I’m Just Saying – THE SPECTACLED BEAN

Ain’t It A Pip? Growling About Holiday Shopping, Enjoying An Animated Puppy

I’VE BEEN RUNNING AROUND THIS WEEK, looking for stuff to buy. Not really enjoying the process, but aware of the fact that if I don’t get out there now the stuff I want will be gone.

And don’t go all check online with me. I do that first to decide what I might want, then I allow brick and mortar stores to dazzle me with their customer service and ravishing displays.

During the holiday shopping season I give ’em a chance to please me because I’m old school.

So far, except for Barnes & Noble + Pottery Barn, stores have disappointed me. To wit, if your sales staff refuses to answer questions about your product [looking directly at you Apple] OR if you’ve opened your doors for business but none of your registers are working [giving you the side eye Crate & Barrel] then I will walk out of your store, irritated, but more aware of how little I mean to you.

Do those stores care about my lost sale? I guess not. Was I politely clear about how disappointed I was with my shopping experience? Oh yes. Will I go back into the particular location that ticked me off? Nope.

I don’t know whether I’ll try to buy online what I went into the stores to see and experience. The jury is out on that. But if I do buy anything it’ll be with reluctance because I feel more like a disposal pawn, than a happy returning customer.

• • 🎄 • •

BUT MOVING ONTO A CHEERY TOPIC, focusing on goodness, bringing this post full circle home via clever wordplay, I give you, my gentle readers, the following short animated film about a cute puppy named Pip.

You’re going to like this.

Get out the hankies because you’re about to be overwhelmed with the opposite of shopping frustrations. Yep, this is delightfully sweet and will warm the cockles of your heart. As they say.

I don’t know anything about this organization [I’m not affiliated with it] but this little video made me smile and feel good about life during a time of year when everyone, myself included, is running hither and yon– perhaps forgetting about the spirit of service to others.

Just Curious: Tell Me, What’s Your Least Favorite Holiday?

This is a question I’ve pondered lately. Everyone I know is quick to tell me about holidays they like, but rarely do I find myself in a conversation about a holiday someone does not like.

So I made this poll, basing my answers on my Judeo-Christian Middle Class American experiences. I know that around the world there are lots of other holidays than the ones I listed here, so if your least favorite holiday is not on my list you may add it to the poll using the “other” category.

If you, my gentle readers, want to tell me why a particular holiday is your least favorite, the comments below are the place to do it. Certainly everyone has one holiday that bugs them while everyone else around them is enjoying it.

Tell me about it!

The One About The Neighbors: What Will Be, What Isn’t Anymore, And What Is

Neighbor’s dead tree with turkey vultures [or turkey buzzards, pick your nomenclature]: I don’t like this.

WHAT WILL BE:

“Come and listen to my story bout a man named Jed, Poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed…”

Remember The Beverly Hillbillies? And remember their theme song?

Of course you do.

Well, that’s the song that’s been stuck in brain this past weekend.

Why?

I know not for sure other than Thanksgiving is about hospitality– and somehow seeing turkey vultures lounging above our property on the neighbor’s dead tree, that leans precariously in the direction of our screened-in porch, put the tune in my mind.

I don’t know that Jed Clampett shot turkey vultures, but it seems like something he’d have done. I do know that the dead tree will eventually fall. Fingers crossed, not on our roof.

So there’s that.

• • •

WHAT ISN’T ANYMORE:

“Well the first thing you know Jed’s a millionaire, Kinfolk said Jed move away from there…”

And speaking of neighbors I’ve taken the liberty of sharing with you, my gentle readers, a photograph of their empty backyard. A backyard that is free from a huge, formerly well-used, swing set that is no longer there.

While I admit that the kids playing on the swing set were hilarious and the squirrels frolicking on the swing set were total goofballs, I’m happy that it’s gone from my view.

The neighbor kids are old enough to drive now and the swing set has disappeared, presumably to some other backyard where it’ll be loved as much as it was here.

Change happens, eh?

• • •

WHAT IS:

“You’re all invited back again to this locality, To have a heaping helping of their hospitality…”

And finally while I’m on the topic of neighbors, here is a photo of their black and white kitty cat as seen on a foggy morning.

I don’t know his name, but he occasionally likes to sit under one of our trees. He’s a natural, knowing how to pose for the camera– and takes a darned good picture.

He’s not destructive, just inquisitive, and not afraid to hang out in our yard when so moved by his need for a little peace and quiet away from kids and dogs.

I can understand.

• • •

Questions of the Day

{ answer whichever question OR questions strike your fancy }

So what’s up with your neighbors? Any of their trees poised to fall on your house? Anything missing from their yards? Any of their pets enjoying a respite in your yard?
Can you sing The Beverly Hillbillies theme song from memory like I can? How about Gilligan’s Island theme song? Or The Flintstone’s theme song?
Do you believe I could get any more rambling and random than I have in this post? And how does that make you feel?

Blogging: When Nagging Doubts Take Over Your Mind

• • •

Would you like to know a secret? Something about me, as a blogger, that I’ve never told anyone before?

Well lean in closer, my gentle readers, here goes…

I’m spending way too much time worrying about what to write here.

I mean, if I learned one thing from my blogging break it is that when I’m not blogging I wake up in the morning with a mind filled with mellow thoughts.

And I start my day with a sense of clarity and purpose that’d make Covey [and his Seven Habits] happy.

But when I’m actively doing the bloggy thing I wake up in the morning uncertain, with confused ideas about what to write here and low-level anxiety about whether or not what I published earlier in the week was a good idea.

Doubts fill me in a way that only the Devil [and his Seven Mortal Sins] could take joy in.

• • •

So you know what I did? How I handled these nagging doubts that worry me?

I conducted a study on my bloggy self and my writing behavior wherein: 1) I tracked the time I spent blogging during October; 2) I reviewed my following/commenting process looking for a better way to do it; and 3) I evaluated my categories with an eye to revision.

Here are my findings + changes:

1) I put in about 3 hours per day on all things blogging, such as researching, writing, editing, publishing, reading other blogs, and commenting;

2) I follow a variety of bloggers and to do this more easily I’ve ditched WP Reader entirely, choosing to upgrade my Feedly account wherein I can have everyone filed away, all orderly like; and

3) I need to have fewer categories, well-defined in my head, so that when I sit down to write I’m focused and unworried, thus I’ve re-envisioned my blog with 7 categories.

• • •

So has my little foray into personal blogging self-awareness helped me feel more in control of what I’m doing here?

In a word, YES. Most definitely.

And maybe the message of this blog post is that once a year I need to revisit what I’m doing on this blog and how I want to keep on doing it, so that writing my personal blog doesn’t cause me to worry.

Seems obvious as I say it here, but sometimes the obvious doesn’t come so easily to me.

No secret about that, now is there?

On Election Day: 7 Issues On Which Americans Can Agree

Perhaps you’ve noticed lately that the news media in all its permutations is obsessing on the idea that we Americans are divided… on all issues… with no unity on anything to be found?

WELL, I CALL HOGWASH.

Thus I, a free spirit and seemingly only sane person left in the middle of this country, give you the following list wherein I’ve taken it upon myself to point out issues on which Americans agree.

YES, I USED THE A-WORD.

So what do you think, my gentle readers, are you comfortable focusing on unity instead of divisiveness? And of equal importance, what have I forgotten to add to this list? 🤔

~ ~ 🇺🇸 ~ ~

7 ISSUES ON WHICH AMERICANS CAN AGREE

Commercial airplane travel is a tedious experience, even if they don’t lose your luggage.
Daylight Savings Time ~~is a bad idea~~ in and of itself may or may not be a bad idea, but changing your clock in response to it, or any time change, is difficult. [Thanks to commenters, revised upon reconsideration.]
Paying attention to any Kardashian is a waste of your time.
Sports announcers, hired because they claim to be experts, are as clueless as the rest of us about who’ll win the game.
Christmas merchandise for sale in retail stores in August is ridiculous.
The price of a movie ticket is too high.
Meteorologists who report the weather on TV news are bluffing about what’s going to happen.

~ ~ 🇺🇸 ~ ~

Laughing With A Friend About Her Peeping Mom Problem

HERE’S the dealio. Friend and her husband live in a house on a country road, with an acre front yard, situated on the top of a steep hill.

This is rural. Very rural.

Directly across the way on the other side of the road on top of another hill is Friend’s husband’s parents’ house.

From their front doors they can see each other’s houses in general, but not the specifics, such as what’s going on inside the house or who’s sitting on the front porch.

Because they’re isolated up on their hills, it is private.

• • •

• • •

EXCEPT that Mother-in-Law recently retired from a full-time job and bought a pair of binoculars to watch the birds in the trees that surround her house on a hill in the middle of freaking nowhere.

However birdwatching has not been enough to keep MIL entertained. She is bored. And clever.

In fact, MIL has figured out that by sitting just so in her living room she can use her birding binoculars to look inside Friend’s house.

Or to see who’s sitting on Friend’s front porch.

To spy, in other words.

This new turn of events has put a strain on Friend and MIL’s relationship. MIL sees nothing wrong with peeping in on her son & wife’s daily life, and despite being asked to, will not stop her peeping.

Friend is peeved.

• • •

• • •

BEING a pragmatic soul I asked Friend why she didn’t shut the blinds on the windows on the front of the house. She told me she didn’t want to do that because it was unfair for her to have to do something she didn’t want to do because of her MIL’s interference in her life.

Uh huh.

So I suggested that Friend needed to do something to get MIL’s blood pressure up and offend her enough so that she’ll stop being a peeping mom.

“Amuck, amuck, amuck…”

To wit, I suggested that Friend could join a coven, dress like the witches in Hocus Pocus, and have a witches meeting in her front yard, complete with dancing, spells, and a big cauldron of boiling something, like the witches of Macbeth.

“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble.”

And you know what, my gentle readers? Friend told me that I was being silly, unsympathetic to her plight, and that I was: “NOT TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY.”

To which, between giggles, I managed to say: “You’re right, because this is not a problem. This is an opportunity to EITHER get over MIL’s interference & shut your dang blinds OR cause some mayhem.”

The choice is hers.

Question of the Day

With a peeping mom directly across the street from your house, would you buckle under and shut the blinds?

Would you stir the pot and cause some trouble to make a “mind your own bidness” point to peeping mom?

I await your insightful answers in the comments below.

The One About The Broken Bowls & The Price You Have To Pay

I broke 3 dessert bowls last week. It’s a personal best.

One bowl I placed in the dishwasher wrong and it got chipped.

Mea culpa.

The second bowl I dropped while taking it down from the cabinet shelf. The bowl slipped out of my hand, falling to the floor where, with a sense of drama that reminded me of a 3 y.o. having a meltdown over the way his PB&J sammie was cut, the bowl circled around the floor eventually crashing into the bottom of a cabinet where it broke.

The third bowl, like the other ones, was bone china, a notoriously sturdy substance when not around me. It was part of the now discontinued Lenox Poppies on Blue that was our china when we got hitched. I liked fussier things back then.

This third bowl cracked, then melted/broke, while in the microwave. I don’t know if there was a slight crack in it before I put it in there, but while it was twirling around in the microwave I heard a loud pop.

When I went to take the damaged bowl out of the microwave, unaware that the bowl was damaged, I grabbed it with my right hand and the ceramic was so hot that it burned the fingerprint off my index finger.

Only sort of kidding.

*ouch*

So here’s where I find myself today: I’m a wise, slightly klutzy, woman who realizes, and accepts, that I will probably live the rest of my life a few dessert bowls short of 8 formal dinner place settings, as one does when one is too cheap to replace the broken bowls.

$19.99 a piece? I don’t think so.

Ain’t gonna happen.