Day: January 2, 2019

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.