Taking A Break From Blogging + A Tally Of YOUR Favorite Ice Cream Flavors

June 28, 2022July 11, 2022 / Ally Bean / 222 Comments

QOTD: how many words did I use in this post? Hmmm…? Care to guess?

~ • ~

I’m tired.

My home is in chaos with no end in sight for these remodeling projects. The country is going to hell in a handbasket courtesy, most recently, of the Supreme ~~Snort~~ Court. And the world is a dumpster fire thanks to Mr. Putin.

I am almost without words.

Thus I’m going to step away from blogging for the month of July, maybe longer, so that I might REGROUP. Perhaps RECONSIDER what I want to do here. RELAX, even.

But before I go, let me share the following with you. 😋

~ • ~

AND FINALLY READER COMMENTS IN THE FORM OF A TALLY…

About ice cream flavors. You told me your favorites. Listed below in descending order of preference are the flavors with two or more votes:

VANILLA
CHOCOLATE
STRAWBERRY
MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP
MOOSE TRACKS
COOKIE DOUGH
ROCKY ROAD
PRALINES AND CREAM
COFFEE
DARK CHOCOLATE SORBET

~ ~ • ~ ~

Good Morning To Everyone Except WordPress, My Frenemy

October 6, 2020 / Ally Bean / 241 Comments

Et tu, Brute? 🤓

Entirely against my wishes in one of the most difficult years of my life, WordPress, my now former friend, has stabbed me in the back by stealing my favorite classic editor. This is no way for a friend to act.

Here’s the dealio. One week after sending me the annual renewal bill for this personal blog, WordPress has dumped their new unwanted editing system on my account. They call it the block editor; I think of it as the blockhead system.

I don’t want this new editor, nor do I need this change. I’m already living in a daily state of confusion and angst without this added burden in my life. This begs the question: would a true friend make my life more difficult during a pandemic? Just so they could get their jollies at my expense?

I’d say ‘NO.’ However as of yesterday I’m being forced to learn a new way to write + edit my blog posts, showing me how little I mean to WordPress. Not that I’m surprised, mind you. I know I am, we all are, pawns in WordPress’s game.

BUT it does bring home the fact that social media companies, all of them, do not have our best interests at heart. They manipulate us into communicating in ways that primarily serve their purposes, not our own.

Will I continue to write a blog in a system that makes more work for me? Truthfully, I dunno. I don’t have to keep a blog, I do it for fun– and let me clue you in, learning a new editing system is the opposite of fun for me.

I’ve no doubt that I can learn how to use this blockhead editor, but I resent having to do so this year because, as we all have learned in 2020, life is too short and precious for stressful sh!t that detracts from living happy and healthy.

Not cool, WordPress. Not cool. 🤨

[At this point I’d like to add an image to this post but I don’t know how to do so. That sentence makes me sad… sadder, I suppose. Also, I have some posts written ahead but I don’t know how to publish them now that I’m in block editor hell.]

Goodbye Spring: Excuse Me While I Kiss The Sky, NOT

June 20, 2019 / Ally Bean / 92 Comments

Purple petunias in terra cotta pot as seen in humid, hazy light. No filter involved. Photo taken mid-morning.

With a hat tip to Jimi Hendrix, I’d like to share with you, my gentle readers, that this has not been a wonderful spring. This makes me sad because I love late spring.

It’s my second favorite time of year. Oh yes it is.

However this year, to continue quoting Jimi, “Lately things they don’t seem the same, Acting funny, but I don’t know why.”

Which is me alluding to the fact that all it does around here is rain.

Soggy parsley.

I’m talking inches of rain, daily. Flash flooding. Mudslides. Slippery sidewalks.

Overwatered pots of formerly beautiful geraniums and petunias, now looking like death warmed over.

Pots of herbs so wet they are existing in a weird soggy stasis, looking pathetic.

Sad basil.

In the parlance of ye olde weather forecasters who claim to know why we’ve had this excessive, soul-sucking rain: there’ve been “numerous ripples of energy” that have brought more rain showers and thunderstorms to the region than are normal.

Uh huh. That’s nice.

However, be that as it may, while the rain continues unabated I’ll just contemplate “am I happy or in misery” while I’m stuck inside the house today in my own version of a caffeinated, irritable, non-psychedelic ~~purple~~ gray haze.

Me happy. NOT.

Stone steps down to terrace as seen in humid, hazy light. Again, no filter involved. Photo taken mid-morning.

In Which Ms. Bean Attempts To Buy Outdoor Holiday Lights During A Bleak Week

November 29, 2018November 29, 2018 / Ally Bean / 84 Comments

~ ~ • ~ ~

A photo of the view out a bedroom window. Bleak.

~ • ~

THIS WEEK I’VE BEEN TRYING to get it into gear to start putting up outside holiday decorations.

You’d think at this point in my life that’d be a simple task.

You would be wrong.

Last year, in a fit of tidy, I got rid of all our outside lights and wreaths. The lights worked in sections and the decade-old wreaths were looking downright ratty. They were more wire than fake pine needles and the dingy red bows on them added to the pathos.

So, knowing that we needed some new decorative stuff, I hauled myself up off the sofa and wandered meself through many a store looking at all the newfangled, complicated, high-priced lights– and wreaths.

~ • ~

A photo of ground cover covered in snow. Bleaker.

~ • ~

FROM MY FORAY INTO ACTUAL brick and mortar stores I learned that I haven’t a clue about how much to spend, what to buy [net or string? LED or incandescent? solid color or multi?] and where we might put that which I buy once I get it home.

I also looked at some pretty sparkly wreaths– that all seemed to be covered in glitter. Me not happy. Me not want glitter traipsed into house.

Me fussy like that.

And so on that note of shopping defeat, underscored by one of the bleakest weeks I’ve ever seen in November, I’ll end this post. Figuring that there’s a weekend a’coming and a husband to be cajoled into helping me find the perfect outdoor lights and wreaths.

To add much-needed color to our world. Hallelujah!

~ • ~