Month: January 2020

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Experiments In Gravity

FYI Apparently, purses are “in” this year. How do I know? Because VOGUE says so. I do like that the purse handle works as a sort of bow tie.

As Skitter took me and Bow Tie o’ the Day out for my morning walk today, we enjoyed seeing the thick white snow. We ignored the yellow spots of snow dotting the neighborhood yards, close to the sidewalk. I had a brief idea about using Skitter to create a snow dog-angel in a particularly beautiful patch of snow, and then take a TIE O’ THE DAY photo. But my internal voice of reason came to Skitter’s rescue, reminding me that Skitter would be scared by being embedded into the snow to be a snow dog-angel. And honestly, I didn’t really want to lie down in the cold snow by myself. So we walked on, and I thought about some of the snow angels I remember making.

The best “snow” angel I ever made was not made in the snow, nor was it made on purpose. I unintentionally created it when I fell from our treehouse once when I was a kid. Our “treehouse” was a single piece of wood nailed to a high tree limb which hung out over the vacant lot next door. The lot was a dense tumbleweed farm at times. When I fell out, it was into tall dry tumbleweeds. It was as if the weeds held up their arms to catch me and break my fall. I landed atop a clump of weeds, flat on my back, and gradually fell through their snapping limbs to the ground.

No harm, no foul. I brushed myself off and climbed back up in the treehouse, where I looked down to where I had fallen, and I could see where I had left a perfect outline of my body in the grouping of weeds, smooshed down to the ground. I must have been flailing my arms as I fell flat through the weeds though, cuz the impression in that bunch of tumbleweeds looked exactly like a snow angel.

Who says there’s nothing to do in Delta, UT?!

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There’s Always Next Year

Seattle Seahawks Bow Tie o’ the Day was not enough to move my team past the Green Bay Packers yesterday. Their season is done. I was sure my new Seahawks bow tie earrings would be magic enough to guarantee a win, but I guess I was wrong. Clearly, my wintry cape’s snowflakes didn’t help either.

The only thing weirder than sports fans thinking what they wear will help their team win is why we like our chosen teams in the first place. When I was 12, I chose the Seahawks to be my team when they came into the league in 1976. Why? Because they were there. On Sundays after church, everybody else in the family cheered for their chosen teams, so I figured I needed one. I wanted to back a team nobody else had their mitts on yet.

I’m a fan of the underdog, and as the new NFL team in 1976, Seattle was the underdog of all underdogs. The Seahawks seemed like my kind of team. They were doomed to be losers. I knew my team would lose, and lose, and lose. I prepared for it. I prepared for all the razzing I knew I would endure with my team for years. Every NFL Sunday I got full to the gills with cheers and wins for the Denver Broncos, the Dallas Cowboys, and the stoopid Green Bay Packers, while my Seahawks sucked. But me and my Seahawks won a Super Bowl in 2013, and although that ain’t gonna happen this year, it very well could come to pass next year. Hope springs annually with the coming of the NFL season.

FYI. I’ve visited lots o’ places, but I have never even been to Seattle.

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Another Asparagus Story

Tie o’ the Day is just plain gorgeous as it clashes sublimely with one of my paisley shirts. They both clash with my Suzanne-crocheted Hat o’ the Day. She’s been on a binge with crocheting hats lately. I counted over a dozen she created over the X-mas holidays. I can’t decide which I like the most, so I’m wearing them all once, then we’ll donate them.

But back to asparagus… Most of you know my hometown— Delta, UT. Many readers are not familiar with it at all. Delta was kind of a truer-to-life version of Mayberry. For the most part, we all knew each other. I lived in a terrific neighborhood, on the wrong side of the tracks, just inside the city limits. My dad’s parents lived next door to us, and Dad’s bee warehouse was behind their house. Farm country started literally across the street to the west of our home. That meant a canal full of irrigation water was also literally across that same street. And a dirt ditch canal meant loads of asparagus.

Every neighborhood has its share of grouchy folk, and mine was no exception. I was on the canal bank picking asparagus one fine summer day, when I heard an ominous voice: “Don’t you steal my asparagus!” It was not God’s voice, although it shook me to the core. It was one of our crabby, old lady neighbors who seemed to think that everything in her not-too-good eyesight was hers just because she lived closest to the ditch. I’ll just call her Mrs. Canal. Off, I ran the whole forty yards to Dad’s bee warehouse, leaving a trail of scared asparagus falling behind me. Yes, even the asparagus was scared.

Through the fog of bees in the honey extracting room, I regaled Dad with my latest exploit. He was sympathetic. He had grown up there, right across the street from Mrs. Canal. I asked him how old Mrs. Canal was. He pondered, then said, “All I can tell you is that she was at least a hundred years old when I was a boy.” That was Dad’s way of saying I’d better just be polite, and leave that area unpicked until Mrs. Canal gives up the ghost, then I could have at it.

I started picking the asparagus where Mrs. Canal couldn’t possibly see me, and it killed me to leave “her” asparagus growing there on the canal bank. Year after year, she never picked it, so it just grew spindly and went to seed. What a waste.

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A Fancy Food I Didn’t Know Was Fancy Until I Moved Back East

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I have been playing with both the new and old computers today. Suzanne transferred my old computer’s contents to the new computer last night, and I’ve been comparing various files to make sure everything made it to the new machine. So far, so good. No problems. And the new machine is quick, I tell ya.

This photo shows my computer’s desktop screen, which is a picture of one of my fave summer meals Mom made for me: asparagus and pickled asparagus. Mom planned to make me creamed asparagus over toast too, but it was July— and way too hot to eat creamed anything. Still, it would’ve made an even better photo.

As a kid, I spent a great deal of my summer on my bike, prowling the county’s ditch banks for asparagus for Mom to cook. It kept me out of trouble, and it generally kept me on her good side. I lost track of time one day, and when the sun went down I found myself and my bike out on the ditch banks of Sugarville. There were no cell phones back then, of course. And I was so young I didn’t know I knew anyone who actually lived in Sugarville, so instead of knocking on some “stranger’s” door and asking to use their phone, I hauled my butt back into Delta as fast as my cowboy boots could push the pedals. Darkness falls fast in the desert.

My bike basket brimmed with perfectly fat asparagus. I was sure the ton of asparagus would save me from Mom and Dad being miffed at me for being AWOL all day and after dark. It did not.

When things were settling down in the Ron and Helen Wright household that night, Dad said I should think of my asparagus hunting as deer hunting. I should think smart. He said, “You can hunt asparagus anywhere you’re not trespassing. You just have to tell us which direction you’re going, so we know where to find the carcass when you don’t come home.” Message received.

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I Hate Haters

Skitter’s Ties o’ the Day offer up this story for your contemplation. Every day, when we still had the Delta house, and I still had a daily Delta/Mom routine, Skitter would put on a tie and ask to go with me on my daily Diet-Coke-at-The-Pub visit. At first, I told Skitter she couldn’t go to The Pub with me cuz she was a minor. But when she aged out of minor-hood, I then had to break it to her that she would never be legally allowed in The Pub, or other places like it— simply because she is not a people. She had no idea she was “different”, so it came as an enormous shock to her skittish, canine system.

I explained to Skitter about prejudice and discrimination. About its many forms and guises. About bigots and bullies. About how every living thing is “different” in some way (many ways, in fact), depending on what “they” say is the “norm”. I explained that the categories and mechanisms used to commit bigotry are completely arbitrary. They bear no resemblance to the truth, beauty, and goodness of existence. Bigotry is reductive and riddled with the fear of everything except itself.

Skitter pondered seriously about the in’s and out’s, the up’s and down’s, and the sideway’s of what I had told her. She thought and thought, until her tiny thinker was exhausted. And then she said, “But I can still wear the ties, right?”

Now, that’s a nifty perspective: Just go about your life, in wonder and love and ties.

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Showing Off My Slippers Again

When you have something really groovy, show it off. Show it off often. Thank you again, Georgia Grayson Wadsworth for crocheting me these slippers over a year ago, for my Hanky Panky surgery stay at Huntsman. I never tire of my friend-made slippers, and I never tire of feeling grateful for what others do to help me on my life’s adventure.

It is quite freeing to feel gratitude. Feeling appreciative is one indication somebody has actively loved you. It means someone thought enough about you to offer a kind word; make a needed loan; give a sheltering hug in a time of loss; flash a smile across a room of strangers; etc. The list is infinite. And if you’re not feeling gratitude for anything, you aren’t paying attention. At the very least, you are reading this right now, and who do you think I’m taking the time and effort to write it for? You, of course. Even if you’re bored with this particular post, I wrote it for you. It’s not much, but it’s one way I can show I care about you. We should all be more grateful for whatever parts we play in each other’s lives.

Other good people can find value in stuff that makes you joyous, just like you can find value in theirs. (Stay away from selfish, jealous people who can only appreciate something if they own it.) In a nutshell, that’s what my tblog is all about: I love wearing ties and telling stories, and I want to share them with others. Sometimes I write a lot. Sometimes I write a little. Sometimes a post is sarcastic. Sometimes a post is downright profound. The neckwear is always splendid, at the very least.

I’m sure I’ll show off my bow tie slippers here again and again over the coming years, but I probably won’t climb back up on the dining table to show them off with a Neckties o’ the Day puzzle. That is not a do-over. The standing-on-tables part of my life is now done. I guess I just needed to do it one more time. I’m grateful I did it, and I’m grateful I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m sure I’ll live a longer life by keeping my Bow Tie Slippers o’ the Day on the floor.

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My Spock Ear Is Cold Again

There is no chill in the world that can’t be solved by wearing a comfy sweater, bigly ear muffins, and a wood Bow Tie o’ the Day. Seriously. Don’t tell me I’m wrong about this unless you’ve tried it.

That reminds me. It’s time for another episode of Weird Scribbling In My Notebooks, in which I relay some nuggets I’ve written in my notes over the years— trying to figure out what I meant and/or why I thought they needed to be written down in the first place. These gems are from one of my 2010 notebooks.

#1 “Secret of life: Don’t get hit by a firetruck.” That pretty much explains itself, I guess. I kinda don’t know why I felt the need to record that bit o’ common sense in the first place, but ok. One really should not forget it.

#2 “My scalpel eye is cutting through to a clean, factual thing.” Sounds like I figured out something all by myself.

#3 “Am I killing this pen, or what?” I must have gotten a new pen I liked.

#4 “The Last of the Dead Shot Bubbas.” I have not one idea what that was about. I’m guessing it was a possible title for a Delta story. I dunno.

#5 “Credit on earth is bad. Credit in Heaven is good.” Let’s see: Incurring and paying bills = earthly rewards. Loving others builds up credit in your favor in Heaven= Heavenly rewards. Plus, actively loving others is just the right thing to do. CTR, all the way.

#6 “Speaking of coloring inside the lines— coloring hair is coloring ONLY the lines.” Now, that’s just seeing hair from a different perspective, pointing out that every hair is a line you can shape, cut, and/or color.

#7 “Callings don’t show up on your phone bills.” True. Usually the bishop just asks to meet with you. (Har, har, har.)

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A Visit To Dr. Bow

Kandinsky-style Bow Tie o’ the Day and I spent the bulk of our afternoon clashing our attire at my doctor appointment with my pain management doctor. I refer to her as Dr. Bow since the word “bow” sounds like a syllable in her real name. And she is a TIE O’ THE DAY fan.

The appointment went well. You know that irritatingly vague 1-10 pain scale the docs use to pin down the seriousness of your current pain? When Dr. Bow asked what my pain level was today, I said a lower number than I’ve said in 20 years of being asked. I happily said I was at a 5. I might as well have won the pain level lottery. I’m feeling a-ok.

Knock on wood, and on anything else that’s handy.

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I Like Words

Booked-out Tie o’ the Day is hanging out with the computer keyboards. As much as I am smitten by ties and bow ties, I revel in words. One-syllable words, bigly words, odd words, unpronounceable words, and so on. If it’s a word, it’s my buddy. I’ve never bothered to learn a second language, cuz I haven’t yet finished with all the English words and their various combinations. It’s a good thing I’m a writer, or I’d have no idea what to do with the words in my head. They’d probably turn into voices, which would probably make my head implode.

I even find a use for most swear words. Not the bad, bad, bad ones. They make me cringe. But a basic swear word is sometimes the exact right word to use. It makes a point. It adds emphasis. I get tired of profanity if it’s just there to take up space. It’s usually unimaginative. In almost all instances of swear word usage, there is a more descriptive, more precise word to convey whatever message you’re trying to get across to someone else. I admit I use the tamer profanities on occasion, but I would not say that swearing is one of my prominent characteristics. However, I recently benefited bigly-time by letting out a few “hell”‘s and “damn”‘s I didn’t know anyone heard.

My desktop computer sits upstairs in the loft area where I write. The poor machine is a dozen years old, and we all know that in “technology years,” it has outlived itself at least three times over at this point. Its operating system can no longer be updated. It loads whatever it loads at a speed barely resembling motion. I don’t recall complaining to Suzanne much about the ancient machine. I bear the desktop no ill will, and I mostly make it work.

But apparently, when the computer hadn’t followed my orders lately, I began to drop a fairly innocent swear word. Or two. A tiny “hell” or “damn,” spoken in almost a whisper from the loft. The words must have floated down the stairway, where they curled into the living room— where they flew right into Suzanne’s ear while she tried to think of presents to get me for our 6th Anniversary and Christmas. She took hints I didn’t even know I was giving. Of course, she has known me since 1984, so she can read me beyond my words. And so Suzanne gifted me a new iMac, to cover both our 6th Anniversary and X-mas. She says she’s pretty sure iron (traditional 6th Anniversary gift) is used somewhere in the machine’s construction, and I am happy to believe her.

Gee, I hope I can determine which computer keyboard is the new one and which is the old one. I know: I’ll follow the Yellow Key Grime.