Snippets Of Life

Goofing Off On A Friday Afternoon, I Ponder A Pretty Sign

/ Ally Bean / 214 Comments

Lean in closely, my gentle readers, while I tell you a secret: sometimes I hesitate to tell you what we’ve been up to.

The thing is, and isn’t there always one, I wouldn’t want you to be jealous of our exciting suburban lives. That would never do. I’m not here to gloat over anything, I’m here to share the nitty gritty flapdoodle and twaddle of our daily lives.

Considering we’re all friends here, I’m sure that once you learn what Z-D and I did last Friday afternoon, you’ll understand how we roll. You’ll get a clue into our psyches and how we make our own fun.

You see, after traipsing around Ikea for an hour or more, buying an $8 dish drainer for the kitchen sink, we were high on the joy that comes from a successful shopping adventure. So as we were driving home, on a whim, for a change of pace, we decided to stop at a large unique garden decor center to see what was going on there.

And to get in a few more steps.

Unlike the modern indoor international Ikea vibe, this old-fashioned outdoor locally-owned garden decor center is funky. It sits on acres of land with an old farmhouse at the front of the property and seemingly endless merchandise behind it.

In fact at this time of year everywhere you look there are displays of pots and fountains and stepping stones and birdbaths and gazing globes and pond supplies.

When we pulled into the parking lot we parked in front of the sign you see in the large photo at the top of this post. This sign directs you, the customer, to go one way or the other way around the house.

Unlike Ikea there aren’t multiple ways to walk through this place. Here you must decide between two options about which way you’ll go.

That is, you can meander along the Scenic Route that wraps around the front of the property where there is inspiration, like fountains and ponds, paths and statuary, but nothing for sale.

OR

You can go the opposite way that leads directly to the Main Entrance [ironically behind the house] where you find what you need, pay for it, then have it loaded into your vehicle.

I’m not going to tell you which path we chose, but I’m going to say that my heart skipped a beat & I did a little happy dance when I realized that the sign in the parking lot was a “blogging question of the day” found in the wild!

And considering I had nothing planned to write about this week, how fortuitous is that? 😊

Questions of the Day

• When’s the last time you decided to spontaneously go somewhere for no other reason than you were driving or walking by?

• If you shop in brick and mortar big box stores, do you visit with a specific purpose, OR do you go for reconnaissance, OR do you go there to walk & window shop, OR for some other reason?

• If you shop in locally-owned businesses near you, what’s your favorite one? And why?

• Thinking in an introspective way about what makes you tick: do you usually prefer to meander [scenic route] or to be direct [main entrance]?

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Let’s Laugh: Three Absurd Conversations + Something I Cannot Explain

/ Ally Bean / 243 Comments

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Three Absurd Conversations

ONE – Out to dinner with friends. The conversation turns to ice cream. The questions: 1) What is your favorite flavor? and 2) Where do you buy it?

My answer: Spumoni is my favorite flavor but it’s difficult to find, usually only around Christmas, and never for sale in Kroger where I shop most of the time. Seems like they could have it.

A friend, a lawyer, pipes up and jokingly says: It’s not Kroger’s fault for not having spumoni, it’s your fault for liking a weird flavor of ice cream.

Immediately everyone at the table agrees with him and starts laughing at me while I’m forced to admit that he could be right. He might have a point.

You like vanilla, it’s everywhere, no problem.

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TWO – Overheard while shopping in Dillard’s. An older couple, mid-80s, are in the women’s clothing section near where I’m standing. She’s looking at blouses, he’s looking bored. She pulls a blouse on a hanger off the rack and tells him she’s going to try it on.

He seems surprised and says: I thought we were just horsing around here. Then he makes a low guttural snorting sound like a horse whinny while attempting to prance like a horse.

She looks over at me, rolls her eyes, then turns to him and says: Slow down there Roy Rogers, hold your horses, and wait here.

This spunky reply made me laugh out loud and him smile like the ornery cute kid he probably used to be.

Oh, to age with your sense of humor intact.

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THREE – Said by the husband after he plugged in the heating pad so I could lay on the bed with it on my aching thigh.

Him: You’re not supposed to sleep with the electric heating pad on, so once you fall asleep turn it off.

Me staring at him: Think about what you said.

Him: Really, that’s what the warning on the tag says.

Me: Keep thinking.  

Him after long pause: OH… I see the problem.

Which confirmed that he still understands logic, but had me in stitches laughing at and thankfully with someone who rarely says anything illogical.

Even the brainy ones can be dim. 

Something I Cannot Explain

This isn’t my car.

Mid-afternoon I pulled into a parking lot adjacent to a city park and found this car *parked* [abandoned?] in this awkward way.

There were no indications that the car had hit any other vehicle, stopping midway while pulling into the parking space.

After I parked down the way and walked back by the car I saw that the inside of the car was tidy. There wasn’t a note on the windshield explaining what had happened. There was no police citation on it.

It was just a half-parked car in the way in a public parking lot with nary a soul around to explain the situation.

Any idea what was going on here?

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A Sweet Story About A Stroller, A Stumble, And A Stranger

/ Ally Bean / 245 Comments

I’ve no particular reason to write about this other than to confirm that things can go sideways quickly and that random acts of kindness still happen, sometimes right in front of your eyes.

I WAS WAITING FOR the mail to arrive. We live on the curve on this suburban street so I can see the USPS mail truck coming from a long way off.

I realized the mail would be here in a minute or two so I sat down in the living room and stared out the window. It was mid afternoon when there are few vehicles driving around. The day was clear and sunny, in the 50s F so a beautiful day for everything.

I saw a young mom and dad out running while pushing a stroller with a small baby in it as they jogged along the street in the direction that slopes gently downhill toward a gully.

I watched as the dad nodded to the mom then took off downhill at a faster speed while she pushed the stroller at a decent pace, stepping like a metronome to her own beat. All was good until the mom tripped, lost her balance, and tried to catch herself on our neighbor’s mailbox post.

As she fell to her knees, hanging onto the mailbox post, she lost control of the stroller and inadvertently gave the stroller with the baby in it a huge push that caused it to roll quickly down the middle of the street.

Unattended.

Rolling along like nobody’s business.

She screamed to her husband for help but he had earbuds in and didn’t hear her.

HOWEVER AN OLDER MAN, probably in his mid-70s who I see walking slowly up this street every afternoon, saw what happened and, I kid you not, sprinted up the middle of the street toward the stroller.

He was flailing his arms and yelling at the dad who eventually turned around to see a stranger running to stop his baby’s stroller as it gained momentum rolling down the hill and his wife on her knees a few houses back while shouting at him to get. the. baby.

At this point the dad, who clearly didn’t know how this could have happened so quickly, looked so gobsmacked that I couldn’t help but smile at the dude.

Well the older man pushed the stroller back up the slight hill to the mother and went back to walking. The dad came back to the mailbox post and hugged the mom who’d gotten to her feet.

And while the mother was a heap of nerves, shaking, crying, grabbing for the baby, it’ll come as no surprise to you to learn that the baby and the dad and the older man were fine.

However after a minute, having regained her composure while wiggling her ankle around in small circles, the young couple with the baby turned around and walked back up the slight hill in the direction they’d come from both holding onto the stroller.

NOTHING TERRIBLE HAPPENED YET it was one of those moments in time, that transpired in a snap, when I realized again that we all depend, in some way or another, on strangers to help us get by.

Plus, being a pragmatic soul, I also realized that I do hope this young couple invests in a stroller wrist strap. Seems like it might be a good idea, all things considered.

‘Ya know?

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

Have you ever see something happen so quickly in front of your eyes that all you can do is watch it unfold?

Have you seen anyone do a random act of kindness lately?

If you walk or run outside on sidewalks or streets, have you ever stumbled like this mother did? If so, what happened next?

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Repurposing Can Spark Joy: My *New* Standing Desk + 3 Nosy Blogging Questions For You

/ Ally Bean / 258 Comments

With a hat tip to Marie Kondo who probably wouldn’t approve of my approach to clutter but would be kind about not saying so, this post goes out to procrastinators and frugalistas everywhere.

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Last week when I said nothing was going on here, I lied. In fact the story was staring me straight in the face, but I didn’t see it at the time.

You see, and the photos below will confirm, the story is that I’ve created a new better version of my homemade standing desk. The one on which my computer, Keyzia, sits while I write my posts.

In an effort to make my back love me again in the fall of 2022 I gave up sitting at a desk and thus began my quest to figure out a way to make my favorite current desk, a sturdy Pottery Barn number, into a modern-ish standing desk.

Granted I could buy an official real deal standing desk but I am frugal. And creative. And never sure how much longer I’ll be writing this blog, meaning that at some point I’ll no longer need a standing desk so why spend the money?

I got the idea for what you’ll see below from an Ikea hack website where someone had bought a small Ikea bench that they put on top of their Ikea desk to create a standing desk.

That is practical and cute as can be, thought I.

Then in a flash of money-saving insight I realized two things:

  1. We had a wooden bench [from Ballard Design] sitting in the garage waiting for me to get around to phoning St. Vincent de Paul for pickup [with other furniture of course];  and
  2. I’d kept that wooden bench stored in the basement for years, even though it never sparked joy within me, because it was sturdy and I bought it at the outlet store for a decent price.

Therefore instead of buying anything new, like from Ikea, I used what we already had here, repurposing the Ballard Design wooden bench by placing it on the sturdy Pottery Barn desk to make the perfect riser for my sweet Keyzia.

Thus Keyzia no longer rocks down to Electric Avenue while sitting precariously on a pile of World Book Encyclopedias covered in a tablecloth. We’re both happy about this improvement.

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BEFORE: my messy desk-type situation

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BEFORE: close up of where Keyzia sat

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BEFORE: the stack of World Books hidden under the tablecloth

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AFTER: a wooden bench soon to be turned into a standing desk component

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AFTER: bench on top of desk elevating Keyzia to a comfortable height

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AFTER: a standing desk with a tidy desktop because baskets sitting on lower shelf of bench encourage me to put my paper notes in one place

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3 NOSY BLOGGING QUESTIONS

When it comes to writing blog posts do you use a desktop computer like I do? OR, more likely, do you use a laptop or a tablet or a phone? OR, quite possibly, a combination of all of the aforementioned?

When you’re at home working on your blog where do you write? Like at a desk? At a table? Plopped down on a comfy chair or bed? Standing at the kitchen counter? Other spot?

Thinking ahead, how much longer will you be writing your current blog? When you end it will you walk away from blogging entirely OR start a new blog, maybe on a different platform?

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