Day: January 4, 2021

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A Pandemic Birthday Party In The Birthday Boy’s Garage

I posted last week that my very first brother-in-law, Kent, was turning the bigly 70-damn-5. Here are a few pix of our brief visit to give him our eternal regards for joining the family in 1967, and for staying in the family for the duration. From then, until now, Kent has always hit our funny bones with his up-beat brand of cleverosity. His wisdom shows up wrapped in humor, as well. And his heart is wide open.

On Kent’s birthday, we threw The Skit in the car and drove up to his and BT’s abode in Pleasant View, where a day-long drive-by of honking horns bleated their birthday wishes to our Kent. We actually stopped in to hang for a little while in their garage, which was set up with socializing at pandemically social distances in mind. The libation served to birthday revelers was sparkling cider in the grooviest teensy bottles. A bigly and tall heater spread the heat. The present we gave Kent was one of Mom’s old HELEN W license plates, in honor of him christening all of Mom’s cars with the same title of “the Helenmobile,” probably starting as far back as the 70’s. I will not lie: We stole a masked hug or two from Nuk and Mercedes before we left.

I wore my lighted turkey hat for the occasion, as well as a holiday Tie o’ the Day covered in portraits of polar bears, Santa, and snowmen. Skitter’s Tie o’ the Day is an authentic mystery, and we’re open to any guesses you might have as to what the “thing” on Skitter’s tie is supposed to be. It appears to have a sort of snowman head. It has what might be strings of lights wrapped around its Christmas tree-like “body.” I think it might be a dinosaur of some kind, or maybe Godzilla. It does have a tail. Is it holding a baby who’s wearing a black hat? Seriously, what is this creature? Is it an icon from some cult? Is it a mascot for an octuple-A baseball team nobody’s ever heard of? I feel like I’m missing the punchline to a joke. Whatever it is, I like it cuz Skitter likes it.

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Better Than Christmas Morning

Suzanne and I had some Christmas presents to deliver to Bishop Travis and Bishopette Collette—and Gracie, too—so we drove to Provo a few days after Christmas, when the season had settled down for everyone. We and our Face Masks o’ the Day were treated to an hour of good—though mildly muffled—conversation with Gracie’s parents, and a live performance of The Gracie Show.

Skitter visited the Blackwelder’s with us. It was the first time Skitter and Grace had met, and their encounter was a success. Gracie was enamored with the mutt, and Skitter was willing to let Amazing Grace shower her with up-close, pokey, hands-on attention that only a kid can give. Skitter basked in it. In fact, I didn’t ever see Skitter vibrate around Grace. Well, I guess that’s not quite true. Gracie has a slide in her room, on which she performed amusing tricks for us. Skitter begged me to let her go down the slide a few times to impress The Divine Miss Grace. Of course, I helped Skitter be brave to accomplish the scary feat. Let me tell you, Skitter vibrated all the way down the slide three times, much to Gracie’s delight.

Bishopette Collette later texted that Grace talked about Skitter long after we had gone home. When Skitter heard that, she asked me to teach her to wink. She wanted me to snap a photo of her winking to send to Gracie, and said photo is included here.

BTW Holiday Tie o’ the Day was a hit with Grace. I showed Gracie how to turn on the reindeer’s flashing red nose and Christmas music by pushing the fire flames on the tie. She pushed it as many times as you’d expect a toddler to push a button that turned on a flashing red light and Christmas music. The battery was dead by the time we left. I loved every minute of the visit.