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Navel Gazing

So often, what we anticipate our day will look like only slightly resembles what our day turns out to be. That’s the nature of living on a planet with nearly 8 billion other people. We aren’t completely in control of much that occurs beyond our own physical body. What we are always in control of is our behavior in response to the goings-on around us. How we behave is certainly our legacy to others. Our actions—including what we say—are what others will remember of us. Our actions will be the crux of any story someone tells about us. What we ultimately do will far outlast any plans we made or intentions we had.

Every tiny and bigly moment of action matters because someone important to you is always watching your every move: you. You are always a front-row witness to your own actions. If you don’t like what you see when you’re observing yourself as you live your life, you might want to seriously consider changing how you go about your living. If your actions don’t sync up with what you profess to value, you are degrading yourself. Your responsibility to yourself as a human being is to act in ways that glorify who you are. Your job is to act in tune with your singular self. That’s the stuff we want others to remember about us, isn’t it?

What follows is a repeat post from August 2019. Re-enjoy!

FRIDAY NIGHT TESTS

Worst. Dinner. Date. Ever.

I got all gussied up for a Friday on the town. Bow Tie o’ the Day was right there with me, ready to start the weekend the minute Suzanne came home from work. And then, I got a text from Suzanne at work, saying “Blah, blah, blah… leg pain… blah, blah, blah… leg is swollen… blah, blah, blah… doc says I should go to the urgent care NOW… blah, blah, blah… could be a blood clot!” So, off I run to the urgent care clinic in Farmington to find Suzanne. When I get there, she’s waiting for me in the lobby, where she explains the clinic can’t do the correct testing on her leg. We immediately amscrayed to the ER at Lakeview Hospital in Bountiful.

We spent the next couple of hours in an ER exam room, where Suzanne’s left leg was x-rayed and ultrasounded, and a bigly insurance deductible was forked over to the hospital. Panic not, my friends! Suzanne’s mysterious swollen leg passed its x-rays and ultrasound tests. We have no definitive answers about what’s going on in her left leg, but we are relieved to know it’s not an evil blood clot.

We got home from the hospital last night in time to watch all three hours of Live PD. Suzanne reclined all evening in the loveseat, with her legs further lifted atop 2 pillows I retrieved from upstairs. I’m certain Suzanne was plenty comfy, since she kept asking me if I would please go pee for her so she wouldn’t have to move. I would do anything for Suzanne. You already know I don’t say “no” to anything she asks of me. However, pottying for her is one task I cannot put on my honey-do list. But I would, if I could.

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Skitturbing Skittsurdities

So, yeah, as I wrote about last week, I came up with the word “skitturbing” the other day, to accurately describe how it feels when Skitter engages in some of her disturbing eccentricities. I offereded up the example of when she decides to perch like a gargoyle somewhere across the room and she just stares at me for an hour or so. It can only be described as kind of “skitturbing” when she does that. But she does other odd things that need to be described a bit differently. For these less creepy behaviors, I created a combination of “Skitter” and “absurdity,” and came up with the word “skittsurdity.” Skitter commits many “skittsurdities.” The example I and my Bow Tie o’ the Day will regale you with this afternoon has to do with Skitter’s canned food. After Skitter has gone outside to empty her doggie bladder first thing each morning, she jumps up in her bed beside me on the loveseat for her first nap of the morning. I write, I putter, I make calls, I plan for the day. Skitter wakes from her first morning nap around 9, and then she immediately prances over to her food and water bowls to make her official inspection. She samples the water and oh-so carefully surveys her food bowl. It holds some dry dog food, like it always does. It does not contain any of Skitter’s allotted wet food—a serving of which I place on top of her dry food each day at Skitter’s request. What makes the story of Skitter and her wet food result in it becoming a bona fide “skittsurdity” is the fact that although Skitter doesn’t like to eat her wet food until the evening, she will not settle down until she sees her gooey wet food is placed in her bowl in the morning. So she checks her food bowl after her first nap, then paces back and forth in front of me in a highly agitated state, whereupon she returns to her food bowl—again, watching me to be positive I’m watching her—to make sure I understand she is alerting me to the fact that there is no sign of wet food in her food bowl yet. That’s my cue to spoon the correct amount of her wet food into her food bowl—not because she’s hungry and wants to eat it immediately or even soon, but so she can observe it sitting atop the dry food in her food bowl for the entire day. She needs to see it there, just in case she decides she wants it earlier than her normal suppertime when she actually devours it. If the blob of wet food is there, Skitter relaxes and continues her day. Yup, the wet dog food simply sits there silently, for hours before she wants it, like the cherry atop the dry food—so Skitter can check on it at various times during the day. The gushy wet food sits for hours to naturally harden and crustify and stink and change colors before Skitter happily consumes it a couple of hours before she retires to bed. That, my friends, is just one “skittsurdity” in a long list of Skitter’s behavioral “skittsurdities.” I am always glad to find the right word for things—even if it means I have to make them up myself. 🤓

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Naps From The Past

Thanks for indulging me in my current interest in past TIE O’ THE DAY offerings as they pop up on FB. I’m amused by these posts from soon after my first pancreas surgery, in 2018. I do not remember these posts at all, so it’s like finding out new tidbits about myself. What I do vaguely remember about that time is being sleepy 24/7. I recall I had the uncanny ability to doze off for a quickie nap anytime, anywhere, and without experiencing any guilt for doing so. For a few months post-surgery, I napped with reckless abandon. In fact, I dare say napping during that time of physical recovery was both my job and my hobby. Napping was my purpose, my reason, my quest. I napped, therefore, I was. I pursued naps. I was, in fact, promiscuous with my naps. I literally and brazenly napped around, and I didn’t give a sweet damn who knew about it. I made no excuses for my sleepy behavior. I knew no nap shame! I was a nap tramp, a nap hussy, a nap-ophile! Ah, those were the days.

So here’s a TIE O’ THE DAY re-post from August 2018:

OH, IS IT MORNING?

No, my puffy eyes and dopey look aren’t because I’ve been crying. This is my face 90 seconds after I got out of bed. I found the right Bow Tie o’ the Day, put it on, and here I am. Having to wake up in the morning can sometimes be a kick in ye olde noggin. But I’m working to get back into the normal daily routine of being a normal person, as opposed to being a convalescing-for-weeks-after-surgery kind of gal. And y’all know what I mean when I use the word “normal.” I mean MY normal. I’m getting there, even though I have to take short naps a dozen times in my day. The normal I’m eager to get to most is shown by Bow Tie: burgers, hot dogs, fries, and pizza. I’ve followed my prescribed bland diet pretty faithfully. Even if you eat out, you can find bland, tame, easy-on-the-pancreas dishes on the menu wherever you go. And so far, I’ve managed to stick to that, even at our Sunday brunches. But I long to scarf down tasty, greasy, not-necessarily-healthy food occasionally. Just wearing Bow Tie makes my mouth water and my tummy growl. I almost want to cook it and consume its food fabric print. I can’t believe I just thought that, let alone wrote it. For sure, I would never do such a thing to any bow tie, and y’all know it. It would be a horrific sacrilege. But I do kinda wish Bow Tie were at least a scratch-n-sniff. 🍔🌭🍟🍕

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There Is No Good Time To Not Serve Your Fellow Beings

Here’s some TIE O’ THE DAY food for thought to gnaw on.

We tend to get wrapped up in ourselves and our own wants. We lose perspective when we embrace the narrow habit of taking care of “me, me, me, me” first—ahead of those in desperate need of assistance simply to survive. I don’t think we ignore others’ needs because our human nature is evil. I think we do it because there is so much help needed in the world that we have no clue where to begin to help. We can willingly blind ourselves to the seemingly endless need of others, in order to be able to survive what we see. Knowing there is so much work to be done can paralyze us into doing nothing except looking out for ourselves. But that’s ‘s no excuse for inaction. I can’t fulfill all the needs of the entire planet, but I can do some things—beginning with helping those around me who are in need. I can’t do everything, but I should what I can do—and I should do no less. What I cannot do is nothing. There’s is no peace that comes with choosing to live a life of giving nothing of oneself to others. Nobody has to steal in order to share. We can all be rich in providing service of some kind every day, even if it is simply checking on a neighbor. Just an observation.

Below, is a revised post from 2018, which made me think about—and write about—serving others today.

IT’S FUN TO THINK ABOUT STEALING, IN A MOVIE SORT OF WAY

Robbing a Loomis armored truck as it waits in front of Dick’s Market is not a brilliant idea. Even Tie o’ the Day knows that. It’s especially not a smart idea for me to attempt it, cuz I kinda stand out. I’d be way too easy for witnesses to identify. I can just hear the witnesses in the parking lot all report the same things about the perpetrator: “I saw a woman in a purple tie, and the license plate on the red truck she drove away in said HELEN W.”

Heck, let’s all be honest. Most of us have, at one time or another in our lives, thought about robbing a bank—in a not-serious way, I hope. We talk about doing it because of the money, but also for the challenge of making a perfect plan that is soooo much better than the plans of stoopid criminals who bungle their schemes. We watch TV crime shows about the hapless thieves, and we are positive we could pull off the robbery without a hitch, whatever the thieves are attempting to steal.

“Pretend robbery” planning also leads into the amusing conversation game we all play on occasion when we talk about what we’d do if we had a filthy, obscene, bigly amount of cash. Of course, we all know we are never going to earn that kind of money from our jobs, so we’re stuck cogitating about things like winning the lottery or robbing Fort Knox. We selflessly say that if we somehow end up with a pile o’ money, we’ll buy our parents a new house, and we’ll give money to charity, and we’ll build a school in some impoverished country, and we’ll end world hunger, and so on. But guess what! We know damn well that if we hit it rich, we’d immediately quit our job. And the first thing we’d truly do with our new-found fortune is to blow it all on a fancy-shmancy car, a motorcycle, an airplane, and a yacht. And the bigliest new smart television on the market. Oh, and a case of Junior Mints. We’d likely be more selfish with our winnings than philanthropic.

Anyhoo…Entering Dick’s Market, I walked right past the armored truck, waving cordially to the driver. Inside the store, I spent the tiny fortune in my teeny pocket to buy a maple-frosted apple fritter. I can attest to the fact that the fritter was rich—even if I’m not. 😜

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Hairspray Is Almost A Requirement In Delta

Delta wind is a force unto itself. If you have never experienced it, but want to feel it for yourself, I recommend you don’t confront it alone. Yes, you need a spotter with you. The Delta wind’s superpower is not necessarily its speed, but its quirkiness. It comes out of nowhere, and it leaves the same way. It might last 10 minutes or 10 days. When dormant, the Delta wind lurks quietly and perpetually in the background, until it finally unfurls itself—wildly, and in uneven gusts—to remind you that you’re merely mortal. And the Delta wind reminds you the material objects human beings think they own are really just on temporary loan from the cosmos until/unless the Delta wind decides it wants to take them back. The Delta wind owns each of us who is familiar with it, right down to our very dust. The Delta wind will surely outlast us all.

The following is a revision of a post from 2018.

THE DELTA WIND MISPLACED MY KITE

Bow Tie o’ the Day begged to head outside to experience the concept of wind. I explained to Bow Tie what it is, and why it exists. I also explained that any wind that shows up in Centerville, UT is not “real” wind.

Dirt devils in the desert are also not real wind. Tornadoes and hurricanes are not real wind. Those breezes are merely a taste of wind. Even the wind in Chicago, which is known as The Windy City, is not real wind. If you want to experience real wind, you have to spend time in Delta, UT. It’s not even a contest. Delta wins.

I’ve observed the Delta wind blow cats out of trees. On many occasions, I have seen the wind there blow bigly dogs over while they tried to potty. I have regularly seen the Delta wind move sheds, lawnmowers, trampolines, and even bags o’ golf clubs. And, I kid you not, I once saw the Delta wind blow a chainsaw off a picnic table. Where it ended up, I can only imagine.

I myself was once blown over onto a washboard road while riding my bike in a Delta wind, and my bike was nowhere to be found after I uprighted myself and managed to dust myself off. I have seen Delta wind blow herds of humongous tumbleweeds against fences, covering the fences so thoroughly—and artfully—that the fences themselves were not visible. In fact, I once saw the wind in Delta blow so ferociously that it threw a bazillion acres of tumbleweeds so high into the air that they actually disappeared. And when gravity was finally able to pull them back down to earth, it appeared as if the heavens had opened wide and were raining tumbleweeds down upon the whole of Millard County. That, my friends, is wind. And trust me, there is no umbrella for tumbleweed rain. 🌪️☂️🤡

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Bow Tie o’ My Tender Heart

I named this jumbo Bow Tie o’ the Day Luau Labrador. It reminds me of the dog o’ my life, my yellow lab, Araby. She’s been in the bigly dog park in the sky for almost nine years now. From the moment she became mine, she and I were in sync in a way that cannot be duplicated with any other mutt. Some days, I swear, Araby acted more like me than I did myself. She would have completely enjoyed dressing up in a grass skirt an coconut shells like the Luau Labrador and showing off to the neighborhood. Araby was up for any adventure, especially if it involved a bright yellow tennis ball or riding in the back of my truck.

You should know that the late Araby once flew right before my blue eyes. I kid you not. When she was still a puppy, I had Araby and Dad’s old dog, Bert, in the back of my truck, as I was driving to Oak City to drop off a quilt for binding. A light drizzle came down from the clouds, and as I slowed a bit on the last curve before arriving in Oak City, Araby must have slipped and lost her balance on the wet truck bed. In my rear view mirror, I saw Araby fly to the side of the road and pick herself right back up. Bert— who was still in the truck— was looking at me, as if saying, “I told Araby not to do that, but she wouldn’t listen! You know how stoopid puppies are!” I immediately put the truck in reverse and backed up to where Araby was dutifully waiting for me—but on only three good legs. One of her hind legs had been broken when she landed. I lifted her into the truck bed by Bert, and off to the vet I drove, hoping she didn’t like flying enough to try it again on our return trip. The quilt was still on the front seat and I cursed its existence all the way back to Delta.

In the end, it required a 7-inch metal rod to fix Araby’s leg. The vet bill was almost $800. After weeks of Araby healing, the rod was removed and I asked to keep it. Her leg healed perfectly and served her well for the rest of her life. I framed the vetbill and the rod in a shadowbox and hung it just inside my front door for visitors to see. I told anyone who asked about it that it was the most expensive piece of art I owned at the time, so I wanted it on display.

And nope, Araby never flew again. Once was more than enough for all of us.

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Brandi Wore A Tie

Last night’s Brandi Carlile concert at Vivint Arena in SLC was a rip-roarin’ tune fest. The Indigo Girls and Celisse were the opening acts. The evening’s combination of superb musicianship and stellar performances was nothing short of amazing. These folks are all compelling songwriters of the highest order. Brandi wore a tie—just for me, I’m sure. It was a loose necklace-type tie which balanced out the ostentatiously sparkly gold sequins of her shirt. (I wore my 3D-printed purple Bow Tie o’ the Evening, which attaches itself by sliding over the top button of my shirt.) Ticketmaster flubbed our ticket order, so instead of the reasonably priced tickets for upper-level seats I had originally ordered, we were given mega-expensive terrific floor seats. We did not complain about it. Sometimes you’ve just gotta roll with the good fortune that system errors can conjure up to your benefit. Especially if it gets you closer to Brandi Carlile’s stage. 🎸 🎹

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An Accurate Descriptor

My melty Bow Tie o’ the Day is my witness. Skitter does this thing sometimes, which still weirds me out after the almost nine years since she rescued us: Skitter perches herself somewhere and stares at me for extended periods of time. I don’t have to be doing any particular activity to get her attention. She will simply and suddenly decide to motionlessly watch me for as long as an hour. It’s a rather cool trick on her part, albeit a tad creepy. She’s never threatening when she does this, and she doesn’t move or make a sound. But it does appear to me she is under something like a spell. It’s as if she’s my own private gargoyle. I suppose I have my moments when I can be downright mesmerizing to whoever is in my vicinity, but whatever doggie thing Skitter is feeling when she gets the need to stare at me, I am sure my human brain will never know for sure.

Today, however, I am proud to announce I have created a word that I think properly describes how Skitter’s gargoyle-esque gazing strikes me. It is a combo of Skitter’s name and the word “disturbing.” When Skitter stares at me without making a sound or moving a muscle for an hour, it is “skitturbing” to me. In fact, much of Skitter’s normally eccentric behavior can be accurately described as skitturbing. If, despite all my decades of writing, I have contributed nothing more to the betterment of the English language, I feel certain I have at least made my singular lasting mark by conjuring up the remarkable word, SKITTURBING. I have not lived in vain! 🤓 🤡 🐶 🗿

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I Got Tickets To Bruce

If you asked me to estimate how many concerts I’ve attended in my life, I think I’d feel comfortable saying the number is in the 175-200 range. I have seen everybody from Kenny Rogers and Barry Manilow to Cyndi Lauper and even the recently deceased Olivia Newton John. I have seen Neil Diamond and P!NK in concert, as well as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Elton John was my first concert when I was 11, in October of 1975. I saw Elton with all four of my siblings and their significant others. Although I have no musical ability myself, music has been a bigly constant of my days and nights. The music I’ve listened to is the necessary soundtrack of my life. I know I am not alone in this need to be encompassed by music.

My white whale of concerts has always been Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. I consider myself a serious, decades-long Bruce fan, but I’ve never made it to a Bruce concert. I didn’t see him in the 80’s mostly because I had no money. In the 90’s and early 2000’s, with a family, I had neither money, nor time. By the 2010’s, when I finally had both money and time to spare, whenever Bruce was out on tour, I thought: “Why go see him now? He’s not in his prime, and his show will probably have a noticeable geriatric vibe to it.” But by all reports, old Bruce was still fabulously dynamic on his most recent tour, and reviews of his concerts were replete with rave reviews. I felt I had missed out. And now, in 2022, if I still want to see Bruce—and I do—I figure I better go to a performance ASAP, because he himself might be dead by the time his next tour rolls around. So the other day, I got us tickets to see Bruce in February 2023, in Portland. So far, SLC is not on Bruce’s tour schedule, so off we will fly to Portland for the primary purpose of seeing The Boss perform.Do you wanna know another indication that I’m sure I’m gettin’ on the old side of my time? Well, from the moment I bought the concert tickets, let’s just say I began to worry about the February weather, and to pray that said weather will be good enough for the airports to be open on those specific winter days in February, so we can fly safely there and back home. Yup. That worry is practical, it’s way too early, and it’s one more thing which makes me officially old. I never used to worry about weather: I just went wherever I felt like going, whenever I felt like going, and I simply handled any not-so-good weathery thing which might have happened. These days, if I’m headed out of town at a time when there might be “weather,” I make sure somebody knows exactly where our important documents are—just in case. 🛫✈️🎸