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Just One More Christmas Tie, And Then I’m Really Done

I wore Tie o’ A Couple of Weeks Ago at a pre-Christmas dinner with Rowan, at his aunt’s and uncle’s abode. Rowan does not wear ties so I shared mine with him for the photo. I did count this tie in our Holiday Tie Tally, but just haven’t posted the photo until now. It is one of my fave Christmas ties, with its clever reference to Grant Wood’s painting, AMERICAN GOTHIC. I am a fanatic for all things clever.

I had no time to post this morning because I had a PT appointment in Farmington at 7:45 AM, and an appointment in Daybreak with my crazy-head doctor at 8:00 AM. It is nearly impossible to be in two places, 35 miles apart, at the same time. I am not a flash-speeding superhero. Nor do I have an invisible plane like Wonder Woman. I managed to switch my PT to 10:30, so it all worked out. [I wasn’t stoopid enough to schedule the appointments to conflict with each other. It’s a long, boring story about how that happened. Trust me, it ain’t interesting enough to be worth your time to hear it.]

I am mystified about how often I have whole weeks when I have zippo in my calendar, then I make one single solitary appointment, and then something else has to be done the same day– or even at the exact same like, like today. And as I look ahead at my calendar, I can see I have no appointments scheduled until an appointment on February 3. Wanna bet some doctor visit, or other can’t-skip thing, has to be taken care of on that same day? And then I will again go weeks with no appointments scheduled, and when I finally do schedule an appointment, the whole weird thing will happen again.

To further illustrate my point: Last week I found out Suzanne and I will be in Tucson in March, from the 3rd until the 6th. On the same day I found out about Tucson, it just so happens that I learned BAND OF HORSES will be doing one concert in Las Vegas on the 7th. I must see them live. I must go. I will not be dissuaded. So… Do we fly back to SLC and turn around immediately to fly to Las Vegas? Or do we fly from Tucson directly to Las Vegas for the concert, then back to SLC? It makes sense to do that, but it will end up costing us a bunch of extra bucks to do it that way.

It’s not just those two time conflicts on that pair of days. Nope, there’s a third thing I’m supposed to be doing. On the 7th, I have an appointment scheduled with my crazy-head doctor. I made the appointment in October, since she is always booked that far ahead. Of course, I’ve gotta reschedule it. Who knows when I can get the appointment rescheduled. Probably May.

See, within a 24-hour period, I’m supposed to be doing three different things in three different states. And there isn’t one appointment on my schedule for the two weeks before and the two weeks after the crazy March 6/7 confluence of to-do things. How and why does this happen?

FYI Not to fear for The Skit. Skitter is already set up for Suzanne’s sister, Marjorie, to come over to our house for a week of sleepovers while we’re out of town. I doubt Skitter would survive staying in a kennel, no matter how great it is. She would shake and shiver until all her fur fell off, or go on a hunger strike. Skittish Skitter needs to stay in her own home, and Marjorie loves to spend time with her. Skitter feels safe with Marjorie. It all works out well.

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Did Anybody Else Notice It’s Freezing Outside?

Floppy Bow Tie o’ the Day tops off my clashy attire this afternoon. Honestly, I am sick of red and green right now. I needed a whole lotta other colors going on. I didn’t go anywhere today, I just needed to dapper-up in non-Christmas colors for my trek to the mail with Skitter, aka, The Skit.

Skitter is not pleased that the temperature outside was 13 degrees at 4 PM, which is when we walked to the mailbox. But she pouts now if she doesn’t have her little walkie to the mail, no matter the weather. She will not let me escape to fetch it on my own in the car. Perhaps she’s afraid I won’t know how to get there and back by myself.

But I think it has more to do with the fact that she pretty much had to be dragged on a walk for the last five years, and now that she’s finally figured out walks are not scary, she MUST go for he daily mail walk. She likes it so much I walk her to the mailbox on Sundays and holidays when the mail isn’t even delivered. I will never tell her I’m pulling a trick on her for her own benefit. I don’t want Skitter to think I would lie to her.

And do you know what? Skitter doesn’t “walk” on her walks. She prances. For the entire walk! She prances like Lipizzaner horses when they perform. YouTube them, and envision Skitter prancing in the mix among them. If I ever figure out how to post video, I’ll be sure you get to see Skitter’s marvelous prissy gait. And you simply must see her “chew dance.” Words can’t convey these two Wonders of the Skitter World, which I am fortunate to witness and experience each and every day.

Anyhoo… I boxed up the holiday bow ties this afternoon, and I put away the holiday attire and doodads. Storing all that away is helping me in my attempt to reorganize The Tie Room. I’m convinced there is some unused space in there somewhere. I haven’t found it yet, but I did fill two big garbage bags with stuff to take to D.I. tomorrow. I also managed to uncover a pair of earrings I lost over the summer. And I found a buried bag of chocolate Twizzlers from who knows when. Suffice it to say, it wouldn’t be possible for me to eat said licorice unless I had a jackhammer. I certainly didn’t have one handy, so into the garbage the petrified package went.

That is a tragic fate for such a terrific food. Chocolate Twizzlers deserve a far better send-off. At least they got to mummify in the hallowed presence of neckwear. A most pleasant death, I’m sure.

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And Now, Back To Our Regular Programming

Wood Bow Tie o’ the Day brings us back to the realm of routine days without celebratory hoopla. The Christmas break is officially over. If the neckwear says it’s over, it’s over.

As I was putting the holiday ties into their storage boxes last night– where they will hibernate until November– I found myself in a sort of meditative state. As I curled each one into another and laid them in the bin, I felt Zen-y. I was so into the regular procedure, I lost myself in peacefulness. It was weird.

Of course, I only knew this weird thing had happened when I came back to myself. When I awoke from my nap of the mind, I was astonished about how the calm that came into in my crazy head was all because I was carefully laying ties into their hibernation. It’s a yearly routine, and it requires touching each tie and making the exact same movements to place it in its box, over 200 times. There is a rhythm to it. It doesn’t require thinking. It requires simply being.

It got me cogitating about how people lose themselves, for example, in gardening. The planting, the pruning, and etc. need to be done over and over and over. There’s a routine and a rhythm in working in a garden, and it can be relaxing.

Routine household chores can be like that. They are work, but they can be calming. Doing them can make you Zen-y. You can get in a zone that makes you let go of all the crap you need to let go of. (Of course, household chores are not as elegant as gardening.) We perform a zillion other routines that cause the same peaceful effect. Hobbies, especially, can do that. Religious rituals can function like that.

But there is a negative effect that can come of the regular, the routine, the same-old-same-old. The negative is that we can fall from peaceful dreaminess too far into only ourselves. That kind of thing can make us forget we are here to care about others. We can also get tunnel vision and forget to discover the unfound and to try new things. We can forget there are things out there that we haven’t yet imagined. You can’t feel joy if you’ve lost your imagination.

BTW I’m putting away the holiday bow ties this evening. If I get as Zen-y about it as I did with the neckties. I’ll let you know.


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The Kind Of Weight I Like To Gain

Tie o’ the Day I’m wearing is a tie for Hanukkah. My sideways Bow Tie o’ the Day is in honor of Kwanzaa. I have to apologize for not doing my official Hanukkah and Kwanzaa posts. (I will handle those holiday posts next year. I promise. Unless…) I planned to write about those two other celebrations, and then my extreme bipolar depression hit me. I spent most of December in a funk that kept me from focusing on certain things. It was all I could do to sometimes kinda fake having the Christmas spirit. It was even difficult to keep the holiday neckwear theme going on TIE O’ THE DAY posts. I’ll be fine. I always am. My head will eventually swing back into a relatively level mental equilibrium.

Anyhoo…

Sing it along with me and Willie Nelson : “To all the Neckwear o’ the Day I’ve worn before…”

Look at what Suzanne and I caught over this Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa season. To heck with fish stories, I tell bow tie and tie stories. And what I’m going to tell you next is not a fib. I’m not stretching the truth when I say the total poundage of the season’s festive neckwear I wore adds up to 32.2 pounds. Yup. Since mid-November, I’ve worn 4.8 pounds of Bow Ties o’ the Day, and 27.4 pounds of Ties o’ the Day. Gee, no wonder one of my rotator cuffs is a pain in the shoulder. All that additional tie tying and bow tie clasping. All that extra carrying o’ the ties and bow ties.

Drum roll, please! The final HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 107 Bow ties. 217 Neckties. The end.

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The Tie Room Says, “Merry New Year, Y’all!”

Bow Tie o’ the Day’s design from Beau Ties, LTD is called “First Night.” And it must have been a strange First Night around here, because I woke up in Bow Tie and this ugly ugly ugly sweater. I can’t tell if this little dude on the sweater is supposed to be Santa, an elf, or a gnome. Confusion abounds.

Also, apparently Suzanne tied one on and decided to make a quilt on the floor. She really did TIE one on. So, that’s what colorful duct tape is for!?! This floor thing is a quilting shortcut I’ve never actually seen before. Oh, well. A new year, a new experience.

That’s my Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider on the table. Aside from being bubbly, its characteristics do not remotely resemble real champagne. But it must have intoxicated me somehow, because I remembered nothing about any of these happenings until I finally woke up and came downstairs this morning.

Yeah, what a wild night it must have been here in my own home. Come to think of it, it was quite a typical night around here– except for the loss of memory induced by the Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider. I won’t drink that again.

HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 106 Bow ties. 216 Neckties.

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And Another Year Bites The Dust

Apparently, the same anonymous gift-giver who sent me the Christmas underwear I modeled last week decided I needed some tux-y New Year’s Eve underwear. Thank you for knowing what I’m all about, whoever you are!

Hey, don’t you think my pose in this photo makes me look like a statue of some important historical figure? If I become famous enough to be statue-worthy, I hope my statue looks exactly like this picture.

Suzanne and I usually spend New Year’s Eve at home. Neither one of us likes to be in a moving car in the city on a holiday that might as well be called “Burp, if ya got ’em!” So here I be in my pajamas, wearing my new anonymously-given tux underwear and my old tux-y bow tie socks. My Christmas light-themed suitcoat adds holiday party class, and it’s also a reminder to me to take the X-mas lights down tomorrow or the next day.

Three of the six Ties o’ the Day are decked out with party drinks. One of the other three ties is just glimmery. One has lips for kissing at midnight. And one is giving us the fireworks during the kiss. I try to cover it all.

There really are two Bow Ties o’ the Day wrapped around my neck, although the photo doesn’t really show the black martini-covered bow tie. But you can’t miss the balloons on the main Bow Tie o’ the Day. Balloons can be part of any type of party, but I’m wearing balloon Bow Tie o’ the Day here especially in honor of my bro-in-law, Nuk, whose birthday is on New Year’s Eve. Nuk is a champion funny man, as well as a champion human being. You da Nuk, Kent Shaw!

Have a ball, folks. Be safe, folks. Call me if you need a ride home tonight, folks. See ya next year in the morning, folks.

HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 105 Bow ties. 216 Neckties. We finish our tally-ing in tomorrow evening’s post.

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The Piano Player Stood All Amazed

Here’s Bow Tie o’ Christmas Eve, when Suzanne and I took ourselves out for a double-celebration. Since our anniversary is December 23rd, and X-mas is the 25th, we threw the occasions together on Christmas Eve at one splendid dinner at Log Haven, up Millcreek Canyon. Plenty of glittery snow and trees and mountains. Gorgeous, even in the dark evening.

Since the traditional gift for the 5th wedding anniversary is supposed to be something made of wood, I just had to make dinner reservations at LOG Haven. How could I not keep with the “wood” theme? Log Haven is basically a log cabin. Okay, it’s a log mansion which a guy built for his wife as an anniversary gift in the 1920’s. See, I put thought into these things. It matters how their meanings reflect what we celebrate if at all possible. I don’t just throw a dart at a map of eatin’ places.

We had never been to Log Haven before. It was incredible, complete with snowy trees and mountain views and a sunset down the canyon. It was worth saving up for. And save your pennies for a couple of months– you must.

My wintry cape gave us a surprising highlight of the evening. As we emerged from the car and Suzanne handed the keys to the valet, a man in a tux happened to be walking toward us. Upon seeing the cape, he stopped in his tracks. I was so afraid he was going to say: NO CAPES ALLOWED IN THIS FROU-FROU ESTABLISHMENT! I was sore afraid. But he said, “Oh my, we don’t normally get things that classy here.” A few minutes later, we noticed he was the restaurant’s piano player. Play on, kind sir! I figure what he said is further proof of the wintry cape’s coolness, cuz the piano player sees all, and he should know.

Suzanne and I shared a butternut squash soup, which was beyond yummy. And we ate grilled calamari, which was a first. The only calamari we’d ever seen on a menu in our world-wide restaurant-hopping has been breaded. I had the prime rib, whiskey potatoes, and charred Brussels sprouts. I am not normally a Brussels sprouts gal, but I have been known to eat outside my comfort zone. I was pleased I did. Suzanne ate huge sea scallops. She also ordered a mid-priced bottle of fancy wine, which meant I would be driving home. The wine was an intriguing water-white. It was like no wine we had ever seen. Suzanne let me smell the wine, and then I vehemently kicked myself mightily for being an alcoholic and, therefore, unable to drink wine.

We did what’s becoming our new dessert routine, which means we each have dessert, and then we order a third dessert to take home with us. I chose the pineapple upside down cake, while Suzanne had something I can’t remember– and she’s still asleep so I can’t ask her. We chose a bread pudding to bring home to eat for breakfast the next day. All so good.

As for wood anniversary gifts… Suzanne gave me a circular wood lamp with inlaid lighting, which turns on when its two magnets almost meet. It now sits in the loft, where I write. I’m sure I will compose exquisite poems ‘neath its glow. She also gave me shelves made of teak wood. She will assemble the piece and hang it when I make up my mind where I want it, which I’m sure will also be in the loft.

I gave Suzanne a necklace with a Bolivian rosewood pendant, with 5 silver in-lays– one for each year. And I was proud of myself for thinking of hand-turned wood crochet hooks as a gift for her. She seemed surprised and infatuated with them. She has three, in three different woods: Rosewood, Quilt Maple, and Cocobolo wood. When she decides on exactly what style and wood she wants the hooks to be, she can get a set.

Suzanne and I have been together for decades, but it only counts legally as five years. I guess it’s kinda like dog years: Your dog might be 5, but it’s really closer to 35. Same with us. By my math, that means dog years equal lesbian years. That’s the only way it makes sense to me. (Har, har, har.)

We’ve had a fantabulous ride, even with the break from each other we took for a few years. That was part of the ride too. When I begin to think our life can’t possibly get any better, it always does. Even the rough patches seem to have an essential core of goodness.

Gratitude has to be a way of life if the good is going to surround you. I’m infinitely grateful Suzanne stopped to talk to me for the first time, in the Weber State College library in 1984. Every day of my life, I’m grateful for that.

Merry 5th Anniversary, Suzanne. My love for you deepens with every passing moment we are here.

HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 103 Bow ties. 210 Neckties.

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Two Ties In A Pod

I donned these Ties o’ the Day to wear alongside each other because they reminded me of a couple of people I know very well. Suzanne is one, and I am the other. Ties o’ the Day are accurate representations of our distinctive ways of moving through life.

Suzanne is the pretty red Tie o’ the Day, with its perfectly straight tree sides and its perfectly round tree ornaments. Suzanne is the trees being properly green. She’s the single gold line moving in thin curves, playfully and wildly in Tie’s background.

I am the red, what-the-hell-happened-here Tie o’ the Day. (I made it myself.) I am gold glitter, out of control. I’m a red nose, and pom-poms, and a deer whose eyes fell off. I’m a HO and a snowflake. I am full of empty spaces: hardened glue spots where I’ve lost some decorations from year to year. I am what is missing. I’m a silver tinsel pipe cleaner– – here for no reason except the silliness factor. Tie is as close to a fairly accurate description of my spirit as any.

Suzanne is practical and solid. She is careful and logical, and she plans for the long-term. She plans for the contingencies– for what might go wrong. Suzanne is back-up plans. Suzanne is the troubleshooter and builder. She is imagination and surprise. Suzanne is classic, and patterns, and a steady course. Suzanne is the straight man to my vaudeville act. She’s the breathtaking, bejeweled, antique chandelier from which I swing like a chimpanzee.

I am the comic relief. I am the in-your-face. I am the dark thinker. I am the cacophony, and the calm, and the storm on its way. I’m the rapidly-changing moods. I’m the screaming protest. I’m the creator of impractical amusements we need in order to remain sane. I’m the zig-zag. I’m the taser. I am the free spirit to come home to. I am the storyteller and the poet. I’m the loud, the clash, the funky. I’m the Care Bear and the conscience. I am the drowned and the saved. Oddly, Suzanne says I am the voice of reason. Imagine that.

And do you know what Suzanne’s doing right at this very moment in time? She’s sitting at her Ultimate SewingBox, making me another cape just because it will make me as joyful to wear it as it makes her to sew it.

I write this post as a preface to tomorrow morning’s post about our 5th wedding anniversary, which was last week. The traditional gift for the 5th anniversary is wood, and I had a heckuva time thinking of an appropriately snazzy wood gift for Suzanne. A Popsicle stick didn’t seem quite enough. It turned out we found swell presents for each other.

HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 102 Bow ties. 210 Neckties.

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Prepping For A Party

I can’t count Tie o’ the Day in our tally total, since I already showed and counted it last week. But here it is again, in a selfie from X-mas day, taken while Suzanne and I were getting ourselves dolled up to head to her parents’ house for the holiday gathering o’ the family. You can see by my cape that I was ready to walk out the door for the trek across Pinae Gardens to chat with folks– to celebrate the happy tidings and good family souls o’ the day.

HOLIDAY TIE TALLY holds: 102 Bow ties. 208 Neckties.

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Bigly Burps At Christmas Bashes

Tie o’ the Day is a delightful Christmas party must-have tie. It was a terrific find, but I can’t remember where I found it or how much I paid for it. It is both clever AND handy. It is especially handy at this season’s get-togethers, while my shoulder is being painfully dysfunctional. I’m down to one good arm for carrying things. I’ve gotten good at one-armed social hugging as well. A helpful Tie o’ the Day/ keeps the rotator cuff surgeon away.

HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 102 Bow ties. 208 Neckties.