Month: October 2019

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A Doc Appointment In SLC

I stole my Wrangler pink ribbon hat back from Skitter this afternoon when I had to zip into SLC for a quick appointment with my pain doc, Dr. Bow. (Her real name has “bo” in it.) She did not recognize me when she came into the exam room, because she had never before seen me in a Tie o’ the Day. Apparently, I’ve only ever worn bow ties to my appointments with her. She said she liked my Tie o’ the Day as a snappy, purple reminder to everyone to steer clear of domestic violence this month and every month. She also told me that I act more like a bow tie gal than a necktie gal. I told her I completely agree, but there’s no way in heck I’m ditchin’ my beautificent necktie pals. They are a part of me too.

Y’all might be wondering why this tblog is called TIE O’ THE DAY, instead of BOW TIE O’ THE DAY, since I wear more bow ties than any other kind of neckwear. Well, a couple of years ago when I finally persuaded Suzanne to build me a website, I was actually wearing neckties seven days a week, plus wearing a bow tie to church. Hence, I created and purchased the domain name tie-o-the-day. I’m not getting a new one. No new domain name for me. “Tie” is a general term that can cover all types of ties, so it’s still accurate, no matter what kind of neckwear I’m sporting.

Anyhoo… This afternoon, I had a hallelujah time at my pain appointment. And what makes a pain appointment fantastic? I asked my doc to reduce my pain meds by half, and Dr. Bow gave it the thumbs-up. It’s all thanks to the heavy duty pancreas surgery I had a year ago. It has also helped that I have spent the last year doing relatively nothing strenuous as I’ve recovered from my little operation. I’ve overly babied myself, and I have moved super-gingerly since surgery. My Hanky Panky hurt 24/7 for almost two decades. I’ve only got 1/3 of it left now, and that remaining 1/3 is mostly healthy. It emits much less pain, yet functions better than my whole Hanky Panky did. I’m feeling pretty good these days, physically. Knock on wood. Maybe my next Dr. Bow pain appointment will be the last. A girl can dream.

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A Seriously Busy Month

October is a jam-packed month, in terms of awareness/causes and celebrations. I plan to address as many as possible. The neckwear and I won’t be doing Oktoberfest, yet again. I haven’t celebrated that doozy since 2006, which is the right thing for yours truly. You’ll have to tackle that one on your own, if you are so inclined. Halloween, of course, is the bigly party deal of the entire month. And then there are the various hunts going on up in them thar hills. I was born to celebrate all that hubbub.

Skitter showed support for Breast Cancer Awareness Month yesterday, decked out in her pink. Today, her hat represents that cause. In addition, she’s hoping her purple Tie o’ the Day calls your attention to Domestic Abuse Awareness Month.

Skitter and I have chatted about domestic abuse, and we decided on something to say to y’all about it: Hey, folks, that all-encompassing commandment about loving one another– I think that’s supposed to start in your own home. Just a thought.

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I Was Going To. Really, I Was.

I sat down this afternoon to write a lengthy TIE O’ THE DAY post, in which the neckwear and I did many unusual and daring things. But it was 3 PM– otherwise known as Judy o’ Clock. Behold! When this JUDGE JUDY litigant showed up on the screen, I became petrified. And all my false and true stories promptly fell out of my head, and went splat on the floor. Not even a bow tie on this woman’s neck could have spared me from the debilitating fear which overcame me when she appeared on the 65-inch television screen. My eyebrows look downright svelte and tame compared to hers.

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Skitter Hates Breast Cancer, Too

Skitter dresses up in my stuff all the time. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and I’ve noticed she’s turning up in a lot of pink lately. In this photo, she’s wearing a fabulous pink Tie o’ the Day, and she’s made a tiara out of my SAVE THE TA-TA’S awareness bracelet. Even the sleeping Skitter dreams of a cure for breast cancer. She’s a very compassionate dog.

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Check ‘Em Out

Flouncy Bow Tie o’ the Day joins me in solid pink because October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It’s a cause I believe in, and that’s the only reason I was able to stomach showing up in one solid color. You most likely will not see me “solid” again, especially in real life, so gander at the pink and pink and pink now, while you can.

You are in charge of your breasticles’ health, ladies. Do your self-exams. If you have someone who can help you with the task, that’s okay too. Just sayin’.

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Just Imagine. Or Don’t!

Bow Ties o’ the Day made me aware that this style of hat is “in” this fall. I have no earthly idea what its style is called, however, so I decided it’s kind of a Mickey-Mouse-meets-Goober-Pyle piece of headwear. I’d wear one. My fave dress here is the see-through one. C’mon– you have to admit it’s the most interesting outfit. And I like the boots on the right “me” too. They are fascinatingly chunkerrific.

Looking at this ad got me cogitating about the “me/un-me” theme in my posts earlier this week, and then that started me thinking about the following: What if I were triplets?! Yikes. Would all three of us wanna be “me” at the same time, and “un-me” at the same time? And if we (3) were all bipolar, would that double (x 2) our crazy-head issues? Would that make us virtually 6 clash-fashion geniuses?

Oh, contemplating the slapstick which would ensue from that triplet-y lightning strike drains me. It makes me tired to broach even the pretend possibilities. And afraid. To imagine it makes me very afraid.

Hark! I am satisfied to be just one, bipolarized “me.” One of me will do, thank you.

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The End: PART THREE Of Some Meandering Of My Mind

I haven’t selfied today, so I’ll let Grace Anne show off her cute Bow Tie o’ Last Sunday before she got in a fancy polka dot dress for church. See, her bow is on the ballerina costume emblem on her chest.

So….. I’ve been writing here about wanting to just un-me myself, cuz I keep needing to re-learn the lesson of using moderation in assisting folks in solving their own problems. When I do too much, I short-change myself and disappear, which makes me realize I really don’t want to change into someone I’m not. I just want myself to grow to be better at being me. I think we all want that for ourselves.

But why do we make the same mistakes again and again? Yesterday, I said that one reason is because we are familiar with the pattern. It feels comfortable to us. We feel safe in a pattern we’ve set, if only because we’re used to it.

However, I think there’s a much bigly-er reason we get stuck in our patterns of behavior that replay our weaknesses. What complicates our battles with our own personal deficiencies is the fact that our weaknesses are usually intricately tied to our strengths. And we don’t want to chance giving up our strengths.

For example, I think most of us will agree that helping others is a good way to be. Helping others, to the detriment of ourselves is not so good. We have to keep learning how to harness all the bells and whistles of our helping, so we don’t collapse in self-neglect. Ideally, we want our characteristic strengths to grow, while our characteristic weaknesses diminish. So although it is true in some sense that we must lose ourselves in order to find ourselves, it’s also true that we can lose ourselves in helping others to the point that our “self” can starve to death. If that happens, we are of no use to anyone. We have made it impossible to love our neighbors. Now, that’s what I call a sin.

To use a car metaphor, the long and short of it is that I had been speeding around for others a bit recklessly, until I had no speed with which to move. My tank wasn’t just empty, it finally rusted out. My wheels were stuck in a mud puddle of my own making too. I spun my wheels out of helpless anger, knowing fully well that I was only throwing mud and making deeper ruts. I gotta remember to not do that again. Y’all know exactly what I’m sayin’.

As a decrepit old gal these days, my “me” is like the muddy used car. Folks, I’m never gonna be a new car. I’m pretty much AS IS. But used cars can be detailed, so I’m also AS I WILL BECOME. I wanna be a continually NEW used car, regularly detailing myself with mostly snazzerrific bow ties.

End of deep thoughts.

BTW You know how I find connections everywhere I look? Here I am posting about the good and bad of helping others, and what did my fortune cookie tell me at lunch today? “Life’s greatest privilege is being able to help someone in need.” Duh! I kid you not.

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What Was All That Absence About? (aka PART TWO)

Here are some rare photos of me and Skitter naked of our neckwear. When I lounge on the reclining loveseat in my mis-matching pajamas, somehow Skitter manages to gradually squish me and hog my seat. You can see I hate it when that happens.

Anyhoo… In the previous post I wrote about wanting to be un-me, cuz being me creates problems for me at times. One thing I do that makes problems for me is this: I come to the rescue. It’s what I do. (I’m sure that’s why Suzanne has to make me so many capes.) I think I must say YES to every plea that comes my way. Suzanne and I call me ERRAND GIRL because I have been known to spend much of my time doing for other people what they don’t have the time, patience, or availability to do themselves. I am a do-gooder. I do not say it in a braggadocious way. I mean it in the sense that I seem to have an intuitive skill to pitch in and help. It was a kind of fate I was born into, too. I can’t take credit for that part of it. You do know who raised me, right? My do-gooding skill comes naturally, like some people have a natural musical ability. Perhaps I can’t say NO because I am covered in blessings, and some people have so few. (Let’s face it. Many of you share this yes/no struggle. I know you, you know.)

I think my recent postlessness is very much about getting burned out by too much doing for others. You’ve been there too, no doubt. I’ve been overly generous with my mental and physical energies for others recently, to the extent that I began to feel like I was living other people’s lives while ignoring my own. I was spending my days in the Kingdom Of Saying Yes To Other People. My own behavior caused me to lose my sense of me. I “helped” others let me lose my balance, in order for them to maintain their own.

Balance. That’s my “issue.”

I keep having to learn the same lesson about balance, over and over– and in different scenarios– in my mortal existence. I think it’s kind of like that for all the bigly lessons we each have to learn. We might be working on conquering different things in ourselves, but a lot of the stuff you need to learn is unique to you. Some of the ideas are the same for all of us. We find ourselves running into our own same lessons repeatedly, and that’s a clue we really need to work on that idea.

It’s not necessarily that we’re too stoopid to learn our lessons the first time we encounter them. It’s not that we don’t know we have to grow to be better people– and to keep from being boring to ourselves and others. No, I think we keep hitting our heads against the same lessons at increasingly deeper and more meaningful levels in our souls. We’re stubborn and defensive about our weaknesses, but we hold onto them because they’re what we know. Holding on makes growth slow or even impossible, when growth is always oh-so possible.

Why else do we greedily hold on to what holds us back? There’s a really, really, really, bigly reason we hold onto stumbling blocks, and I’ll explain it in the rest of my theory tomorrow in PART THREE: the final post in this particular philosophical exploration. And then we can get back to silliness. And neckties and bow ties and bolos, oh my!

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Where, Oh, Where Have The Bow Ties Been? (PART ONE)

Even heart-target Bow Tie o’ the Day knows I post, post, post. And then I’m suddenly silent. I’ve done it before, but never in TIE O’ THE DAY history have I been post-less for nearly half a month. (Thanks for your patience.) With the exception of a short post on Mom’s birthday last week, that’s how long it’s been. And even more astounding is the fact that I purposely haven’t worn neckwear (this is an earlier photo) for that amount of time. Oh, the pigs are flying about that! I am simply not myself.

Usually when all’s quiet on the laptop it’s due to some bipolar thing, or connectivity issues while we’re vacationing. This time my silence has been part bipolar vortex and mostly existential crisis. I wore my spirit out, and I wanted to be un-me. I guess even I couldn’t handle my high-maintainance diva self. Thus, I haven’t worn neckwear, nor have I had the oomph to consider posting. I haven’t perked up to think of clashy fashion. I haven’t been clever or chatty. I haven’t restocked the fridge with Diet Coke. I have not had one story or sermon formulating in me to write. I have not offered to assist others. I have tried to be as un-me as I can be. What if the un-me is the best me? I don’t know if anyone has missed me and the neckwear that is so much a part of me, or not. I kinda haven’t missed myself, which tells you I’m not quite back to my normal. I’m the kind of person I and other people regularly need a vacation from. But trying to be a matchy, low-key me isn’t working all that effectively for me either. My “me” got pooped. What’s a me-gal to do?

Besides, we can’t really run from ourselves anyway, can we? I mean– really, escaping ourselves is one task we cannot possibly accomplish. But I’ve recently been trying to be un-me anyway, as I tried to do a couple of other times in my life. I’m sure you’ve tried to be un-you, too, at certain points in your existence. Yet here you are, right at this moment– you are most probably being inescapably you. Mr. Rogers and I are glad you are you. I’m trying to get back to being me, by creating this post. I’m pushing through it, but it’s tiring to be me.

Bottom line: I don’t think we need to change who we are, as much as we each need to continuously try to grow into a more glorious authentic self: a self that takes care of itself, in order to be strong enough to care for others without disappearing into exhaustion.

[Tune in tomorrow for PART TWO of this post, which will likely clarify what I’m trying to say.]