Confessions Of A Reluctant Family Historian: My Kingdom For A Shredder

July 9, 2024July 9, 2024 / Ally Bean / 249 Comments

This is what is tripping me up. 😵‍💫

Last week while the outside temperatures and humidity soared to uncomfortable heights, I started going through boxes of old family photos + paper stuff, not because of an in-depth interest in genealogy, but because I want to reclaim a closet.

You see in our guest bedroom closet there are a gazillion and twenty-two boxes of old family photos + paper stuff that take up half of the closet.

Decades ago I inherited these boxes of old family photos + paper stuff from my mother and two aunts. While the boxes have been out of my sight for years their existence, even hidden away, has nagged at me.

Not as a constant worry mind you, but like a realization that there’s something I didn’t ask for taking up space in my life. And that something is weighing me down.

Group of guys, my great uncle is probably one of them.

Thus with quiet resolve I’ve begun going through these boxes that are disorganized, dusty, and sometimes have a musty odor that requires the use of an electric air cleaner in the room.

First I shredded that which obviously has no value. Things like a 1988 sales receipt for a “gold necklace” that was my mother’s, but who knows which necklace it refers to. Or things like patient notes scribbled in my doctor father’s chicken scratch cursive handwriting on the back of envelopes.

Then in an attempt to make some sense of it I’m sorting the contents of the boxes into smaller piles of:

Photos: a) by person when name is on the back or b) by guess based on the age of photo not the people in it [2 examples seen on this post]
Letters: a) personal exchanged within the family or b) signed by famous people
Historically interesting circuit rider preacher stuff [my great grandfather was one]
Lighthearted tidbits like comic strips or funny stories or cute cards
Bibles: 12 [!] complete ones + 3 New Testaments [1 in Spanish] + 1 Apocrypha

And this is where the project stands today.

Group of gals, my grandmother is probably one of them.

While I long to get this stuff dispatched to where it needs to go [trash? digitized photos? museums? wherever you send old Bibles?] there is a problem, obliquely referred to in a literary way in the title of this post. Gold star to anyone who gets the reference.

After shredding some old family photos + paper stuff and filling three 33 gallon extra large trash bags, I broke our 25 y.o. paper shredder. Jammed it up to a point that we decided to buy a new one, currently on order with Amazon, to be delivered later this week.

Because I have only just begun to shred. 😑

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QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

If you have inherited family photos, either because you wanted them or by default because you’re the end of the line, what have you done with them?

What project or projects are lurking in your closet, taking up physical and emotional space in your life?

Did you break any machines last week? If so, which one or ones?

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Because It’s Funny: When Life Imitates A Movie + Determining YOUR Sense Of Humor

June 25, 2024 / Ally Bean / 238 Comments

A STORY IN WHICH I’M REMINDED OF A MOVIE

You, my gentle readers and kind lurkers, may remember that last summer I mentioned our neighbor bought an electric robotic lawnmower that when programmed cuts the grass making perfectly straight, amazingly pretty, latticework lines across his yard.

I nicknamed the machine Yertle because as it wanders around it looks like a large slow-moving turtle.

[Also because I like to name things.]

At the time I mentioned Yertle a few commenters asked: How do you stop someone from stealing it?

We now know that the answer to this question is: YOU DON’T.

Yes, someone driving by midday saw Yertle out in the front yard, stopped, hopped out of his black pick-up truck, and ~~kidnapped~~ stole Yertle. Due to the angles on neighbors’ doorbell cameras, the theft was caught on video but the license number on the truck and the face of the thief weren’t.

However, there was one thing the thief didn’t consider when he stole a machine that is programmed using 22 satellites in ye olde heavens above. You see, once Yertle was unceremoniously lifted over the property line, with a hat tip to ET, Yertle phoned home.

Literally.

Immediately.

Thereby alerting our neighbor that Yertle had been swiped and that he was resting in the back of a pick-up truck that was speeding into the countryside.

So our neighbor called the Sheriff’s Department to tell them what had been stolen and to look for a black pick-up truck. Plus our neighbor, using his cell phone that tracks Yertle, was able to tell the Sheriff’s Department Yertle’s current exact location as the thief drove down the road.

Then our neighbor waited.

Welp, apparently the thief figured out that Yertle had a GPS tracking device, so before the Sheriff caught up with the truck Yertle was found*, abandoned unharmed by the side of the road.

Yertle came home no worse for the wear, a victor over the forces of evil, and as you can imagine, the talk of the ‘hood.

A QUIZ TO DETERMINE YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR

I stumbled over this questionnaire, Test Your Humor Style. It’s based on Rod A. Martin, Ph.D.’s academic idea that humor can be divided into four different types.

After answering 32 easy questions, I learned that my humor styles, succinctly defined, in descending order are:

Self-enhancing [97th percentile], meaning I look on the funny absurd side of things;
Affiliative [73rd percentile], meaning I enjoy sharing amusing stories to make people laugh;
Self-defeating [64th percentile], meaning that I laugh along with others when being made fun of; and lastly
Aggressive [17th percentile], meaning I don’t use humor to tease, put down, or manipulate people.

There’s more to the definitions of each humor style so instead of writing in depth, I’ll share the following taken directly from my results page.

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

What’s new in your neighborhood? Spill the tea!

Ever reminded of a movie by something that happened in real life?

What’s your favorite funny movie?

Do you think the four types of humor make sense?

If you took the quiz, what is your primary style of humor?

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* I wrote this post yesterday morning then learned the rest of the story last night. Come to find out after rescuing Yertle the Sheriffs did catch up with the black pick-up truck. The two men in it claimed that the only reason they’d taken Yertle was that it was by the trash cans on trash day and they thought it was a motorized toy car being thrown out. Uh huh.

My Rambling Report On The Color Green + My Art Project For Zazzy’s Challenge

June 11, 2024 / Ally Bean / 240 Comments

My Rambling Report On The Color Green

a spunky hosta growing among the stones underneath the deck

Well paint me green and call me a cucumber!

Someone on social media said the above and I got laughing.

Then I realized that I’ve been inexplicably drawn to the color green lately, seeing the color everywhere I turn. It’s summer here so it’s outside my window, but I’ve also found myself drawn to it inside the house.

Bought some drapes, white background with a vertical vine pattern in a color called Pine.

Bought some oval place mats in a color called Thyme.

Bought some bath mats in a color called Celadon.

[Even looked at, but didn’t buy, nail polish in a shade called Happily Evergreen After.]

Yep, I’m in my green phase now.

image via @grantdraws on IG

So what does the color green mean?

• According to Sensational COLOR green is “the most common color in the natural world, and it’s second only to blue as the most common favorite color.”

While green can be associated with money & envy, what I’m enjoying about green is its calming influence that symbolically represents freshness and progress.

• According to the Crayola Crayons wikipedia page, there are 22 Standard shades of green and many Speciality shades. Most of the crayons have basic predictable names but a few have unusual names such as: Inchworm, Asparagus, Fern, & Shamrock. My conclusion is that green means variety.

• An article from The Cleveland Clinic about chakras explains that there are 7 “places in your body where energy — in yoga terms, prana — congregates or is concentrated.”

The chakra associated with green is your heart chakra that’s located, somewhat predictably, in the center of your chest. Keeping your heart chakra open is important if you’re to maintain balance.

made me laugh so here it is

“It ain’t easy being green.”

Kermit nailed it when he shared his burden of being green, like leaves, in his mellow soulful song “Bein’ Green” [HERE].

Is there anyone among us who doesn’t understand that blending in with other ordinary things, instead of standing out like splashy sparkles in the water, can be frustrating?

Of course he goes on to say that green can be cool and friendly-like which is where I’ll end this scintillating, marginally informative, blog post brought to you by the Universe nudging me to notice the color green.

And who can argue with that‽

• ❇️ •

My Art Project For Zazzy

Zazzy of the blog zazamataz has challenged us, her bloggy friends, to create some art. In her post [HERE] she shares a video in which an artist shows you how to use water color paints, a roll of painter’s tape, and a black Sharpie to manifest art.

The video, like Zazzy, is encouraging so I decided to see what I could do, adapting as I went along.

First I bought some watercolor paints at the grocery store, forgetting to buy a few extra paint brushes. Then I found notebook paper in my desk drawer, discovered a roll of masking tape in the kitchen junk drawer, decided to use Q-tips in place of paintbrushes, and substituted a pencil, then an ink pen, in place of the Sharpie I didn’t have.

In other words I used what I could find around here.

Below is my masterpiece.

• ❇️ •

Questions of the Day

Do you like the color green? Where do you see green in your life? Do you see it literally and/or do you use the word figuratively?

Do you *MOO* when you see a cow thereby announcing its existence? If not, what’s wrong with you?

Considering I’m not an artist by training or inclination, how do you like my artwork? Are you willing to try to create some art, just to see what happens when you try?

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The One About The Stink Bug Hunter & His Preferred Tools Of The Trade

May 29, 2024September 24, 2024 / Ally Bean / 286 Comments

Photo via Washington Post

Our May temperatures have been warmer than normal, enticing brown marmorated stink bugs to emerge earlier than usual from their winter digs. While they cause no structural damage to buildings, they are a nuisance.

Kind of creepy to see in my opinion.

We rarely find them inside the house [unlike the roller shade situation earlier this year], but notice them when we sit on our screened-in porch.

One of us [not me] has decided to wage war against them, like the semi-retired suburbanite that he is. While Indiana Jones had his hat & a whip, Zen-Den has his fly swatter & toilet paper.

The fly swatter he uses to slap stink bugs off the screens or walls; the toilet paper he uses to pick them up and squish them before he flushes them down the toilet. He is on a mission, carrying these items with him whenever he steps onto the porch.

The Stink Bug Hunter’s preferred weapons.

Thus equipped with the items seen in the photo immediately above Zen-Den has become a menace to stink bugs. He stalks them while we sit, ostensibly to relax, on the screened-in porch.

He is ever vigilant.

Hence I’ve learned to put my preferred beverage into a Tervis with a lid so that stink bugs, pursued by ~~my sweet baboo~~ the Stink Bug Hunter don’t land in my drink.

As they are wont to do.

And further, as a long-time married person who sees humor in many things, I’m entertained, enthralled even, by the tenacity of a man who has decided to attempt to reign victorious over stink bugs.

As if that’s going to happen. 🙄

• • •

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

What kind of insect do you dislike the most? When confronted with them do you jump into action like Zen-Den to kill said insect?

Are you, like me, a fan of sitting outside with a beverage at hand? If so, factoring in the time of day, what is your preferred beverage? Do you need to have a lid to put on top of it?

What’s new with you? Got any tales to tell about your life in the merry month of May?

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