Four wood Bow Ties o’ the Day have arranged themselves into an interesting frame, to highlight a tremendous milestone in my family: Mom’s and Dad’s first grandchild. Of course, that means the little rugrat is my first nephew. Jeff Tucker has been in the family for around five decades now. Today is his birthday, so “Merry birthday, Jeff!”
In this picture, from left to right: Mom; Jeff; my grandpa, Leroy Anderson; my grandma, Zola Wright; and little ol’ me with my straight bangs. The grown-ups are overjoyed in this photo. Jeff is wide-eyed at all the attention, and I look somewhat stunned. But you can easily see Mom is absolutely gleeful.
Mom worked as a “lunch lady” at the high school during this time. When she learned Jeff had finally been born, Mom dressed up in a gray wig, tossed a shawl over her work apron, and grabbed a cane. She walked into work looking like the stereotype of a doddering old grandma, yelling, “I’m a grandma! I’m a grandma!”
I’m wearing some stripey clash for binge-watching MAJOR CRIMES. No, I am not watching the Super Bowl right now. There’s nothing political about why I’m not watching the game tonight. I just don’t care about it this year. I will probably decide to watch the last two minutes of the game. That’s usually all that really matters anyway. Unfortunately, the last two minutes of any NFL football game last at least a half-hour– due to timeouts, penalties, fake injuries, instant replays, and whatever other excuses the coaches and players can come up with to delay the game. But until the game is almost finished, the closest I’ll get to football is wearing the helmets and footballs on Tie o’ the Day.
My bike helmet’s gotta be enough because I don’t own a football helmet. Bow Tie o’ the Day is clear. My feelings about Super Bowls are simple: First, the Seattle Seahawks should always be one of the teams in the Super Bowl. Second, if the New England Patriots or the Dallas Cowboys are in a Super Bowl, the other team should always win the game. That simple outcome will make the world a better place.
If you’re a regular reader of these posts, you know that although Suzanne and I have been a thing since 1985, we took a break from each other for a few years– during which time we made our biggest relationship mistakes on other people, instead of on each other. (That’s sort of a joke, but not completely.) I spent most of my break on the other side of the country.
I ended up teaching in Maryland in the 90’s. (I’ll explain how that happened in a future post.) While I lived there, for a year or two I had the long hair you see on these ID’s. I should have been wearing Bow Ties o’ the Day back then, which would have made my whole look more hip, but I hadn’t had the complete neckwear conversion quite yet. Despite what you see in the pix on these ID cards, my hair actually looked nifty. I wore it in a ponytail, which made me blonde from the back. I have no idea why my hairs weren’t ponytailed in these photos. Kinda scary, eh?
That extra poundage of fat you see on my face in the ID snapshots is the kind of weight I call the-extra-ten-pounds-of-fat-you-gain-when-you’re-living-with-someone-you-know-you’re-going-to-leave-soon-but-you-haven’t-yet-been-able-to-extricate-yourself-from-their-evil-tentacles fat. Yeah, that kind of fat.
Circles and browns. That’s Bow Tie o’ the Day. Shirt o’ the Day is seeing the state of the planet more clearly with its zillion pairs of glasses. In this photo, we are hanging with Suzanne in her office for an hour. It’s time for lunch. It’s cold outside this time of year, so our usual lunching at the park is not an option. This place will have to do until spring temperatures show up.
Suzanne eats yogurt for her meal. For my meal, I watch Suzanne eat yogurt. I’m never hungry at that time of day. I like to hang with Suzanne at lunch because I can make sure she takes the time to eat. I like to know she hits PAUSE from her duties for a bit, and also for a bite.
The other reason we lunch together is because we need to right now. This has been a tough year for us, relationship-wise. No worries. We are more than fine, and we will continue to be more than fine. We’ve just had some tinkering to do.
Before we sold the Delta house, it was necessary for me to split my time between both places. Now that we’re in one house, I’m in Suzanne’s face and space all the time. Even though living in one house is exactly what we’ve always wanted, we have both had to make adjustments to our daily routines. The more time we spend together, the more the tinkering pays off.
I also think my summer surgery made last year more problematic, in terms of our relationship. In some ways, it’s made us closer. But recovering meant I had to mostly be a slug, which meant Suzanne had to take over the house and outside errands. She also got a hoity-toity promotion, which means she got handed a long list of more responsibilities, which means longer hours at the office. For a few months, I was just one more job she had to do. And I felt incredibly guilty about that. I still do. Suzanne said she was happy to do it, and even happier that I let her. It’s almost impossible for me to accept help with anything. (Except the computer glitches. Suzanne is welcome to fix my computer issues at any time.)
In the context of these things, can you feel the occasional tension popping up?
With fashion, I always try to achieve dis-harmonic clash. In relationships, clashing is not ideal. Suzanne and I are on the same page on pretty much everything, but there is always a torn page or two in any relationship. There’s always relationship work to be done. You can love someone– as in, you can feel love for someone. But for that love to be “real,” you have to commit to doing the verb of love too. You have to actively love, by doing things to show the love you feel. Sometimes we forget that fact.
I successfully finished my prescribed physical therapy for my stoopid rotator cuff this morning. I’ve been PT-ing for two months, and I am pleased to report my shoulder has full motion and is no longer painful and incapacitating. I have an exercise routine I’ll need to faithfully continue to do in order to keep my roto cuff in shape, but I’m done visiting the physical therapist twice a week.
In celebration of this delightful news, I’ve got some bright colors going on. Bow Tie o’ the Day is especially joyous. Its colors and fabric design are based on the incredible stained glass windows in Chartres Cathedral in Chartres, France. I’ve seen plenty of photos of them, but I think I could handle seeing the stained glass windows of the cathedral in person. Maybe it wouldn’t kill me.
Suzanne spent time in Europe twice when she was a young whippersnapper in the 80’s. She has always wanted to take me there for a long-ish vacation. She especially wants to show me London. Now that Rowan is no longer a child and is out of the house, we can certainly go if we want to. And, of course, Skitter loves to have Suzanne’s sister, Marjorie, stay here with her when we’re off somewhere, so leaving the Skit is not an issue. It is I who have been the hold-out.
First, I’ve never cared much for doing bigly travel. I did spend a fantastic two weeks drinking beer all over Ireland 20 years ago, but I’d rather take many short jaunts, instead of fewer major jaunts. I’m fine with just seeing mostly non-touristy, out-of-the-way cubbyholes of the U.S. of A., which I can find anywhere we go.
Second, with Mom being so old (88-and-a-damn-1/2), I haven’t felt comfortable with the idea of being an ocean away from her for an extended period of time. I’ve consistently told Suzanne I won’t go out of the country until after Mom passes away. But the other day, for some reason I started to feel differently about it. I told Suzanne we didn’t need to put off going on a European adventure anymore, because I think Mom will probably live another 88-and-a-damn-1/2 years. We’ll die before she does, so we might as well renew our passports now, and start saving and planning to go wherever and whenever we want.
Bow Tie o’ the Day joined me and Skitter on a scenic drive to Delta to visit Mom at MCR. Skitter traipsed around the halls in her red plaid bow tie collar, her cowboy hat, and her camo coat. Of course, she was a hit. Wherever she goes, Skitter is always ready to be in a pageant. She’s a star. But Mom’s stardom towers over all of us. She was in bigly feisty, funny form this morning.
Mom’s blood sugar has been excessively high for the last few weeks. When her nurse came to check Mom’s sugar numbers, she asked which finger Mom wanted her to prick today to get some blood for testing. Well, Mom was her usual smart-ass self. She immediately said, “Which finger do you use to flip the bird? I want to use that one. Is this the right one?” She had it exactly right. These pictures are proof.
Just a hip beanie, a sweet shirt, a paisley Cape o’ the Day, and a Shaman-covered Bow Tie o’ the Day. That’s all I’m gonna write, but it’s more than enough. Superior clash fashion can speak for itself.
Bow Tie o’ the Day presents a map of the planet, and Shirt o’ the Day presents the heavens above us. They are a perfect pairing for me to present something which ticks me off to the moon and back. My peeve? The general thoughtless incivility which seems to have crept into every nook, cranny, and pothole of public and private discourse– from grocery store chit chat to politics, and every other kind of conversation or op-ed in between. It’s so often childish in the sense of being rude, crude, inaccurate, and just plain mean.
That got me thinking about how we say everyone is a child of God. Do we really believe that? I don’t think we always treat others as if they’re as much a child of God as we think we are. In fact, at times, I’m starting to be uncomfortable with terms like “child of God.” And it’s more and more difficult for me to be comfortable with any statement whose gist is that “We are all God’s children.” Nope. Those words and sentiments don’t really resonate for me completely, with the way we behave toward each other right now.
Don’t get your feathers in an uproar about what I just wrote. Of course, I know there is a difference between being “childlike” and being “childish.” Childlike = good. Childish = unacceptable. That’s not my problem.
Here’s the thing. I think we should add another term to be spoken with as much fervor as we say “child of God,” and it should be “adult of God.” We should grow up. We should become civil to one another– whether it’s in politics; in the drive-thru line at Burger King; or even in the crowded pool lane where you’re swimming laps. Let’s grow up. Let’s be considerate and say “please” and “thank you.” And let’s mean it. Be a child of God who acts like an adult of God.
First of all, that isn’t dandruff you can see in my hair. I’m liking the slicked-back hair look right now, but I cannot find a gel that doesn’t become flakey throughout the day. If anyone can suggest a product to help me out on this, please let me know. Flaking hair gel is not the look I’m trying to achieve. (I’ve tried pomades, but they’re too greasy and don’t hold my hair in place.)
I went to Provo yesterday to attend Bishop Travis’ ward. He’s always been a swell nephew. Travis is a superb speaker, and a listener can’t help but learn a lesson or eight from him, whether they want to or not. Whenever we visit Bishop Travis’ ward, I and my SWWTRN sit by his wife, Bishopette Collette. Collette always notices and comments on my bow ties and/or cufflinks, which makes me get a swelled head and causes me to feel way cooler than I really I am.
The reason I chose to wear my Skittles Bow Tie o’ the Day to church is because everybody knows you have to be prepared with a stash of little treats in Sacrament Meeting. Treats must be strategically parceled out to keep the antsy small children quiet. I’m a bigly kid and don’t need to snack at church, but I still like having the idea of candy. Just wearing the representation of candy is enough to keep me under control.
Eating mints helps shut me up and keeps me from bawling and running down the aisles too. I like to suck on mints during church meetings. I don’t know why. It’s just a habit. Mints aren’t treats though. I have proof: Kids know treats and if you give a kid an Altoid, it gets spit out almost immediately. Thus, mints are not treats.
My Rubik’s Cube Cufflinks o’ the Day are also appropriate to wear to church. Church is one of the places you can go to figure out answers to your existential questions: Why am I here? What’s the point of everything? How can I make my life have meaning? etc..
These questions and their answers are a kind of puzzle, and we have to shuffle ideas around in our heads and hearts, in order to put existential concepts together in a way that makes sense to us. As we go through difficult experiences and changes in our lives, the puzzle can get shuffled around. We find ourselves having to take it apart, make adjustments, then put it back together to make sense of it again. If we’re honest with ourselves, we can admit that we have to re-do our puzzle work to some degree many times. That’s called being a mortal human being.
