Snippets Of Life

No Song, Gleam, Or Peace Here: Ms. Bean Reports On Her Noisy Morning Thus Far

/ Ally Bean / 214 Comments

Good morning, my little rays of sunshine.

Or at least I wish it was a good morning.  I have no song in my heart.  No gleam in my eye.  And there is definitely no peace in my soul.

HERE IS WHY.

The following explains my morning so far.  Let me warn you that currently I’m not at my happiest.  Kind of snarly.

First, at 6:00 a.m. Zen-Den’s phone alarm chimed to inform him, and me be default, that is it was time for him, not me, to get up to face the day.  This is normal noise that I look forward to not hearing once he retires, something he claims will happen in September, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

He got up, but I snuggled under the covers to contemplate arising to meet the day at this awful hour continue sleeping, as one does.

THIS WAS NOT MEANT TO BE.

At 6:14 a.m. his phone started blaring its alert signal.  Yes, that horn sound went off, loudly, as if all heck had broken lose.  Z-D was in the shower, didn’t hear the alert signal, so I reluctantly got up to find out what the emergency was all about.

It was that an elderly woman had wandered away from a home on a street near here.  She was only wearing a light top and jammies bottoms, which considering the cold temps, is dangerous.  Be on the lookout for her, so I will be.

Clearly at this point I was awake so I decided to go downstairs and make a pot of coffee.  This is my usual morning routine, just maybe not this early, but whatever.

I can adapt.

I can be useful.

I can sip coffee and mutter quietly in the corner.

THAT, SADLY, DID NOT HAPPEN.  

You see, I brewed the coffee without any trouble but as I sat there in the semi-darkness caffeinating myself with said coffee I heard a noise.  A noise that can only mean one thing. One lousy, awful, undoubtedly expensive thing.

The noise was the desperate sound of an animal trapped inside the house, probably in the attic or maybe in the walls, who was, and still is, scraping, pawing, flaying itself around in an attempt to escape from the inside our house.

WHERE IT SHOULD NOT BE.

And on that note of irritation I shall end this post.  Trying to not hear the noise that is going on over my head.  Trying to not be distressed by the events thus far on this ill-fated Friday morning.

Hoping that you, my little rays of sunshine, have something positive to tell me about your day.  Distract me, please.

 

 

Nothing Sketchy: And Then Our Mailbox Made A Run For It

/ Ally Bean / 204 Comments

I enjoy a bit of absurdity.

It was late Friday afternoon.  Zen-Den was working from home in a guest bedroom his upstairs office that overlooks the front yard and street.

He was on a conference call, listening, bored presumably, and staring out the window at the street.

There was a gust of wind and just like that our extra large [15″x11.7″x24.8″] black metal [11.5 lbs] mailbox  [identical to this one] went flying off its post– and started scampering down the street.

Like a sneaky pet dog out on an adventure.

Never slowing down, never looking back.

Z-D, still listening to his conference call saw what had happened, found me downstairs, pointed outside, and mouthed the words “mailbox escaped.”

I looked out the window and understood.  I immediately went running out the front door to chase our mailbox, WITH OUR MAIL IN IT, down the street.

On a cold late autumn day.

Without a coat or gloves on.

The little miscreant, pushed by more gusts of wind, slide downhill in the gutter along the side of the street until it was in front of our next-door neighbor’s house where the runaway fell on its side, popping up its little red flag in surrender.

Nice touch, eh?

I was charmed in spite of the situation.

I picked him up, double-checked that our mail was still inside [it was], then started walking home with said sneaky mailbox cuddled in my arms, like you might when you capture a wiggly dog.

However unlike a warm small furry dog, a metal mailbox is cold, cold, cold to carry.  I wasn’t dressed for the elements let alone a search and rescue mission that involved carrying a large mailbox home.

Mailboxes have sharp edges.

Trust me on this.

Anyhoo, laughing at acknowledging the absurdity of this situation, I got the little fellow home, put him in the garage, and walked down the driveway to see what had happened that prompted our mailbox to make a run for it.

Come to find out, the wood on the post that forms the horizontal platform on which the mailbox sits had rotted underneath the mailbox.  The mailbox had been attached with screws to the rotting wood, but the gust of wind was powerful enough to rip them out of place, and sent our mailbox flying.

This was a first for me/us, but one that graciously provided us with the gift of a Saturday project.

Yep, we had to replace the rotting wood on the post then re-attach the mailbox, no worse for the wear btw, to the new sturdy wood plank.

So we did.

~ ~ 📪 ~ ~

The foregoing story reminds me of my favorite TikTok. It stars a dog named Bean. Do dah, do dah!

https://youtu.be/7pDzrSCZofc

My 1,000th Post: With Grit, Grins, & Gratitude

/ Ally Bean / 188 Comments

Image of Snoopy, originally drawn by Charles Schultz, courtesy of pngimg.com. Click HERE for a wonderful biography about Snoopy.

• • •

It was a dark and stormy night. 

Literally.

I was sitting in our home office in front of my desktop computer, writing a blog post when there was a dramatic crack of thunder and a flash of lightning outside.

It startled me.

I jumped about 17 gazillion feet into the air and in the process my hand on the mouse moved erratically in such a way as to inadvertently hit DELETE, meaning that faster than you can say “waiter, waiter, percolator” I lost my blog post.

Then the electricity went out in the house.

For hours.

Because of course it did.

• • •

This morning the electricity is back on, but I’ve lost my train of thought about how I was going to say what I wanted to say.

So instead of my nonexistent elegant heartfelt essay about how much blogging has meant to me, showing me a kinder way to live my life, allowing me a glimpse into the lives of other people, I’ll be straightforward and say the following with gratitude.

• • •

THIS IS MY 1,000TH POST ON THIS BLOG.

THANKS TO ALL THE COOL KIDS WHO READ, COMMENT, AND LIKE MY POSTS. I’D NEVER HAVE GOTTEN THIS FAR WITHOUT YOUR CONTINUING SUPPORT.

YOU’RE THE BEST AND I LOVE YOU ALL.

• • •

[Here is my first blog post, Hello World! I wrote it 10 years + 10 months to this very day. It makes reference to a guiding principle that I believed then and still do. Case in point, how this post came to be.]

Move Over Grand Theft Auto, Pondering A Real-life Armed Robbery In Our Neighborhood

/ Ally Bean / 164 Comments
Because sometimes odd unexpected things happen…

Last week I learned that there was an armed robbery in this subdivision.  We’ve lived here over 20 years and this is a first.  I learned about it formally from the HOA [Homeowner Association] + informally from the neighborhood grapevine.

The robbery took place in the early evening and involved two men with guns stealing a new Volvo from a neighbor’s open garage.  It’s my understanding that the house security system with alarms and cameras wasn’t on at the time.

The neighbor heard noise in the garage, went to investigate, and found the robbery in process.  He was not hurt physically, although I cannot say how it affected him emotionally.  I don’t know him personally to ask him.

The police haven’t found his car and the men who stole it.  As of today this remains an open case.  My guess is it’ll never be solved, but will become part of the folklore of this large subdivision of 800+ homes.

• • •

A place to ponder. Drinking a mug of coffee while sitting on the deck on a foggy autumn morning.

• • •

It’s easy, and perhaps natural, to start thinking about why this robbery took place, to make up stories that might explain it.  I’m motivated by my need to make sense of this, to try to understand it.

It could be as straightforward as it seems.  The robbers who were driving a Volvo [and isn’t that interesting?] saw an opportunity to steal another one and took it.  It was a crime of opportunity, no advance planning.

This would be my preferred scenario.

Or it could be that the neighbor was working in league with the robbers, intending on splitting the insurance money.  After all, no one except the neighbor saw these two men, allegedly with guns, and because the security system cameras weren’t on at the time there’s no way to corroborate his story.

Or it could be that the neighbor owes money to someone, a bookie perhaps, and that someone arranged for payment in the form of his car.  Things like that happen in this world.  I watch police procedural TV shows;  I know things.

• • •

A view while pondering. Looking out from the deck into the backyard on a foggy autumn morning.

• • •

I’ve been trying to decide what I think about this robbery, discern how it makes me feel.  I’m not stressed by it.  I’m not worried about being safe. Instead I’m indifferent to it.

Is that peculiar?  Shouldn’t I be more panicked?

Of course, as Zen-Den pointed out, we always keep our garage doors closed plus no one wants to steal my 18 year old Honda.  Or his 5 year old one.  A fast risk-benefit analysis confirms his logic.  

Ain’t gonna happen.

Plus this robbery isn’t going to stop me from going for walks around this neighborhood.  If nothing else we might be safer now that more sheriffs are driving through here on a more regular basis.

From their point of view, we’re the place to be.

So that’s where I find myself this morning, hoping this is a one-off, an aberration and not the beginning of a trend.  I’m amazed that I’m writing about something so out of the ordinary that it doesn’t seem feasible, yet it happened.

And that’s all there is to it.

Comments, anyone? How would this make you feel?