I’m Just Saying

Talking Turkey: One Sorry Not Sorry, One Grumble Avoided

/ Ally Bean / 202 Comments

Late afternoon sunlight as seen through trees with leaves turned golden in autumn.

Today is Tuesday. 🗓

This means that if you live in the United States [and if you celebrate Turkey Day] then tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day Eve followed by Thanksgiving Day on Thursday.

I’m not sure if I could’ve made the previous paragraph more convoluted, but probably.  I was trying to be clear and informative, logical even.

Just talking turkey, you know. 😉

It’ll be the two of us celebrating Thanksgiving together this year, most years actually.  We’ve a turkey breast currently in the freezer that I’ll start thawing in the refrigerator soon.  And we’ve the ingredients to make some of the fixings that traditionally go with a turkey dinner.

The usual suspects waiting to be part of Thanksgiving dinner.

YEP to mashed potatoes and stuffing and cranberry sauce and gravy, but NOPE to green bean casserole and yams with little marshmallows.  You may consider those last two sides part of the traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner, but I don’t like them so we’re not gonna have ’em.

Sorry not sorry, don’t even try to convince me otherwise. 🤨

All that’s left for me to do is to go to the bakery to pick up some pies, cherry and pumpkin this year, then get home safely.  Starting today and for the next few days I try to stay away from grocery stores, parking lots around said, and people within.

I’ve learned that Thanksgiving week is one doozy of a chaotic shopping experience in grocery stores.  Generally speaking the shoppers be frenzied, with long lists in hand.  The best thing I can do is stay far away, giving everyone the space they need to shop, while I go home not grumbling about people.

Well, at least not grumbling about the ones in the stores. 🛒

Blue sky with rusty orange leaves, the epitome of an autumn palette.

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

What don’t you like about the traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner? What do you like?

Do you have a sorry not sorry about Thanksgiving, or this week in general?

Tell all in the comments below. 

In Which I Punctuate, Doodle, Get Out Of My Head, Then Laugh

/ Ally Bean / 171 Comments

As you know this is a personal blog.

While I strive to write about things that happen in my daily life, I don’t always have much to tell you, my little moonbeams.

Yet I said I’d be here so I am here.

I didn’t go looking for these 3 unique things to do + 1 funny YouTube video but stumbled over them while doing research for other projects. 

Enjoy!   

• • •

✅ I stumbled over this website, just the punctuation, and decided to try it.

All you do is cut and paste a sample of your writing, input it on the screen, then ‘winner, winner, chicken dinner’ the algorithm generates an image showing only the punctuation in your writing sample.

For the life of me I don’t know what this proves but here are 6 paragraphs of my blog writing reduced to punctuation.

This is a line of punctuation, somehow symbolizing something.

✅ I stumbled over this website, Right-Angle Doodling Machine, and decided to try it.

All you do is use your arrow keys to create an original doodle.  It’s easy– and reminds me of 6th grade when I was bored out of my gourd with “new math” so I started making doodles like these using pencil and paper to pass the time.

I’m not sure why, but making this doodle was relaxing and made me feel youthful and creative, in a linear way.

This is a darned dandy doodle, if’n I do say so myself.

✅ I stumbled over these 20 Journaling Prompts I Swear By to Get You Out of Your Head and decided to try them.

All you do is find yourself a comfy spot to ponder and write, then set about answering each prompt, for your own personal enlightenment.

While I appreciate the concept of writing prompts, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I’m reluctant to use them.  That being explained, overall these did get me thinking about my life in a new way– and that is good.

This is a sprig of catmint and two late-season roses with perfectly pinkish petals.

• • •

Below is The Theory and Practice of Editing New Yorker Articles by Wolcott Gibbs as read by Bill Murray. If you’re a wordsmith, it’s a hoot.

Notes + Photos From The Backyard: No Bad Stuff, Only The Good Stuff

/ Ally Bean / 181 Comments

SITTING OUTSIDE ON OUR DECK late in the afternoon I heard the neighbor girl + her friends playing on the neighbor’s deck.  The girls were all around age 5 and they were chanting:

“No bad stuff… No Bad Stuff… NO. BAD. STUFF.”

They were loud. They were serious. They were coloring.

I started laughing to myself because they reminded me of a boss I worked for years ago.  This boss, a woman, would breeze into my office and say: “tell me the good stuff, only the good stuff.”

Let’s say she was singleminded in her pursuit of demanding creating a positive workplace.  For her idealism I admired her.  HOWEVER one does have to occasionally face reality and deal with complex, not-so-happy issues which, it’ll come as no surprise to you, this boss had difficulty doing.

Can you imagine? 🙄

THE FOREGOING IS MY STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS way of getting to what I think you, my little pudding cups, might find of interest.

Last April I decided to take a monthly photo late in the month of the same scene.  It shows part of our backyard [+ a little of the neighbor’s backyard].  I’ve no story to go with the photos, no particular reason why I started taking the photos.

I just did.

And now, as an homage to the determined little girls and my positivity-crazed former boss, I’ll end this post with four months of photos of our backyard in which you can see that things change, but remain the same.

From my point of view there’s no bad stuff in these photos, only good stuff.  I say this  because nature does what nature does. N’est-ce pas?  And it’s up to us to take note, then do our best to adapt to what is.

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

JULY

~ ~ 💚 ~ ~

Looking For Good Luck: Angel Numbers Are A Serious Matter, Maybe

/ Ally Bean / 217 Comments

The oppressive July heat & humidity that made me a teensy bit fractious have given way to what is supposed to be a week of cool & clear August days.  HALLELUJAH, I feel restored and back to my silly lighthearted self.  Case in point…  

This is a photograph of me as a little bean. On the back it says it was taken by pixy PIN-UPS, which was part of J.C. Penney. My mother’s notation says: “Not sure when taken but cute!!”

~ • ~

The first idea to float into my mind this morning was a question.  The question was: Are you rigging the system if you wait around for Angel Numbers to appear on a device?

In case you’re unfamiliar with Angel Numbers* they’re a series of digits that are either all the same like 4-4-4 or are numbers in a sequence like 1-2-3-4.  You see them on digital devices or on street addresses– or sometimes flight numbers.

In my youth Angel Numbers were known bearers of good luck.

As kids when we saw an Angel Number, usually on an electric digital alarm clock or the bank’s time & temperature display, we’d make a wish.  They were a rarity back then, more so than they are now with computers screens and smart phones and Dick Tracy-like watches.

I still notice them and admit that I want as much good luck as I can get so I still wish on them. You never know…

Thus the other day when I glanced at the time on the microwave and saw that it was 1:22 I stood in the kitchen waiting for the number to change to 1:23, an Angel Number.

Which brings me back to my original question.

By doing what I did, fabricating a contrived situation so that I’d definitely see an Angel Number, am I creating a scenario in which my Angel Number sighting is null & void because I rigged the system? OR am I using my own observational skills and clever wiles to make my own good luck opportunity?

Discuss.

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

Did you know about Angel Numbers as a child? Did you make a wish on them?

Do you make a wish on them now?

Did you then, or do you now, make wishes on other things? What are those things?

Do I look angelic or devilish in the photo at the top of this post?

~ ~ • ~ ~

* HERE is some information about Angel Numbers. It says they are part of tarot. Could be, but as a child they weren’t revealing my future to me, they were fun.