I’m surprised these photographs have survived from the 70’s. Besides Utah, I’ve lived in Virginia and Maryland, and then back in Utah. These prize pix have been with me all along the way. They were taken at the same sleepover as the photo from this morning’s post. See. I wasn’t exaggerating about our boisterous clowning. The pix are joined here by Delta Rabbit-y bunny Bow Tie o’ the Day (Trust me, the white critters on the fabric are bunnies.) and DHS colors Bow Tie o the Day.
In the bunny bow tie photo, top row, left to right: Sandra Topham, Terilyn Anderson, Penny Porter. Middle row, left to right: Tammy Harris, Georgia Grayson, me, Janet Eliason. Bottom: Shelly Brown.
In the red-and-white DHS colors bow tie photo, clockwise from the top: Janet Eliason (behind the elbow), Leann Sorenson, Tauna Louder, Tammy Harris (back of head), Sandra Cropper, Karla Meyers, Edie Gross, Terilyn Anderson.
I don’t know about the rest of these chicks, but I got a lot older.
Birthday balloon Bow Tie o’ the Day joins a frou-frou feather Bow Tie o’ the Day to honor the birthday of Georgia Grayson Wadsworth.
One set of Cufflinks o’ the Day represents the sweet slices of birthday cake I’m sure Georgia will scarf down today. The other Cufflinks o’ the Day represent the zillions of tasty food orders Georgia cooked at the Desert Drive-in (I think that was its name) and the Burger Box. I wish I owned a pair of onion ring cufflinks to have included in the picture. To this day, I have never found onion rings as incredibly tasting as the ones Georgia made. I am not stretching the truth. Even as I write this, I can taste them. And they had the exact amount of crunchy consistency. Yum in my head.
In this late-70’s photo, Georgia has interrupted me in my bathroom as I attempt to rid myself of soda pop. (Check out Mom’s superb wallpaper o’ the era. Flowers, anyone?) This took place at one of my infamous sleeping parties, which Dad tolerated with much grace.
I’m pretty sure this was the party when we got high on junk food, then crushed potato chips, in an attempt to smoke them. What wild girls we were!
At this same party, the dozen partygoers and I managed to escape from my house, most of us in only our underwear, whereupon we ran down Lyman Row. We made a ruckus down there, and Bill Cave’s dad came out of his house and chased us down the road and through many back yards. We were convinced he was going to maim us with his hook arm.
Somehow we escaped and made it back to the house– all of us with our bodies intact. Last. Sleepover. At. My. House. Ever. Dad’s grace had run out. Honestly, I don’t know why we would have needed more sleepovers anyway. At the parties we’d had up to that point, we had already done every harmlessly fun thing imaginable.
Flash forward to last summer when I had surgery. The day before I went into Huntsman, a package showed up at my front door. It contained a pair of crocheted slippers, with a bow tie crocheted into the design. It was, of course, from my old pal, Georgia. They were a sign.
I was scared about the surgery, and Suzanne was out of town. I was alone in my scaredy-cat emotions. That slipper-y gift of compassion literally kept me from canceling the operation, which I was so close to doing. Those hand-made, bow tie slippers gave me the push and courage necessary to go through with what I needed to do.
In the middle of one of the nights I was at Huntsman– after my surgery– I was in horrendous pain. I remember actually saying to a nurse, mostly jokingly, “Kill me now!” because the pain was so massive and relentless. As tough as I am, I’d had it. In fact, at some point that night, I thought I was literally going to die. I looked down at the end of the bed, and there were those bow tie slippers on my feet. And I thought to myself, “If I die, I will die with my bow tie slippers on.” I didn’t need boots to die in.
Bow Tie o’ the Day and I scurried off to sit in Suzanne’s office and stare at her while she ate her yogurt for lunch. I drank two cans of Fresca from Suzanne’s personal office refrigerator, cuz the Diet Coke I had left in my car overnight was still frozen solid. Ya can’t drink something the consistency of a brick. Thus, I gulped the flowing, free Fresca available to me. Tasty-riffic, but…
Apparently, I’m not acclimated to the side effects of Fresca consumption, because my face has been stuck like this since I drank the first sip. That drinking happened six hours ago, and this mischievous expression just keeps hanging across my face. What’s even weirder is that I think this photo looks more like me than I usually look like myself.
Think on that idea for a minute. It’s as if– due to my reaction to a relatively small dose of Fresca– my face finally got stuck in its “true” look. Has Diet Coke disguised my own face from me and y’all for all these decades? Can I only reach my full Helen-potential if I switch to the “true” Fresca?
And here I go, down The Existential Sinkhole o’ Questions (TESo’Q). You know the one. You fall into it every now and again, when some occurrence or another discombobulates you. The questions are the same for us all: Who am I? What is my purpose? Where is all the Chapstick I’ve lost? Should I have done x, instead of doing y? Should I stay or should I go? Who’s yer daddy? What happens if I forget to forget that I forgot to not forget something I forgot I meant to never forget? Why am I here? Have I wasted my life? What’s my stripper name?
See there? That’s how The Existential Sinkhole o’ Questions can give you a headache. Once you start with your “bigly” existential questions, you can get yourself easily mired down in them, to the point you don’t actually go out and do your living. You can waste time treading water in the swirling TESo’S questions for years on end. Try to avoid that. Try to drive right past that nasty TESo’Q, if at all possible.
And if you wanna be a compassionate person about all this TESo’Q biz, here’s what you can do: After every time you pull yourself out of The Existential Sinkhole o’ Questions, surround the sinkhole with orange traffic cones, so others can more easily avoid taking the grungy plunge. Oh, and help pull them free of the dastardly pit when they ignore the traffic cones you laid out so thoughtfully for their benefit.
Admit it. None of us pays attention to the orange traffic cones all the time. That would be smart. We’re not smart: we’re people.
I had a heckuva difficult time deciding what bow tie to wear this morning, so I took the easy way out and decided to wear my bow tie-covered ascot. When in doubt, wear as many bow ties as you can, as often as you can, and in any way you can. That little recommendation fits right in line with the goals of clash fashion. Wear bigly, clash bigly. Clash bigly, or go home!
With this philosophy in mind, I present to you, in one piece of neckwear, Ascot o’ the Day and Bow Ties o’ the Day combined. As an added bonus, I am pleased to give you Bow Tie Sunglasses o’ the Day, which I plan to hand over to my ever-sunglasses-wearing mother when I visit her next. Watch out for that!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
