Don’t Let The Seeds Stop You: 6 Random Things To Tell You On A Tuesday In March

March 11, 2025 / Ally Bean / 216 Comments

1 – I am editing. After reading about the Zombie Test for writing I latched onto the idea. The test, created by Rebecca Johnson deputy director of the Marine Corps War College, is a rule of thumb that helps you discern if you’re writing in the passive voice. All you do is: “Try adding by zombies after the verb in your sentence. If it makes sense, congratulations! You’ve probably got yourself some passive voice.”

2 – I am laughing. So you know how everyone seems to want to stereotype other people by their generations? Well this snarky article, An Updated Guide To Generations, explains how to do this. I’ll just go ahead and tell you that I feel at home in this stereotype: “Maybe Boomers: Gen Xers who type on their phones using a single pointer finger.” Mock me as you will.

3 – I am communicating. I recently stumbled over the simple idea that there are three ways you can reply when someone tells you something about themself. You need to discern if this person is looking to be hugged, to be heard, or to be helped. If your response is what they expect, then you’ll easily connect. Never thought about interpersonal communication in this way, but now that I have I like it.

4 – I am dubious. On my radar is 25 Front Door Color Meanings Revealing the Personality of Your Home, an article that purports to intuit the personality of your home by noting your front door color. While I’m all about expressing yourself, I don’t believe front door color alone says much. It’s just one variable that contributes to the overall look of your property, so don’t get too hung up on it.

5 – I am remembering. This is the “do it now” Lockdown Manifesto written by Julian Hanna and published on April 17, 2020. It influenced me, in a positive way, about how I’d face the pandemic. Going back to re-read it five years later I am struck by two things: 1) it’s great timeless advice; and 2) we were so innocent about how Covid-19 would upend our lives forever.

6 – I am exploring. After a conversation with a friend about what it means to say you’re curious, I found this Britannica “Discovery Your Curiosity Type” Quiz. To be clear I wasn’t looking for a quiz, I was looking for a definition of the concept of curiosity, but the quiz popped up in my research. I took it, learning that of the 4 curiosity types I am an intuitive discoverer aka Explorer.

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

Assuming you don’t want to write in the passive voice, will you be utilizing the Zombie Test to make sure your voice is active?

Do you need to be hugged, heard, or helped today?

What color is your front door? What, if anything, does it say about your house?

Which kind of curiosity type are you? Did you take the quiz or are you guessing?

~ ~ 🍉 ~ ~

I’m Pleased To Announce That Miss Nettie Briggs Has Entered The Chat

March 4, 2025March 4, 2025 / Ally Bean / 217 Comments

Give attitude, get attention, right?

I like that saying, it explains many things.

I prefer, and I think you’d agree, that the attitude be positive spunk [aka signal] rather than negative junk [aka noise], BUT the result is the same: the attention is on you.

Not that giving attitude is anything new.

In fact back when the world was a more genteel place free from 24/7 news and social media, I’m sure people gave attitude— just in more subtle ways. They may have been irritated by events and other people, but seemingly they tolerated that irritation with more grace than today*.

Case in point is Miss Nettie Briggs. She is featured in the professional portrait seen at the top of this post. She is looking placid, mildly amused by what she is doing.

Or so it seems to me.

I found this photo mixed in among the boxes of family photos that I sorted last summer and wrote about in Confessions Of A Reluctant Family Historian: My Kingdom For A Shredder, my most popular post of 2024. [Go figure?]

I don’t know for sure who Miss Nettie Briggs was: my mother had written her name on the back of the photo so she knew who she was. But there’s no one left from any generation that’d be able to tell me Miss Nettie Briggs’s story.

However I have an inkling of who she might have been.

I remember my mother talking about a nurse who came to live with her family for a year, tasked with looking after my mother’s older sister who’d had abdominal surgery. Something that at the time was a dangerous procedure that required months of bedrest in order to heal.

Nettie lived with them and when not looking after her charge, who slept a lot, she read books to and played games with my mother and her younger sister.

Mom liked Miss Nettie Briggs, as I recall. Enough, I would guess, to keep a photo of Miss Nettie Briggs around in a ratty cardboard box full of dusty old family photos for me to find one day.

I adore Miss Nettie Briggs because I find her charming.

Thus it has come to be that Nettie’s photo is now framed and hanging on the wall in our study where I do my blogging, old-school style on a desktop computer.

Meaning that whenever I do anything related to blogging Nettie is looking over my shoulder, keeping my thoughts mostly civil, my sense of humor firmly intact, and my vibe jovial enough.

At least most days.

Questions of the Day

What’s your attitude today? Are you receiving the kind of attention you want?

Do you have any old family photos of somebody who is a mystery to you?

Do you have any old or new photos of people framed and hanging on your walls? Once upon a time that was frowned upon you know!

• 🤎 •

* Last month in various places online I, a kind-hearted person, was criticized for:

watching TV shows rather than reading books
suggesting that not all men are worthy of adoration
noting the demographics of people who got in my way
proposing that not all old things are worth saving
not obsessing constantly about The Donald and his First Buddy

Bomb Diggity: Staying In Your Good Books By Sharing Memes About Books + A Very Special Reader Comments

February 25, 2025March 3, 2025 / Ally Bean / 203 Comments

Yesterday I learned a new-to-me idiom. It is “in someone’s good books” and is defined by The Idioms as:

If you are in somebody’s good books, it means you have done something good that has delighted them, and if you are in their bad books, you have annoyed them, and they are now angry with you.

Granted over the years I’ve said something similar [to be “in someone’s good graces”] but now I have another respectable idiom to add to my personal lexicon.

Also, I have what will be the catalyst for this blog post: BOOKS.

You see, my little popsicles of profundity, I’m currently at loose ends, a blogging wordsmith with time on my hands because somehow or another IT IS STILL FEBRUARY and not much is going on in my life.

Thus with the aforementioned catalyst in mind I perused my folders and files that are in order for once because I’ve used this winter to get my little bloggy organized for the first time in years.

[To wit please note, there’s a revised About Ally Bean tab; a new Best Of The Bean tab; an updated Blogroll 2.0 tab + a new Header image.]

Getting back to the issue at hand, after looking into my recently organized folders and files I found the following which I present without any personal commentary. Yes, this is unusual for me but I’ll admit that at this point in February my bomb is less diggity than usual.

• • •

AND FINALLY A VERY SPECIAL READER COMMENTS…

After writing the above I realized the following bloggers who comment here regularly are also authors of published books. Seems like a good time to mention them. Click on a name and go say “HI!” Tell ’em Ally Bean sent you.

• • •

📚 Now it’s your turn to stay in my good books, and I know you want to delight me, so leave a comment below! 📚

• • •

A Chance Encounter In The Cereal Aisle, An Unexpected Act Of Probably Legal Kindness

February 18, 2025 / Ally Bean / 219 Comments

Something weird happened. Please allow me to explain.

A few weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon Zen-Den and I were shopping in Kroger. It was busy but not chaotic, for the most part shoppers were aware of each other. In fact the biggest annoyances were the extra temporary displays clogging the aisles.

Thus it was a slow process going up and down the aisles, but we weren’t in a hurry so we moseyed happily along, Z-D pushing the cart, me following behind him.

In the cereal aisle we came to a full stop when we encountered a couple in their 70s who were looking for one particular cereal. They’d abandoned their cart in the middle of the aisle and, with paper coupon in hand, were laser-focused on finding the right cereal on the shelf, wherever it might be.

We just smiled and waited.

Eventually they found their cereal and looked up to see us standing there, unperturbed. The woman, who was wearing a sweatshirt that said “You Are Enough,” apologized to us for holding up traffic.

No problem say we and go on our way continuing to shop.

• • •

Eventually we got what we needed and went to stand in line to use the U-scan machines. After a few minutes we scored a machine and went to it.

Doing our usual grocery shopping two-step, I handed the items to Z-D. He then scanned and bagged them.

Welp, while we were doing this I noticed the older couple was now in line for the U-scans. Then kind of out of nowhere the “You Are Enough” sweatshirt woman walks up to Z-D, who is in the process of weighing fruit, and says: “Excuse me sir, these are for you.”

At which point she hands a surprised Zen-Den three flowers [seen in the photo at the top of this post]. He looks at me, like I should have a clue about why this is happening, but I shrug.

Beats me.

So he thanks her while taking the flowers that he then hands to me. She smiles and goes back to standing in line with her husband by their cart of unpaid for groceries and a bouquet of flowers.

We finish checking out, pay for our stuff, and walk out of the store with me holding what was TECHNICALLY, from a strictly legal perspective was probably, STOLEN MERCHANDISE because at that minute while we walked to our car the flowers hadn’t been purchased by the older couple who was still standing in line waiting to buy them.

I hope.