Introspection

Monet, Spiders And Thoughts Thereupon

/ Ally Bean / 26 Comments

I took these photos while standing on our deck early yesterday morning.  It was foggy outside and the world looked like something out of a Monet painting.  Nature’s beauty charmed me, but also lured me into a much too contemplative frame of mind for a Monday morning.

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Seeing my world in this hazy way left me feeling grounded + old.  I realized that I’d seen it all this way before, but was now remembering that there’ll be a finite number of other times that I’ll see it this way again.  Feeling introspective, I was.

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But as if on cue, when I went back inside the house to refill my coffee mug, I saw this little spider climbing up the inside of the screen.  Now here is a critter who’s living in the moment, I thought.  Good for him.

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He’s applying himself to the task at hand with all the enthusiasm + strength that he can muster.  And perhaps he has the real message of this early morning: get out there, start climbing and do something.  No need to get stuck in maudlin contemplation when there’s life to be lived now.  Spider Wisdom 101.

Doesn’t Everyone Have A Sofa In The Middle Of Their Kitchen?

/ Ally Bean / 27 Comments

I’ve gotten away from talking about our home redecoration projects here on The Spectacled Bean. I don’t know why, because they continue on behind the scenes and influence my life every day.

Often because the project is in the middle of everything.

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That being said, now that I’m in the final days of NaBloPoMo June 2014 and I need something to write about, I’ll revert to my blogging roots and tell you what we’re up to around Chez Bean.

In July or August when furniture goes on sale, we are going to buy a new sofa and chair for the TV room.  This is why the current sofa got itself moved into the kitchen.  I needed to get an idea of what the TV room would look like without a large blue object influencing me.

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Now having seen the TV room, sans blue, with my makeshift ottoman-esque example of what a khaki-gold sofa might look like against the wall, I think that a neutral-colored, nubby-textured sofa and chair will look great in this room.  With lots of colorful pillows, of course.

So that, my gentle readers, is what’s going on here… right now… in the middle of our kitchen.

Sunshine, Paperweights & The Magic Of Perspective

/ Ally Bean / 16 Comments

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I noticed that in the late afternoon the sun shines into our dining room through the French doors.  I have a paperweight collection on a table that happens to be in the path of the sunshine.

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When the light passes through the paperweights it makes beautiful patterns on the wall.  The patterns are easy to see, weirdly shaped and fun to capture with my camera.

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On a whim I adjusted my camera focus to distort the sunshine as it went through the paperweights and I found something different to see.  Something vaguely familiar, yet unique.  Proving once again, that what you see is all in how you go about looking at things.

In Which I Attempt To Spring Clean & Am Thwarted By Motherly Advice

/ Ally Bean / 22 Comments

Order out of chaos.

It’s that time of year.  Spring.  And my half of our clothes closet is a mess.  As usual.  Just ask Zen-Den.

So I’ve decided to be strong, be decisive, be ruthless… and sort through my clothes.  And accessories.  Because it’s not doing me any good having all this stuff piled up hither and yon.

I crave a calm, organized closet.  Angst-free.

Encourage or discourage?

But here’s the issue, when I start to organize anything in our home I hear my late mother’s voice telling me three of her stock phrases. The woman was nothing if not consistent.  And cautious.

  1. Waste not, want not.
  2. Be careful.
  3. Think it through.

So then after acknowledging that these phrases are bouncing around inside my mind, I become so filled with doubt that I do not do that which I set out to do.  And the closet… or the basement… or the junk drawer remain messy.

Stumbling over the past.

It’s the oddest thing.  I can let go of outdated ideas with ease.  I can move on from rotten relationships as needed.  But when it comes to objects that I’ve bought or inherited, I have difficulty deciding what to do with them.

Begging the question: how do you un-program that which a well-intentioned mother who grew up during the Depression programmed into you?

There must be an override switch somewhere, right?