurate.

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:: Myself ::

“What’s happening?” ~ Twitter As some of you know already, I was not immediately taken with Twitter.  But instead of giving up I asked for some guidance, and many blogger/tweeters came forward to help me understand the medium.  Thank you.  Now I’m on Twitter just about every day tweeting along with the rest of them.  Learning lots.  Laughing often.  Loving much.  You can find me @spectacledbean.

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:: Why Not? ::

“Yikes  Something went wrong! But don’t worry, we’re on it — and we’ll try to get it fixed as soon as we can.” ~ Pinterest  I’m enjoying my Pinterest account when it works.  Have you started one yet?  It’s addictive;  I was warned, but I jumped in any way.  Click here to see what I’ve accumulated so far.

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So this is what I’ve been up to lately while online. How about you?  What cool things are you doing?