Pish Posh.

A Text Not Meant For Me, A Game Not Played By Me

/ Ally Bean / 257 Comments

IT WAS AROUND THIS TIME 5 years ago when I lost touch with, let’s call her, Kathleen the Control Freak— a natural born queen bee, uptight and competitive.

The Covid-19 pandemic lockdown had just begun. I’d texted her to make sure she was doing okay and got a terse reply something to the effect of: “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

I responded with a polite “Just checking in” and left it at that.

During the next few months I tried a few more times to text her, our usual way of communicating, but got no reply.

Crickets make more noise.

Come December we didn’t receive a holiday card from Kathleen the Control Freak which confirmed I no longer existed in her small world which, truthfully, I was happy to not be part of anymore.

I’ve never been good in the role of a wannabe to a queen bee.

• • •

FAST FORWARD TO A FEW weeks ago when Kathleen the Control Freak texted me, including me in a group text to friends who play pickleball at her club. This seemed odd because: 1) her previous behavior over the last five years suggested I am persona non grata; and 2) I don’t play pickleball.

I believe I was accidentally included.

At this point, fun as it would have been to text a group reply about this queen bee’s error, I did not do that. Instead I watched in real time as everyone, a group of women who’d never give me the time of day, texted among themselves.

From this I observed that these women, who gushed and fawned over each other, waited dutifully for Kathleen the Control Freak to establish dominance by dictating where and when they’d be going to breakfast together the next morning after she finished her 8:00 a.m. pickleball game.

Queens gotta rule all the courts.

• • •

NOW AS YOU CAN IMAGINE this experience left me with a few things to consider.

• I wondered why Kathleen the Control Freak, a perfectionist along the lines of Martha Stewart, still has my phone number, presumably for some reason, in her exalted list of contacts.

I admit this seemed odd to me but also not worth dwelling on. Her number is no longer in my contacts and that’s what matters to me.

• I wondered why I’d ever considered Kathleen the Control Freak to be a friend. Was I wrong when I thought she was fun to be around? Or have we both changed over the years— she getting bossier, me getting mellower?

That’s the conclusion I’m sticking with because I see no need to overthink why someone ghosts you.

• But most importantly, and this is where the snark is, I wondered about whether I should be mischievous and show up to join the group for breakfast the next morning.

After all I knew the details of the plan to get together, didn’t I? 

But I didn’t go. For one thing it’d have been an hour drive to get to their side of town and that seemed more bothersome & petty than worthwhile & victorious.

And for another thing despite contemplating this way to upset them, in reality I didn’t care about whatever the heck was going on with this group of grown-up mean girls.

Under the circumstances, would you?

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

Thinking about these last five years, has anyone ghosted you? Have you ghosted anyone? Details if you please.

Have you ever found yourself in a group text where you didn’t belong? If so, what did you do?

Who’s the most control freaky person you know in real life?

Do you play pickleball?

• • 🪴 • •

Confessions Of A Reluctant Family Historian: My Kingdom For A Shredder

/ Ally Bean / 249 Comments

This is what is tripping me up. 😵‍💫

Last week while the outside temperatures and humidity soared to uncomfortable heights, I started going through boxes of old family photos + paper stuff, not because of an in-depth interest in genealogy, but because I want to reclaim a closet.

You see in our guest bedroom closet there are a gazillion and twenty-two boxes of old family photos + paper stuff that take up half of the closet.

Decades ago I inherited these boxes of old family photos + paper stuff from my mother and two aunts. While the boxes have been out of my sight for years their existence, even hidden away, has nagged at me.

Not as a constant worry mind you, but like a realization that there’s something I didn’t ask for taking up space in my life. And that something is weighing me down.

Group of guys, my great uncle is probably one of them.

Thus with quiet resolve I’ve begun going through these boxes that are disorganized, dusty, and sometimes have a musty odor that requires the use of an electric air cleaner in the room.

First I shredded that which obviously has no value. Things like a 1988 sales receipt for a “gold necklace” that was my mother’s, but who knows which necklace it refers to. Or things like patient notes scribbled in my doctor father’s chicken scratch cursive handwriting on the back of envelopes.

Then in an attempt to make some sense of it I’m sorting the contents of the boxes into smaller piles of:

  • Photos: a) by person when name is on the back or b) by guess based on the age of photo not the people in it [2 examples seen on this post]
  • Letters: a) personal exchanged within the family or b) signed by famous people
  • Historically interesting circuit rider preacher stuff [my great grandfather was one]
  • Lighthearted tidbits like comic strips or funny stories or cute cards
  • Bibles: 12 [!] complete ones + 3 New Testaments [1 in Spanish] + 1 Apocrypha

And this is where the project stands today.

Group of gals, my grandmother is probably one of them.

While I long to get this stuff dispatched to where it needs to go [trash? digitized photos? museums? wherever you send old Bibles?] there is a problem, obliquely referred to in a literary way in the title of this post. Gold star to anyone who gets the reference.

After shredding some old family photos + paper stuff and filling three 33 gallon extra large trash bags, I broke our 25 y.o. paper shredder. Jammed it up to a point that we decided to buy a new one, currently on order with Amazon, to be delivered later this week.

Because I have only just begun to shred. 😑

• + • + •

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

If you have inherited family photos, either because you wanted them or by default because you’re the end of the line, what have you done with them?

What project or projects are lurking in your closet, taking up physical and emotional space in your life?

Did you break any machines last week? If so, which one or ones?

• + • + •

The One About The Stink Bug Hunter & His Preferred Tools Of The Trade

/ Ally Bean / 286 Comments

Photo via Washington Post

Our May temperatures have been warmer than normal, enticing brown marmorated stink bugs to emerge earlier than usual from their winter digs. While they cause no structural damage to buildings, they are a nuisance.

Kind of creepy to see in my opinion.

We rarely find them inside the house [unlike the roller shade situation earlier this year], but notice them when we sit on our screened-in porch.

One of us [not me] has decided to wage war against them, like the semi-retired suburbanite that he is. While Indiana Jones had his hat & a whip, Zen-Den has his fly swatter & toilet paper.

The fly swatter he uses to slap stink bugs off the screens or walls;  the toilet paper he uses to pick them up and squish them before he flushes them down the toilet. He is on a mission, carrying these items with him whenever he steps onto the porch.

The Stink Bug Hunter’s preferred weapons.

Thus equipped with the items seen in the photo immediately above Zen-Den has become a menace to stink bugs. He stalks them while we sit, ostensibly to relax, on the screened-in porch.

He is ever vigilant.

Hence I’ve learned to put my preferred beverage into a Tervis with a lid so that stink bugs, pursued by my sweet baboo the Stink Bug Hunter don’t land in my drink.

As they are wont to do.

And further, as a long-time married person who sees humor in many things, I’m entertained, enthralled even, by the tenacity of a man who has decided to attempt to reign victorious over stink bugs.

As if that’s going to happen. 🙄

• • •

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

What kind of insect do you dislike the most? When confronted with them do you jump into action like Zen-Den to kill said insect?

Are you, like me, a fan of sitting outside with a beverage at hand? If so, factoring in the time of day, what is your preferred beverage? Do you need to have a lid to put on top of it?

What’s new with you? Got any tales to tell about your life in the merry month of May?

• • 🤔 • •

The One About Spring Cleaning, Taking A Tumble, And Discussion Of Said

/ Ally Bean / 248 Comments

The Spring Cleaning Part

Last week we decided to do a proper spring cleaning on the first floor of our house. It’s almost all wood flooring, the outliers being the powder room and the laundry room that have tile floors.

As you can imagine cleaning and waxing all the wood floors means moving furniture, rugs, plants, lamps, decorative items from one room to another; then moving them back from whence they came.

Please note that we’re not obsessive about doing all the spring cleaning in one day, like we were when we were younger and working and being social butterflies who had places to go, people to meet.

No, now we go with the flow and take our time.

Over a few days.

The Tumble Part

Well, we’d done the floors in all the rooms except the living room. And I suppose I was feeling a little cocky about how efficiently we’d moved furniture and such around the first floor, like pros.

But pride goeth before the fall, people. [No pun intended but it is one.]

So as we were carrying the rolled up 8′ x 10′ heavy wool rug + pad back into the living room preparing to place it just so, I lost my balance on the slick clean waxed floor and dramatically, albeit slowly, fell down, KERPLUNK.

At this point, if’n we were a younger married couple, my true love would have rushed to my side making sure I was uninjured.

However as a much older married couple my true love knows I’m clumsy as all get out, so he just looked at me in a heap on the floor and said: “it’s just a few more steps to get the rug into place, you gonna help?” 

Thus prompted by his *concern* I stood up, doublechecking the knee on which I’d fallen to see if it still worked. And it did. As did my toes that had gotten twisted around and smashed when I sat unceremoniously on them.

No harm, no foul.

The Discussion Part

Now the foregoing isn’t meant to be a motherly warning against wearing only socks on your feet when you move heavy items around on wood floors, which I think we can agree might not have been, in retrospect, a good idea.

Instead think of this tale as the precursor to the conversation that followed in which we discussed what I could/should/might say to our primary care physician when I go for my annual physical checkup wherein she’ll ask: have you fallen in the last year?

The answer to this question is, of course, dependent upon how you choose to define “fall.” To wit:

Is a fall any incident wherein you find yourself unintentionally down on the floor/ground despite the unusualness of the situation? Such as what happened to me while helping with the rug, something that might be classified as a minor mishap, merely a slip.

OR

Is a fall specifically when you lose your balance unexpectedly whilst doing something normal like walking around your house, your neighborhood, a store, a park, wherever? Such as tripping over something, or having a stroke-like moment, resulting in a serious keeling over out of nowhere. 

I await your insightful comments, my little moonbeams of good health. Trust me when I say this has been an ongoing, unresolved, conversation here at Chez Bean.

What say ye?