Author: wetleatherdog@gmail.com

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Saturday Is A Special Day, Yet Again

High-tops Bow Tie o’ the Day knows it’s true. If it’s Saturday, household chores will get done. It’s a habit I don’t see myself changing at this point in my life. I’ve mentioned before how that Primary song about Saturday being a special day gets stuck in my head every Saturday. It always has, and it always will. I was brainwashed into doing housework with that song. Oh, it’s okay. I have no illusions about the inner-soundtrack of my Saturday mornings ever being anything different. I used to fight it, but I don’t anymore. However, I’m always at the ready to add to the Saturday playlist in my noggin. Along with the heavily rotated Primary song of my youth, “Saturday,” there are songs like “Saturday Night” by The Bay City Rollers, and “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting” by Elton John. One of my fave songs to have stuck in my head on a Saturday is Tom Waits’ “The Heart of Saturday Night.” And there are plenty more Saturday-reference songs to add. If you’re a better Utah Mormon than I am, your Saturday playlist can include every song on the SATURDAY’S WARRIOR soundtrack—randomly shuffled, or in order! Whatever music is stuck in your head while you’re checking off tasks on your Saturday to-do list, it is imperative that you sing out each song with exuberance and pride. The quality of your voice isn’t what’s important. What’s important is to sing loud enough to let the next-door neighbors know you’re choring and you’re happy about it. Above all, remember where you came from: Primary.

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Find Your Passion And Purpose, Then Fly

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I have been ruminating on the ideas of purpose and passion today. Naturally, for me, that meant I dug up one of my haggard copies of Annie Dillard’s book of essays called TEACHING A STONE TO TALK. The first essay in the collection is called “Living Like Weasels,” and it references the story of a man who once shot an eagle out of the sky. (Bad man!) Upon examining the freshly dead eagle, the man discovered the dry skull of a weasel with its jaws attached to the eagle’s throat. It seemed a reasonable assumption that the eagle had at one time pounced on the weasel, and the weasel had swiftly and instinctively swiveled and bit the eagle’s throat. The weasel lost its life to the eagle, but its dead jaws remained clenched on the eagle’s throat for who-knows-how-long until the eagle itself fell prey to its executioner, and all that remained of the weasel was its skull’s clenched jaw. The weasel latched on, with all of its instinctive weasel purpose and passion, most of its body falling away piece by piece over time. The weasel flew high, even to its own end. But imagine what unbelievable things that dying weasel got to see—if only for a few moments—of the world from up in the sky, where it had never before been in its tiny weasel life!

The essay ends with this call to find our own purpose and passion:

“We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience—even of silence—by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting….

“I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you’re going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.”

Chew on that. Ponder those images. Then ask yourself if you hold that tightly to anything? Got purposes? Got passions? If you’re lucky, you know exactly who you are and what you’re about. You’re already flying.

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Annual Auto-pay Goes Bonkers

Every January, I pay a fee to retain the rights to the domain name for my TIE O’ THE DAY tie blog (the “tblog”). Each year, the process has gone smoothly. This year, however, someone else wanted the rights to tie-o-the-day.com. I don’t know if it was for an individual person or a business or some other type of organization, but somebody—for some likely nefarious purpose—was attempting to kidnap MY domain name. They created a speed bump in my domain name renewal process. For a few days, I was a tad worried that my little neckwear website would be lost in the internet’s junkyard forever, or would belong to someone who is not me. When faced with the possible impending loss of my domain name, I immediately did what I do: I did some research and I made some calls. I spoke with The People In Charge O’ Things. I was ready for a fist fight, if necessary. Ultimately, because I had all my paperwork, receipts, and certificates in order, no interloper was able to steal the domain name from me. My beloved tblog can keep its rightful name. Whew!

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Life Is A Conspiracy, Old Friend. Come To The Conspiracy.

Not only did I declare today a Pajama Day around the house, I also declare today the day I begin to embrace the plethora of conspiracy theories that surround us. I am determined to say goodbye to reason, scholarship, science, and common sense. No longer will I be a run-of-the-mill sheep. I will, from this point onward, be a conspiracy theory sheep. The more crackpot the conspiracy theory, the more likely I will be to believe it. In fact, I henceforth refuse to believe in anything that is NOT a conspiracy theory.

Bow Tie o’ the Day is not convinced of my new-found conviction. Bow Tie tells me my newly adopted belief in all things conspiracy will last about 15 minutes. Personally, I’m betting my conspiracy theory phase was over before this paragraph even began. 😉

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The Right Tie For The Given Day

Sometimes I am not in the mood to decide between two equally swell neckwear choices. Sometimes I am compelled to find a way to wear both. Fortunately for me, when I wake up in a necktie-plus-bolo-tie mood, I have the perfect Tie o’ the Day to satisfy my yearning. I have this wonder.

You’d be surprised how often I wake up in some type of double mood. I think it has something to do with my being bipolar, and not so much about any indecisiveness on my part, or any refusal to compromise my present vibes. Whatever the case, a tie like this is a perfect example of what makes my neckwear collection distinctively “me.” It is also what will make selling my collection more problematic when I decide it’s time to let the neckwear go. The right buyer will have to be remarkably like me, and what’s the likelihood I’ll ever find someone like that—besides me, of course?

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Wrestling With Fashion

I’m still experimenting with the limits of my golf pants. This total look is eye-catching, I do believe. I’m eagerly awaiting a delivery of new golf pants, but until then, here’s more of the one pair I already own. My Arkansas cowboy boots add a powerful vibe to my attire, and the bright paisley shirt is the cherry on top of my relgalia. The colors and squares of Tie o’ the Day semi-subtly echo the plaid pants.

The pose I’m offering up harks back to Delta High School’s storied and legendary wrestling program. I cannot speak for how it is now, but when I was in high school, you could not escape the long arms of the wrestling program. Region Championships and State Championships were standard for DHS. If a wrestling competition was in town, that’s where everybody was. Remember: this was back when there were only 5 channels on television, and cell phones had not yet been born. If you wanted to watch something happening live, or just hang with a friend, you showed up at the wrestles.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was learning valuable wrestling lessons from all the matches I watched. Years later, when I was teaching in an all-Black, west Baltimore middle school, I was regularly witness to near-daily physical fights. Most teachers—male and female—were hesitant to attempt to break up fights, opting instead to wait for the school police officer to show up with pepper spray and handcuffs. And I understood why nobody wanted to jump in. It was risky business for any adult, especially for a short white girl from Utah. But I was never comfortable merely standing by during a melee, and I quickly learned that I had skills I had heretofore been unaware of. Wrestling seemed to be in my blood. Somehow, I knew wrestling holds. I could slither into the middle of a fracas and skillfully take a fighting kid down. Eventually, students called me the White Coyote. I still don’t know if it was meant as a compliment or disrespect, or both. But the word “coyote” reminded me of Dad, so I was always fine with the name.

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Gracie Hogs TIE O’ THE DAY Again

It began innocently enough. Yesterday, I was vegetating in front of the television, trying my best to do as little as possible on the Sabbath. Suddenly, my phone dinged at me from across the room. The specially assigned ringtone told me, even before I looked at my phone, that it was a message from Collette, Gracie’s mom. I checked my phone and found Co had sent me a couple of pictures of Miss Grace being both busy and dandily outfitted. Sure enough, y’all can see that Gracie has tights with bow tie designs running down the sides. Not only are these leggings cool, but they are so cool that I must find some for my own white chicken legs. I haven’t been able to think of anything else since I saw them. I have spent hours yesterday and today rooting around on eBay and amazon to find a pair for me, but to no avail thus far. Still, I will not give up. I don’t have to own every last thing with a bow tie on it that I judge to be groovtastic, but I simply must find a pair of these tights in my size! These, I must have. These, I must wear.

You know, it occurs to me that even in the bow tie way of life which I preach daily, it’s true: a little child shall lead them. Thanks for the fashion guidance, wee Gracie.

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At The Plant Store

I kill plants dead. It’s just a fact of my life. It doesn’t matter how hearty a plant might be, or how to-the-letter I follow plant care instructions. If I have a plant to take care of, it dies much sooner than later. You’ll find no green thumbs on my paws. Luckily, I learned this factoid about myself in my kidhood, which has caused me to remain mostly plant-free throughout my adult life. In the 70’s, I stuck with pet rocks, and not one of them died. I was successful with rocks.

Every now and then, someone who doesn’t know I have black thumbs has unfortunately gifted me a plant. And on occasion, I have thought, “Well, maybe I can keep this one alive. I’ll try again.” So I water it, and nurture it, and make sure the plant is situated in the right amount of light. It inevitably ends badly for all parties involved. Most of the time, when I have received vegetation as a gift, I have had the good sense to hand it right off to anyone who is not me. The plants thrive under someone else’s care.

Suzanne has our abode stocked to the gills with plants, and they prosper. They surround me, and yet my black thumbs somehow aren’t deadly to them. How can this be? Well, I follow a strict policy with Suzanne’s houseplants: I act as if they don’t exist. I never talk to them, nor do I make eye contact with them. I certainly don’t try to care for them. So far, pretending the plants don’t exist has insured their continued existence. I know and accept my limitations, which is the beginning of sincere humility. Many plants lost their lives to teach me this lesson.

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Bent Over Backwards

I am eagerly awaiting the delivery of more golf pants. Until more show up, I’ve been experimenting with the one pair I have. This outfit was a hit at Harmon’s this morning. Apparently, if you’re wearing golf pants while grocery shopping, people want to nod at you like they know you. At least, that was my experience today. Later, I had to run an errand at Walmart. As is usual, at Walmart—no matter what I wear—I am usually the most flamboyant dresser in the store (though not in a People of Walmart sort of way). Such was the case at Wally’s today. Score!

Tie o’ the Day is covered in patterned patches of paisley, in rich blue hues. I threw blues all over me today just because I felt like it. I am convinced I have always felt a solid kinship with various shades of blue because they are the first colors I learned to love: When I was a wee babe, I fell into an abiding love with the blue hues of my parents’ eyes. 👀

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New Clash Fashion Territory

I’ve been feeling a bit “meh” about my style lately. I’ve been feeling the need to make a drastic change. Like the Baby Boomer that I am, I have been—and will always be—a jeans chick at heart. Jeans are my uniform. Jeans are my second skin: I am at home in a worn pair of Levi’s. But my legs have been itching for the occasional foray into new territory. I am always happy to oblige my legs, since they do such a fine job of getting me hither and yon. And so I spent some time scouring the websites for new and exciting pants. I wanted something off-beat and zany, of course—to not-fit in with the rest of my wardrobe. After a relatively short search, I found exactly what I was aiming for. I found loud pants. And how did I discover them so quickly? Well, the late Payne Stewart came to my mind. I googled the term “golf pants” and I was directed to the equivalent of Loud Pants Heaven—as in, a boatload of sites selling eye-catching golf trousers.

Red hanky-esque Tie o’ the Day is proud to present my very first ever pair of official golf pants. Yes, I have ordered more. The eye-catching, eye-assaulting new possibilities have jump-started my fashion passion, and my neighborhood will never be the same. 2022 “clashion” is gonna be sweet. As a precaution, please wear shades. 😎