Using “being” in reduced clauses

Question

As far as I know, when two things happen at the same time, I can combine them with using participles.

Such as :

Kate is in the kitchen and she is making coffee.

to

Kate is in the kitchen making coffee.

Is using "being" okay in reduced "to be" phrases? I mean are those sentences below grammatically okay?

1- I sat there, still waiting, being worried that she would never arrive. (... and I was worried ...)

2- I was preaparing the food , my friends being sick of waiting. (I was preparing the food and my friends were sick of waiting)

3- Being shocked by his death, I passed out. (When I was shocked by his death...)

4- The word “book” has a double meaning , the noun form being “ a set of pages inside a cover”, while the verb form is "to arrange to have a seat etc. at a particular time in the future"

Can I omit the "being" in my examples?

1'- I sat there, still waiting, worried that she would never arrive.

2'- I was preaparing the food , my friends sick of waiting.

3'- Shocked by his death, I passed out

4'- The word “book” has a double meaning , the noun form “ a set of pages inside a cover”.

Answer 1

Yes, I would say you can remove being from all four, but some may require an additional verb. Like for the second one, I might say, 'my friends were sick of waiting.' Choosing were as the plural past tense to match was in the first half of your sentence.

Being in my mind, if I use it as a verb at all, it's like referring to the act of /state of being or used as a noun.For example:

a human being or Being constantly late is not a good habit.

I actually can't think of any examples were I would use being except at the beginning of a sentence. In colloquial speech, you might hear someone say, 'I don't know why he's being so crazy' to mean, 'acting so crazy' or 'is so crazy'. But it isn't formally grammatically correct, I don't think.