Witty & Wise Ties, Trivia & Lies
I’ve been working around the house all afternoon, alone and in my pajamas. But that doesn’t mean I can’t wear a flag-ish Bow Tie o’ the Day with a matching puff-style, flag-ish pocket square in my pajama top’s breast pocket while I work. Observing Veterans’ Day for the entire day is a good lesson in patriotism for Skitter to see, even if I’m just in the confines of our own home. I’m determined to raise Skitter right.
Bow Tie o’ Veterans’ Day is a diamond bow made with a folk art, stars-and-stripes theme fabric. Veterans’ Day is always a tough and glorious day of acknowledgement for the men and women who have served in the U.S. military. They chose to serve us. Let’s make sure we serve them in return.
Yesterday, I had an incredible, yet incredibly simple, day. I had the kind of adventure that cost me nothing more than a tank o’ gas and the effort it took to get dressed. In return, I got back a boatload of all the abstract specifics that I would call my core values. In what profound, exotic activity did I participate? I had a regular ol’ conversation with my oldest— but truly young-at-heart— sister, Mercedes. Some of you readers know her as Betty, or Betty Rae, or BT. But to me, she’s Mercedes. She is my own, personal Mercedes.
Mercedes has lived in Pleasant View since the late 60’s when she hitched up with the jolly Nuk. PV is only thirty-five minutes away from my place, yet somehow, we don’t see each other as often as I’d like. We mean to see each other. I mean— it’s not like each of us is boycotting the other. We get along famously. She was literally the first TIE O’ THE DAY reader. Mercedes was my first tbloglodyte, way back when TO’TD was simply a text and a pic of a shirt and tie. That was also back when TIE O’ THE DAY showed only one tie per one day.
Yesterday, I showed up at Mercedes’ basement door with a bag o’ books to share. A bag of books is like a hostess gift between us. We trade books back and forth. Some guests might show up to a get-together, lugging a plate of cookies or a bottle of wine as a “thank you” to the host. We do books. We don’t mind trading underlined, highlighted, margin-noted books if need be. The markings give us further insights into each other. “Why did she highlight that paragraph? Why did she underline that word twice? I’ve gotta ask her about that.”
Anyhoo… We sat in Mercedes’ pleasantly dark basement where she has been working this week. She met The Saddle Purse and my Frida Kahlo cape in person for the first time. We talked family, religion, politics, you name it. And we are always able to respectfully discuss these dicey topics, without bullying and/or closed ears. I come away from our conversations feeling nourished and more knowledgeable than I was when we started.
Do you know what I didn’t do while I was talking to Mercedes? I didn’t worry about snapping pix for a TIE O’ THE DAY post. A post picture wasn’t the most important thing. I was totally focused on having a funny and meaty conversation with my bigliest sister. Enjoy my stick-figure-on-a-sticky-note re-creation of my happy day.
I did wear my wood, glasses Bow Tie o’ the Day for my visit with Mercedes— just in case you wondered.
Skitter wants you to know that these three boxes of ho-ho-ho Bow Ties o’ the Day hold greater numbers than it may appear. Each box is packed at least four bow ties deep. The love-seat provides just enough room for them and Skitter to sit and watch television. They are all sometimes champion couch potatoes. I’ll just stand here in front of the love-seat for a while, gazing down adoringly into the many eyes of my Skitter and my festive bow ties.
I live such a weird, blessed life.
Holiday Ties o’ the Day reveal they are ready and willing to serve for the duration of this Christmas/ Hanukkah/Kwanzaa season. Skitter tells me she’s counted more than 215 neckties here, but she reminded me I bought a few more specimens during some after-Christmas sales last year— which are currently unaccounted for. They’re hiding somewhere in the Tie Room, and I will certainly find them. We probably need to start another holiday necktie storage bin ASAP, as well. I’m off to air out the ho-ho-ho bow ties now.
I’m still receiving votes about whether y’all want me to wear/display ALL of my holiday neckwear during the season, or would you rather I select just one or two pieces per day to wear. Vote on. You Facebook readers aren’t voting a lot in the comments, but I have received quite a few IM’s from you. Readers on the website are chiming in, as usual. So far— if the vote holds its current course— I’ll be wearing each and every piece o’ Christmas neckwear in my collection once again this year. It makes my neck and shoulders hurt, just thinking about the tie weight I’ll be carrying.
Or maybe I just need to figure out how much holiday neckwear am I going to say YES to, and when should I begin to say YES to it. Headlamp Bow Tie o’ the Day is assisting me in planning out our 2019 holiday neckwear game plan.
For those of you who have not been TIE O’ THE DAY readers through a Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa season, I need to clue you in. In past years, I have taken on the task of wearing EVERY SINGLE festive piece of neckwear I own, during the course of the season. Last year, I had to begin donning my ho-ho-ho neck apparel sometime before Thanksgiving, and I still had to wear more than one piece at a time, in order to be sure to show them all before January 2. There were some days I had to wear dozens at a time for post photos. Last year, the tie tally ended up at 107 holiday bow ties, and 217 seasonal neckties. Folks, it’s tough to wear that much neckwear over the holiday season. I’m thinking I might wanna slow it down this year— maybe select and wear fewer pieces, and then I won’t have to begin displaying the highlights of my collection until December. If I’m gonna wear ’em all, I gotta start immediately.
But TIE O’ THE DAY is not all about me: I don’t want to hurt any ties’ feelings by not showing off the gamut of ’em. I don’t want the pieces I choose not to wear to feel like they aren’t up to snuff. I hate it when my tie critters feel bad. And I don’t want y’all to not see the ridiculous amount of holiday neckwear I have collected.
So I’m cogitating about what I can do to keep everyone jolly. Let me know what you want me to do. I’m giddy to show off every bit of the ho-ho-ho neckwear if that’s what y’all want. And I’m giddy to wear fewer, but select, ties o’ Christmas. What’s your preference to see, if you have one?
When last I posted, on Halloween, I showed you Skitter in her french fry costume. I fully intended to post later on Trick or Treat day, showing you my costume. But I made the mistake of saying to myself, “Self, while I’m waiting for the short ghouls and superheroes to knock on my front door in search of goodies, I’m going to fetch the Christmas neckwear out of storage, cuz I need to start wearing it ASAP if I’m going to wear every piece.”
There isn’t room in the Tie Room for the ghastly amount of Christmas neckwear to have year-round residence in there, so it all lives in a storage bin apartment complex in the garage— in the space where my car should park, but can’t. Oh, I made it into the garage to retrieve the bins containing X-mas neckties and bow ties, but after I moved all those bins into the Tie Room, I somehow got overwhelmed and confused. I lost my way out of the Tie Room. Yup, I have spent the last few days mountaineering my way through the maze o’ neckwear which is my decades-long collection.
Aside from being very dehydrated from my lostness, I emerged from the Tie Room relatively unscathed. I drank a mini-keg of water, and promptly sat down to write this. So here are some photos of me in my costume for Halloween. Bow Tie o’ the Day displays a dandy cast o’ sugar skulls, which complements my Suzanne-made Day of the Dead cape. But what am I?
I love the frightening and fantastical costumes Halloween gives us, but when it comes to dressing up myself, I gravitate toward the obscure, clever, or punny things to be. For example, in the fall of 1994, when Major League Baseball went on strike, I donned a white sheet and an Orioles baseball cap and became the Ghost of the Baseball Season. And when “the war in Iraq” was the most repeated phrase on the news, I stuffed my bra to overflowing with plastic toy soldiers and went to Halloween events as “The War in My Rack.” It’s who I be.
Anyhoo… When Miss Tiffany was last cuttin’ my hairs, I saw the idea in the mirror: my hair took the shape of a comma! How cool is that, since I’m a writer? Punctuation is part of everything I create, and the comma is my fave-rave punctuation mark! With my cape, I just had to be a superhero called Comma Woman. In fact, I am more than just plain old Comma Woman— I am Oxford Comma Woman!