Bunny Haiku & To April I Say Adieu

April 30, 2015May 6, 2021 / Ally Bean / 24 Comments

April is one of my least favorite months of the year.

I’m allergic to it and I don’t groove on all the mud courtesy of the rain and I have to pay taxes and I have to watch on the news while “patriotic” wingnuts get their panties in a wad over what it means to be an American and et cetera, et cetera.

Blah.

However, one thing that I do like about April is that it’s national poetry month. I didn’t learn much of anything about poetry when I was in college because my English major program was much too practical for such things, but I did learn how to write a haiku.

Thus I give you the following poem, with stunning rabbit-y photos taken yesterday, as my good-bye to April, a month that makes me sneeze like no other month can.

Ah-choo.

Bunny Haiku

Bunny on a hill,

Spotted me, then turned ’round,

Now perfectly still.

Curly Hair, Haircut Appointments & The Games I Must Play

April 28, 2015 / Ally Bean / 27 Comments

I. I have naturally curly hair.

Only a few people know how to cut naturally curly hair so that it doesn’t turn into a frizzy, choppy mess. In fact, I recently got one of those lousy haircuts, but that’s not the story I’m going to tell you here.

No, this story is about how it came to be that I needed to go to a different hair stylist than my usual one. It is a story about how difficult it is to get an appointment with my usual hair stylist, who moved her business to Salon Lofts about two years ago.

II. Here’s why.

As a client I book my appointments with my hair stylist online using the Salon Lofts easy, intuitive scheduler. ‘Tis a breeze to use it. Love it.

At first this process was easy and wonderful. When I needed a haircut I’d go to my account online and look to see when my hair stylist had an opening. Then I’d pick my appointment.

However, other deceitful clients have begun to take all the appointments that they think they might want. For instance, if Little Miss Suzy Self-Absorbed likes to get her hair cut at a specific time on Wednesday afternoons, she’ll book all of those Wednesday afternoon appointments for months ahead.

Then, 24 hours before said appointment, our Little Miss Suzy Self-Absorbed will decide if this is the week she needs to get her hair cut, or not. If she no longer wants the appointment, she’ll cancel it without financial penalty.

III. This leaves me in a difficult situation.

Either I play this take-all-the-appointments-I-might-want-game, or I check online every morning to see if an appointment I can use has opened up for the next day. Then I re-arrange my schedule to take advantage of it.

I’ve talked with my hair stylist about this scheduling situation, but here’s the thing: from her point of view this is not a problem. After 30+ years of cutting hair she has an established clientele who will do anything to get an appointment, so she’s always booked with clients who show up.

Leaving me to play games to get an appointment. And when that fails, forcing me to go to some other available hair stylist who, as this last cut would prove, ain’t so good at what she does.

A Report From The Sidelines Re: Neighbor Vs. Birds

April 14, 2015November 19, 2015 / Ally Bean / 33 Comments

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[Note to readers: we live in a neighborhood with homes built on wooded ravine lots. With many trees. In which birds build nests, as they are wont to do. These are facts.]

• • •

The neighbor woman who lives behind us has upped her anti-bird campaign. She’s still out to chase all the birds away from her property, but she has a new tactic.

Now, in addition to her shouting and noise-making, she has begun to place bright shiny silver & red metallic streamers in her trees.

• • •

She wanders around her backyard throwing these streamers up into the air near tree branches. Then when a streamer gets caught on a tree branch she loosely ties it to the branch, leaving yards of streamer fluttering in the wind.

This means that when the sun shines and hits the moving streamers, her backyard has bright lights randomly twinkling. It reminds me of an old-fashioned used car lot, which I guess she thinks is a turn-off for birds.

• • •

I find this new behavior alternately entertaining or annoying.

What entertains me is that her neighbors on the property immediately beside her have put a large bird feeder on a shepherd’s hook. They’ve positioned the shepherd’s hook in such a way that she’ll see the bird feeder ever time she steps outside onto her deck, but they cannot see it from their deck.

Don’t you just love passive-aggressive behavior?

• • •

However, what annoys me is that when the streamers are twinkling their brightest the light from them is strong enough to be noticed on our TV screen. Inside the house. Across the ravine.

Meaning that if we happen to be watching something on TV, our show has little sparkly red dots of color superimposed on it. It’s kind of like stroking out without going to the bother of having a stroke.

Now how strange is that?

Tweeted Twaddle: A Blog Post “Written” Without Doing Much Of Anything

April 9, 2015April 9, 2015 / Ally Bean / 20 Comments

• I can’t see straight today. My April allergies are in full swing making my eyes itchy & watery. This happens every year, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Now does it?

• Because I refuse to stop reading while my vision is blurry, I have set my Kindle’s font to old-people-rheumy-eyed large. It’s a feature on there. Really.

• Naturally, while reading I became a bit peckish so I tried a new-to-me snack. I did not like it, so I had to share this fact on Twitter. That’s what Twitter is for, right?

• So in closing of this eclectic [some would say filler] post, I leave you, my gentle readers, with this tweet of creative writing in which I summarize what I wish was going on outside today. Because a girl can dream. Yes?