Suburbia

A 3:00 A.M. Tale In Which We Experience Batshit Crazy For Real

/ Ally Bean / 230 Comments

As if last week, a difficult week for everyone, could not have been any stranger…

Forget your ancient church belfry, this tale takes place in modern times, starting in an upstairs suburban bedroom, moving to the two-story foyer, dashing about in 2 upstairs guest bedrooms, and culminating in the downstairs TV room adjacent to the kitchen.

Who is the star of this tale? Zen-Den, of course!

Here’s what happened.

I was awakened from a sound sleep when I heard the rattling of our wooden blinds at the bedroom window. I glanced over at the blinds and saw swooping birdlike shadows at the window. The shadows reminded me of scenes in the Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds.”

You see, in my drowsiness I thought somehow the bright light from the lamppost in front of the house was shining through the blinds making it appear that birds were creating shadowy silhouettes OUTSIDE the window.

But I was wrong.

I realized this when I got out of bed, walked over to the blinds to see what was going on at the window, only to learn that what I was seeing was INSIDE the house.

I definitively discerned this when something flew straight at me, swooped over my head as I hunched and shuddered, then dashed out the open bedroom door going into the foyer where it started flying around the chandelier like it was crazy.

Batty, even.

Fleece throw aka my impromptu babushka

Calmly, you would have been proud of me, I woke up Z-D who was oblivious to our winged intruder. I told him something was wrong, something creepy was flying around, and that he needed to get up to investigate. I also told him he’d be in the lead during the investigation.

I’d follow behind, on his six.

Utilizing my natural ability to scream loudly when under attack startled.

Without complaining he got up, dressing in jeans and a ragg wool knit beanie, and started walking around the upstairs rooms while I followed behind him, still in my jammies but with a plaid fleece throw [photo above] wrapped around my head like a Russian grandma in her babushka.

Quickly we realized that what I thought was a bird, was a bat. And that Z-D needed to get a broom from the garage, leaving me to stand alone in the foyer defending myself by screaming and holding a heavy doorstop [photo below] in front of my face, using it like a cross meant to keep vampires away.

This might have been helpful, maybe.

Heavy doorstop aka my potential weapon

The rest of this tale is what you’d expect if’n you’ve ever chased a bat through your house. We turned on lights everywhere. We got him out of one room, closed the door; then got him out of another room, closed the door; so on and so on, et cetera, et cetera. This went on until we were downstairs in the TV room where the bat was trying to hide on the floor in the shadows near a lounge chair.

Zen-Den saw him, wacked him with the broom, held him down, and shouted for me to get a cookie sheet from the kitchen. Which I did, putting it on the floor so that we could carefully slowly slide the bat, who was still alive and squeaking, onto it while Z-D used the broom to hold him down on the cookie sheet.

Together we slide our captive to the back door where Z-D then tossed the dude, who got into our house somehow but we don’t know how, outside into the snow.

The bat was shocked, but still alive, and gave us the evil eye as he straightened up and flew away into the night, no doubt as perturbed by this experience as we were.

And that, my gentle readers, is how it came to be that we experienced batshit crazy.

For real.

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

Have you ever had a bat flying around inside your home? Assuming you didn’t want a bat flying around inside your home, what did you do to get rid of it?

Bats are known for their exceptional hearing abilities. Do you see the irony in a bat waking me up in the middle of the night because I’m extremely sensitive to sound? Am I part old bat and don’t know it‽

What’s the last batshit crazy thing that happened in your world? Tell all, we need to know.

~ ~ • ~ ~

Home Sweet Home: Do You Know Where You Belong?

/ Ally Bean / 181 Comments

The Tale [Or Tail] Of An Unexpected Visitor

I wanted to sweep leaves off our deck, it being autumn and all, so I’d opened one of the French doors between our dining room and screened-in porch, leaving it open behind me, then I stepped outside into the screened-in porch.

I had a sense of purpose.

These are the steps that Cookie walked up.

Next I opened the door from the screened-in porch to the deck propping the door to the deck open. I began sweeping the leaves off the deck, attentive to what I was doing, when something from the yard, that had climbed up the stairs to our deck, dashed past me.

Like a black and white canine thunderbolt. 

This is the deck that Cookie ran across going through the screen door that was open at the time into the screened-in porch.

I pivoted quickly to see Cookie, our neighbor’s Dalmatian-Great Dane mix, go running across our deck into our screened-in porch through the door I’d propped open.

Never expecting an uninvited visitor.

These are the French doors that Cookie walked through from the screened-in porch into our dining room.

Then faster than you can say “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick” while still standing on the deck I looked through the sliding door that leads from the deck into the kitchen or vice versa. This is when I saw Cookie, the happy-go-lucky goofball, inside our house looking out at me.

Through a locked door.

This is the spot in our kitchen where Cookie stopped moving, choosing instead to stare outside at me still on the deck.

So I ran across the deck into the screened-in porch, through the dining room, around the corner into the kitchen where Cookie was patiently waiting for me to feed her. Or so I assume.

What did I do?

This is Drags pretending to be Cookie so that you can get the idea of what I saw inside my house, on the other side of the locked door, while still standing outside on the deck.

Welp, I conned her out of our kitchen through the foyer toward the front door by shouting “WALKIES” and she fell for it by following me. I opened our front door, she stepped out, and I instructed her to “go home” while pointing in the direction of her house. And with that, slightly confused but obedient, Cookie trotted off.

To her home sweet home.

Deciding Where You Belong

I stumbled across the OECD Better Life Index. The index is a simple little online gadget that allows you to determine which country would best suit your personality.

Apparently I belong in Norway.

It’s easy to determine where you belong by following the link provided above. You’ll be asked to slide some doodads around to indicate how important 11 variables are to you. Then *voilà* you’ll learn which countries are where you’d find other people vibing with your values.

Your soulmates, I guess.

Questions Of The Day

Have you had a neighbor’s dog come for an unannounced visit? If so, how’d that go? What boss move did you do to get said dog to go home?

Upon opening a door to go outside do you immediately shut it behind you— or are you lax about shutting it sometimes?

If you tried the Better Life Index, which countries do you belong in?

Do you feel Drags needs to be featured here more often? I admit I’ve drifted away from using him, but doesn’t he just make you smile?

• 🐲 •

 

Laugh When You Can: A Tale Of Brotherly *Love* + A Poem About Methuselah’s Diet

/ Ally Bean / 207 Comments

Is this not true?

A Tale Of Brotherly *Love*

The other afternoon the temps were in the lower 80s so I went out onto our screened-in porch to enjoy fresh air and read a book.

I heard kids playing in the ravine behind the house. They were down in the creek bed that’s practically dry this time of year. Kids go exploring down there occasionally and in this case it was two boys, about 6 y.o. and 10 y.o.

I didn’t think a thing about it until I was jolted out of my reading by a loud  Dad voice coming from the other side of the ravine.

Dad said: Alexander, where is your brother?

{Small voice, indistinguishable words}

Dad again: Alexander, I asked you, where is your brother? Where is William!!

{Slightly louder small voice, somewhat indistinguishable, but saying words that included “I don’t know”}

Dad continued: Alexander, I don’t care. Go back down into the ravine and find William. NOW!

At this point I heard a small whimper coming from the bottom of the ravine. A whimper so pathetic that I put down my book, stood up and looked down into the ravine where I saw a small boy sitting on a log by himself, crying, but not hurt or in any danger.

He was pretty much playing up the drama of being left behind.

I shouted over to the Dad telling him that I could see the abandoned brother, that he was fine, and then explained where I was so Alexander, the reluctant keeper of his brother, could find William.

At which point the Dad shouted thanks over my way while giving Alexander one last clearly stated command, a guideline for how to treat your brother.

And maybe all of humanity.

Dad said: ALEXANDER WE DON’T LEAVE OUR BROTHER IN A RAVINE, ANY RAVINE, EVER. Now go find him.

Which Alexander did with some alacrity while I watched, amused, from above.

So sayeth Dad, so let it be.

A Poem About Methuselah’s Diet

I continue to sort through old family photos and papers. In one of the boxes I found the following pithy poem. My father had saved it by cutting it out a newspaper.

According to the introduction to the poem it was on the dinner cards of the 1890 Class, College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. Researching online I discovered there’s no known author for the poem.

DIET

Methuselah ate what he found on his plate,

And never, as people do now

Did he note the amount of the caloric count;

He ate it because it was chow.

•🔸•

He wasn’t disturbed, as at dinner he sat,

Destroying a roast or a pie,

To think it was lacking in granular fat,

Or a couple of vitamins shy.

• 🔸•

He cheerfully chewed every species of food,

Untroubled by worries or fears,

Lest his health might be hurt by some fancy dessert––

And he lived over Nine Hundred Years!

Here is the poem as seen in print.

Questions of the Day

What have you laughed out loud about lately?

What’s the last thing you overheard that made you stop what you were doing and eavesdrop?

What do you think of Methuselah’s pragmatic diet plan?

• • ❤️ • •

Because It’s Funny: When Life Imitates A Movie + Determining YOUR Sense Of Humor

/ Ally Bean / 238 Comments

A STORY IN WHICH I’M REMINDED OF A MOVIE

You, my gentle readers and kind lurkers, may remember that last summer I mentioned our neighbor bought an electric robotic lawnmower that when programmed cuts the grass making perfectly straight, amazingly pretty, latticework lines across his yard.

I nicknamed the machine Yertle because as it wanders around it looks like a large slow-moving turtle.

[Also because I like to name things.]

At the time I mentioned Yertle a few commenters asked: How do you stop someone from stealing it?

We now know that the answer to this question is: YOU DON’T. 

Yes, someone driving by midday saw Yertle out in the front yard, stopped, hopped out of his black pick-up truck, and kidnapped stole Yertle. Due to the angles on neighbors’ doorbell cameras, the theft was caught on video but the license number on the truck and the face of the thief weren’t.

However, there was one thing the thief didn’t consider when he stole a machine that is programmed using 22 satellites in ye olde heavens above. You see, once Yertle was unceremoniously lifted over the property line, with a hat tip to ET, Yertle phoned home.

Literally.

Immediately.

Thereby alerting our neighbor that Yertle had been swiped and that he was resting in the back of a pick-up truck that was speeding into the countryside.

So our neighbor called the Sheriff’s Department to tell them what had been stolen and to look for a black pick-up truck. Plus our neighbor, using his cell phone that tracks Yertle, was able to tell the Sheriff’s Department Yertle’s current exact location as the thief drove down the road.

Then our neighbor waited.

Welp, apparently the thief figured out that Yertle had a GPS tracking device, so before the Sheriff caught up with the truck Yertle was found*, abandoned unharmed by the side of the road.

Yertle came home no worse for the wear, a victor over the forces of evil, and as you can imagine, the talk of the ‘hood.

A QUIZ TO DETERMINE YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR

I stumbled over this questionnaire, Test Your Humor Style. It’s based on Rod A. Martin, Ph.D.’s academic idea that humor can be divided into four different types.

After answering 32 easy questions, I learned that my humor styles, succinctly defined, in descending order are:

  • Self-enhancing [97th percentile], meaning I look on the funny absurd side of things;
  • Affiliative [73rd percentile], meaning I enjoy sharing amusing stories to make people laugh;
  • Self-defeating [64th percentile], meaning that I laugh along with others when being made fun of; and lastly
  • Aggressive [17th percentile], meaning I don’t use humor to tease, put down, or manipulate people.

There’s more to the definitions of each humor style so instead of writing in depth, I’ll share the following taken directly from my results page.

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

What’s new in your neighborhood? Spill the tea!

Ever reminded of a movie by something that happened in real life?

What’s your favorite funny movie?

Do you think the four types of humor make sense?

If you took the quiz, what is your primary style of humor?

~ ~ • ~ ~

* I wrote this post yesterday morning then learned the rest of the story last night. Come to find out after rescuing Yertle the Sheriffs did catch up with the black pick-up truck. The two men in it claimed that the only reason they’d taken Yertle was that it was by the trash cans on trash day and they thought it was a motorized toy car being thrown out. Uh huh.