Share Your World | Going To The Turtles

June 20, 2017August 28, 2018 / Ally Bean / 75 Comments

Once a week Cee asks the questions on her blog, and I answer them here on my blog. It’s a good thing, ‘ya know?

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• What is something that people are obsessed with but you just don’t get the point of?

Basketball.

*yawn*

Here’s my take on it: a bunch of people, who call themselves a team and wear matching culottes, make a big deal about bouncing a ball while running to one end of a wooden court where they make squeaky noises with their shoes as they toss the ball among the team members. Eventually, someone attempts to throw the ball into an overhead small circular net.

Why? No one knows.

Then, the whole nonsensical show repeats at the other end of the court allowing the other team to do the same thing. And then it happens again.

Ad infinitum. 👎

• What quirky things do people do where you are from?

No one does this where I live now but…

I grew up in a small town where the word “mango” meant green pepper. Yep, no one called green peppers what they were, except my mother who knew that a mango was a tropical fruit, not a vegetable.

She never tried to correct anyone in town on this point, but she did make it clear to me that what everyone in this small town believed to be true, was in fact objectively false in the rest of the world.

It was a life lesson, I suppose, on the dangers of groupthink. And of putting the wrong ingredients into your recipes.

• What are some things you wish you could unlearn?

What it is like to be inside a MRI. All of them, any style. It’s a feeling too horrible for words.

• Who is someone that you miss having in your life?

I used to go to yoga classes at the wellness center in a local hospital. Carol, a RN, taught the classes.

These classes were the most safe and satisfying yoga experiences I ever had. However, Carol retired, the hospital closed the wellness center, and I’ve been left ever since trying to find [unsuccessfully] anyone as fun and centered as Carol was.

I miss Carol.

• Optional Bonus Question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Last week’s gratitude award goes to Fredrik Backman for writing the darkly humorous novel, A Man Called Ove. This book kept me entertained/distracted for hours so that the remodeling noise and the various people traipsing around inside our house did not bother me. No better review, eh?

This week’s looking forward to something goes to meeting some friends to go see a professional baseball game. We do this once a year and it’s always a good time, regardless of who wins the game.

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This post is part of Cee’s Share Your World Weekly Writing Challenge.

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Share Your World | Bright Green & Dark Blue

April 18, 2017August 28, 2018 / Ally Bean / 65 Comments

Bright Green: river birch tree leaves and catkins in the spring.

Once a week Cee asks the questions on her blog, and I answer them here on my blog.

• When writing by hand do you prefer to use a pencil or pen?

A pen. No doubt this is because I was taught to write with a Zaner-Bloser pen. This pen had what you’d expect a pen to have: that is, a teacher-approved inky writing tip, guaranteed to help make your cursive writing legible.

But on the other end of the pen was a pointy pokey plastic tip that was good for jabbing annoying boys. As a 4th grade girl might want to do. Should she be fed up with their silliness.

In retrospect this was the first multitasking tool to which I had access– and it taught me that if you make do with what you have at hand, you can solve your own interpersonal problems. Isn’t that right, Danny & Tony?

• Would you rather be an amazing dancer or an amazing singer?

While I like the idea of being amazing I don’t want to be on stage, therefore being an amazing dancer or an amazing singer ain’t gonna happen, kids.

Now should you want to refer to me as an amazing blogger, then we’re getting somewhere. 😉

Dark Blue: full moon in the early evening perfectly clear spring sky.

• If you were on a debate team, what subject would you relish debating?

Ok, again, I’m not one for being on stage so a debate team wouldn’t want me. Regardless of the subject I’d freeze up while on stage trying to declare or contradict or refute– or whatever it is that one does when one is on a debate team.

All those people looking at me… *shudder*

• What are you a “natural” at doing?

I’m pretty good at snarking. Rolling my eyes. Seeing the absurdity in the moment– and calling it out.

Also I can throw ingredients together, sans recipe, and usually make something edible. And I merchandise/decorate spaces by second nature, fussing around with things until they are visually pleasing and inviting.

• Optional Bonus Question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Last week’s gratitude award goes to the fun little video below that summarizes my pre-Easter week shopping experiences. Just like the red bear in the queue, no matter where I went I made some less than prudent decisions about which line to stand in. Gotta laugh, ‘ya know?

This week’s looking forward to something goes to a local garden nursery, only open a few months a year, that’s known for its unique plants. I’ve a list of some small garden tomatoes | peppers | cucumbers that I’m hoping to find at the nursery, so that I can have a manageable veggie garden in pots on our deck this summer.

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This post is part of Cee’s Share Your World Weekly Writing Challenge.

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Phooey, Piffle, and Pshaw: Gray Days Return & I Am Tired

March 14, 2017May 6, 2021 / Ally Bean / 75 Comments

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”

~ Cicero

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Phooey! I’m working on being grateful now, but after last week’s unexpected clear blue skies, this week’s return to dreary gray skies with snow has been difficult.

Piffle! Then add the lost hour of sleep [I’m looking at you, Daylight Savings Time] and I’m not feeling my usual writing mojo OR joie de vivre OR any other flapdoodle-y & twaddle-ish way of using words to indicate joy and productivity.

Pshaw! So instead of stressing myself to find something to write about that is actually interesting and fresh, I’ll just share some photos– and attempt to remember that I am grateful for this change in weather because the more the wet now, the prettier the flowers then.

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In case you care, I looked up the meanings of the exclamatory words I used above. They are defined as follows:

phooey = disbelief

piffle = nonsense

pshaw = contempt

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The One About My Favorite Public School Teacher

February 16, 2017May 6, 2021 / Ally Bean / 75 Comments

{ tweet by @ericweiskott }

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So which public school teacher inspired and encouraged me the most? Who had, and still has, the greatest influence on who I am today?

{ drum roll please }

My answer would be: Mrs. L——-, my high school sophomore English teacher.

She was the first teacher to ever tell me I knew how to write. All the other teachers before her, many good women and men, assumed we kids didn’t know what we were doing. But not Mrs. L——-, whose first + middle name was Clover May.

By the time I had Clover May she was nearing retirement– and didn’t give a rat’s tutu about what she was supposed to teach or how to teach it. She’d done this teaching gig for so long that she intuitively knew how to get kids to write.

So instead of closely following any textbooks or lesson plans, Clover May would tell us funny little stories from her own life*, then have us tell a similar story from our lives… in writing.

She believed anyone could write. It wasn’t a big deal. All you had to do was talk about what happened & BE SPECIFIC. Details like grammar and spelling could always be adjusted after you wrote down what happened specifically.

Yes, Clover May believed in all of us and our ability, perhaps yet untapped, to write a good story… as long as you were specific.

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* One of Mrs. L——-‘s funniest stories had to do with her given name. From day one she insisted that we kids know her full name. While decorum dictated that we call her Mrs. L——-, she believed we should know her first + middle name because this was an example of how to BE SPECIFIC.

So when Mrs. L——- discovered that one of her less-than-enthusiastic students could not remember her name correctly, she was ready to be perturbed. However, she couldn’t be upset with this kid, who apparently lived on a farm, because the way he confused her name was so clever that she had to laugh.

You see, this kid, who had been sort of listening to what she said, thought that Clover May’s name was… Alfalfa June.