Category: Bow Ties

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Mom Is Very Quiet Here With Us Today

Mom likes the color orange. It was a no-brainer to pick the Bow Tie o’ the Day I am wearing to type this post, which covers the time I spent at MCR, aka, the Care Center, with Mom yesterday. I didn’t get to spend enough time with Mom. Never do. Never will. So I dug out this photo of Mom in her mid-teens, and Skitter and I are hanging with her again today, if only in photograph spirit.

I don’t tell Mom when I’m coming to visit. I just arrive in her doorway. I would hate it if I told her when I’d be there, and then something came up to make me unable to show up then. I’m not big on canceling on Mom. Nor should any of us be big on missing appointments with our elders. Anyhoo…

When Skitter and I entered Mom’s pad, Mom had just gotten back from breakfast and was under her covers, prepped for her post-breakfast/pre-lunch nap. Skitter knew a good situation when she saw one. She immediately jumped right up on the bed, curled into Mom’s side, and told me to leave them both alone to doze.

Skitter felt so much more confident and at ease at MCR on her second visit. She did not shake or shiver this time, even when people spoke to her or petted her. Skitter was able to keep it at a low vibrate. Skitter is such a hit with the residents she’s met that there is no way in heck I would dare show my face at MCR without being accompanied by her. We’re a team.

My cousin, Gina Diaz, and her daughter Haylee dropped in to check on Mom while I was there. General nuttiness and storytelling ensued. I don’t know if we three Wright old broads entertained Haylee or if we scared her. We laughed, chuckled, chortled, guffawed, snort-laughed, etc. When we get going, we cause all of the various types of laughter. Gina asked me to model my new cape, which I did. Both sides! And a few minutes after Gina and Haylee left MCR, I called myself a very bad word in my head. I was angry I hadn’t thought to capture Gina and Haylee with me and Mom in a TIE O’ THE DAY photo. Next time.

While at MCR, my Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless (SWWTRN), and I and Skitter attended a little meeting with Mom. Apparently, at MCR each resident (and the resident’s family) has a casual, but documented, meeting with those who are ultimately responsible for each aspect of their care: meds, nutrition, counseling, etc. At these gatherings, residents are asked if they have any comments, complaints, issues, suggestions, etc. that need to be addressed in order to improve their care, as well as to improve the total MCR experience itself. (I assume MCR does this with the residents at regular intervals. I need to ask about that.) Mom has no complaints about MCR whatsoever, and she gave only high praise to those in charge of her. She loves the MCR experience.

While we waited in the lobby for Mom’s MCR meeting to begin, she was antsy. She asked, “Did I do something wrong? Was I supposed to fill out a paper?” No, Mom. I and my SWWTRN tried to settle her. I mean, she wasn’t upset, but she wasn’t relaxed about it either. She was a bit apprehensive probably because it was her first meeting. We tried to explain the purpose of the meeting was for her and those in charge of her care to check-in with each other about how things are working. I had to actually say these words to bring Mom down a notch: “Mom, they aren’t going to kick you out.”

When the conference room door opened for us to go into the meeting, a half-dozen or so MCR staff members were waiting for us at a long table. Mom jokingly asked them what she was being called on the carpet for doing. I told Mom she’d be fine if she just acted like she was there to get her Temple Recommend.

The meeting went smashingly. Mom is not kicked out of the Care Center. So far. I did tell her she forgot to complain about all the sexual harassment she has to endure at MCR. She said it was ok she forgot to mention that. She must not mind it. (har, har, har)

I must also report that Skitter enjoyed sitting-in on Mom’s meeting immensely, although she chose not to contribute to the discussion. She’s shy, you know.

FYI The next post will be about the reason I will no longer take lots of photos of Mom, for these posts.

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A Bow Tie For Physical Therapy

Fear not! The next post will regale you with tales of my visit with Mom at MCR yesterday. First, I gotta head out to my rotator cuff physical therapy, and I thought you might be interested to know wood Bow Tie o’ the Day goes through my PT regimen with me.

You’ve seen me wear ties and bow ties with my t’s and tanks, and I simply wear them tied/hooked around my collarless, naked neck. But I thought there must also be other, less neck-sweaty ways to wear my neckwear with collarless shirts. Found one! If I wear a t-shirt or tank top, these wood bow ties which attach to your shirt with magnets are just the ticket. I have a handful of wood-and-magnet bow ties which work effectively and fashionably for just such occasions, including physical therapy. CAUTION: DO NOT WEAR MAGNETIC WOOD BOW TIES IN MRI MACHINES! Doh!

One day last week, I forgot to attach one of these groovy bow ties to my t-shirt before I went to physical therapy. When I walked through the front door of the PT office, the receptionist told me she would need to see my ID before she would allow me past her to the therapy equipment. “Or,” she said, “you can come back in a bow tie to prove you are who you say you are.”

That means I’m famous, right?

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Good Thing I Took ‘Em To Her

Skitter and I and my slim-line Bow Tie o’ the Day had a blast visiting Mom in her MCR bachelorette pad earlier today. One of the first things Mom said to me and The Skit when we arrived was, “I need my sunglasses so I can see.” I handed Mom her usual shades from her table and she was convinced they weren’t her sunglasses, even though they were. She said they didn’t fit right. That was my cue.

Voila! I immediately pulled these bow tie-shaped shades from inside my cape, and Mom grabbed them heartily– as if she’d owned and protected them forever. Honestly, when I bought these sunglasses for her I didn’t know if she would actually like them. I knew I could get a jolly Mom-bow-tie-photo out of it, but I had no idea she would take to them so easily and so much. (The bow tie doesn’t fall far from the tree?) Mom wore them during our entire visit. And one of my MCR spies has already let me know that Mom is still wearing the bow tie spectacles, even as I prepare to post this from my house in Centerville.

I lost count of how many folks at MCR complimented Mom on how snazzy her new sunglasses look. I was especially grateful to Skitter for having had the presence of mind to remind me to put the speshul shades in the car before we headed out to Delta this morning. Saved by the Skitter!

Tomorrow, I’ll post more about our MCR playtime with Mom. I’m too exhausted from the quick roundtrip to do any further thinking.

BTW Skitter’s visit with Mom was just the thing her little doggie-highness needed. She got a part of her Skit-spark back.

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A Car Ride To The Country

Here’s Mom from the mid-70’s. Our living room. Dad’s green chair, which had to be reupholstered and re-springed half-a-dozen times because he liked it so well he refused to get a new chair for his old butt. Mom’s reading either The Salt Lake Tribune or The Chronicle. Isn’t her freshly done hair boo-tee-ful? And if I remember correctly, here she’s showing off her new ring and watch, which Dad gave her. (I tacked on Bow Tie o’ the Day. Duh!)

Skitter and I are jumping in the car in about ten minutes to drive a couple of hours to our old Delta stomping grounds to see this regal Queen. We’ll certainly report our findings. I think the trip will perk up Skitter’s current blah’s. And mine. That’s what Mom does, whether she’s trying to or not.

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Another Safe Photograph

I thought Bow Tie o’ the Day and I should follow-up this morning’s clean post photo with another super-duper wholesome picture this afternoon, just in case Suzanne is still touchy about the January 5th morning post photo, which she considers to be exposing too many square inches of my pale, pale skin. How scandalous of me!

Here I am, snapped with my Kodak Handle Instant camera, back in the same days of the crazy sleepovers and my mooning. I am showing off my car door. It’s not my car door which belonged to my car. It’s my car door, which I rescued and took home. I found it in the middle of a gravel road in Sugarville. It looked so forlorn laying there all by itself, with its fair share of life’s rust, scratches, and dents. I thought it only right that I should be a Good Samaritan and provide it with shelter and love, so I adopted it. You have to understand: this was during the early-/mid-70’s– the era of pet rocks– so a pet car door didn’t seem all that outlandish to me. Occasionally, I drove it uptown to one of the gas stations, where I would unload it by my car and wash its window, to provide amusement for folks dragging Main. The car door’s window relished getting the squeegee treatment.

My car door lived with me until I went to college, where I couldn’t take it with me. I re-homed it before I left Delta, in 1981. I drove it out West to a farm near where I’d found it, where it could live out its earthly existence running fast and free in the fields of the Lord.

[FYI Skitter is a bit more active today, but not much. She stays zonked-out under her pile of blankets like she’s hibernating. She did decide to accompany me on the walk to the mailboxes late this afternoon. She hasn’t cared to go for a walkie for a few days, so that’s a getting-better sign. Skitter thanks you for the positive vibes you’ve sent her way. We think they’re helping.]

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It Finally Happened

I can’t believe it. I guess I did it. And it surprised me. I pushed Suzanne to her limit. Suzanne got upset about a photo I posted here. I didn’t mean to get her out of kilter about anything, but she got that way anyway. It was the photo from the morning of January 5th, when I was wishing Georgia Grayson Wadsworth a merry birthday. Even though I posted it a few days ago, Suzanne didn’t bring it up until yesterday.

If you recall, the pic had been taken at one of the infamous sleeping parties I hosted in the 70’s. It shows Georgia surprising me while I’m on the potty, while someone else takes the picture (and I’m sure it was Tauna). It’s an innocuous photograph, if you ask me. All you can see is my naked thigh. And a little bit of the naked almost-behind my thigh. But Suzanne was not pleased with me so wantonly putting it out in cyber land for all to see.

To me, it was the bathroom wallpaper that was so hideous and offensive about the scene. I almost didn’t post the snapshot because of it.

I told Suzanne posting the picture was really not a bigly deal, since I was a prolific mooner in the Delta environs during those years, so almost all Deltans had seen my butt anyway. She was kinda not amused. “Disturbing” is the word she used.

I’ve got her settled down now. This morning she got ready for work without bringing it up again. I dashed out of the house to get to my physical therapy appointment ASAP. I headed out long before I needed to leave, because I wanted to escape the house before Suzanne even had a chance to bring it up. She has not texted me about the whole hullaballoo, so I’m probably safe now. She’s most likely moved on.

Anyhoo… I figured I should post a completely, absolutely innocent photo– with an equally innocent Bow Tie o’ the Day. Just to be safe. Suzanne cannot quibble with a photograph of Helen, Sr. and baby Helen.

[Hey, check out Mom’s curlers. I think she still has the very same set.]

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The More Things Change, The More Things Change

TIE O’ THE DAY took the Sabbath off. We slept in, then binge-watched IN PLAIN SIGHT, and then it was time for dinner at the in-law’s. We drove over to their house, even though they live only about three blocks way. We always drive there, and I think it’s ridiculous that we do that. But we do it anyway. What lazy butts we have. We always come up with an excuse not to walk there. Yesterday, we decided it was too cold to hoof it over. Our excuses are rarely good ones, but that doesn’t matter to us.

Bow Tie o’ the Day has a classic Tiffany glass design. It’s a beauty. I wore it for the express purpose of showing you my latest interior design construction: a trail of ascending/descending books. As a lover of books, I named this the Stairway the Heaven. I design with books, and I thought I’d try this books-on-the-stairs look. It is visible the minute you walk in the front door, and people who’ve come into the house seem to like it. It’s eye-catching because it’s unexpected. FYI It leaves ample room to walk up and down the stairs, which is the most important concern. Safety first!

We are always running short on bookshelves, so I guess I’ve just given up. I try to find other places for the library to live. At some point, there’s no more wall space for more shelves, so I’m making do. So far, Suzanne has been mostly okay with my book spots. She is, however, tiring of the twenty books stacked on the toilet tanks in each bathroom. I can tell she’s had it with that. But, really, I never know exactly what I’m going to want to read when I’m bathing or am otherwise occupied in the bathroom, so I like a large selection handy. I say the books stay. And they will. Until Suzanne has finally had enough and moves them.

We don’t argue about stuff like that. Things like that just stay the way they are, until suddenly they are different. I’ll simply walk into the bathroom one day and the books will be gone. They will have been replaced with a knick-knack or doodad. That’s the clue that Suzanne’s patience with the towers has ended, and I better not put books there again. Well, okay then. Argument avoided about something that doesn’t really matter, in the scheme of things. Score.

Suzanne puts up with a lot, so I rarely have a problem with her sorta having the final word on house design matters. As long as something isn’t in the way of my antics or isn’t hideous, I’ll roll with it. Sometimes, I even know she wants to put something somewhere she won’t even mention. For example, I knew she wanted the Ultimate SewingBox in the living room, where we spend most of our time. But I also knew she would never in a bazillion years ask me if it was okay to put it there, since it hogs so much space and sewing machines are loud. I took it upon myself to suggest the idea and ask if she wanted to put it there. She was gleeful. That made me happy. The television volume does have to be deadly loud though.

Suzanne and I agree upon pretty much all of the bigly things. She even picked out our house without me when we were in the market six years ago and I had to be in Delta with Mom. Yes, we do have veto power over each other’s bigly decisions, but we rarely use it. Think about it: If you don’t agree about the bigly things with the person you live with, why are you even living with them?

Most disagreements aren’t about life-altering choices that might be more important to one person in a couple than the other. Most things don’t matter. Most arguments between couples are about small, unimportant things like who’s turn it is to do the dishes. We should all stop that. What’s wrong with us that we let the tiny, irritating stuff set the mood of a household? Do you really wanna come home to that?


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Two More Crime Scene Photos

I’m surprised these photographs have survived from the 70’s. Besides Utah, I’ve lived in Virginia and Maryland, and then back in Utah. These prize pix have been with me all along the way. They were taken at the same sleepover as the photo from this morning’s post. See. I wasn’t exaggerating about our boisterous clowning. The pix are joined here by Delta Rabbit-y bunny Bow Tie o’ the Day (Trust me, the white critters on the fabric are bunnies.) and DHS colors Bow Tie o the Day.

In the bunny bow tie photo, top row, left to right: Sandra Topham, Terilyn Anderson, Penny Porter. Middle row, left to right: Tammy Harris, Georgia Grayson, me, Janet Eliason. Bottom: Shelly Brown.

In the red-and-white DHS colors bow tie photo, clockwise from the top: Janet Eliason (behind the elbow), Leann Sorenson, Tauna Louder, Tammy Harris (back of head), Sandra Cropper, Karla Meyers, Edie Gross, Terilyn Anderson.

I don’t know about the rest of these chicks, but I got a lot older.

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Can’t A Girl Just Pee?

Birthday balloon Bow Tie o’ the Day joins a frou-frou feather Bow Tie o’ the Day to honor the birthday of Georgia Grayson Wadsworth.

One set of Cufflinks o’ the Day represents the sweet slices of birthday cake I’m sure Georgia will scarf down today. The other Cufflinks o’ the Day represent the zillions of tasty food orders Georgia cooked at the Desert Drive-in (I think that was its name) and the Burger Box. I wish I owned a pair of onion ring cufflinks to have included in the picture. To this day, I have never found onion rings as incredibly tasting as the ones Georgia made. I am not stretching the truth. Even as I write this, I can taste them. And they had the exact amount of crunchy consistency. Yum in my head.

In this late-70’s photo, Georgia has interrupted me in my bathroom as I attempt to rid myself of soda pop. (Check out Mom’s superb wallpaper o’ the era. Flowers, anyone?) This took place at one of my infamous sleeping parties, which Dad tolerated with much grace.

I’m pretty sure this was the party when we got high on junk food, then crushed potato chips, in an attempt to smoke them. What wild girls we were!

At this same party, the dozen partygoers and I managed to escape from my house, most of us in only our underwear, whereupon we ran down Lyman Row. We made a ruckus down there, and Bill Cave’s dad came out of his house and chased us down the road and through many back yards. We were convinced he was going to maim us with his hook arm.

Somehow we escaped and made it back to the house– all of us with our bodies intact. Last. Sleepover. At. My. House. Ever. Dad’s grace had run out. Honestly, I don’t know why we would have needed more sleepovers anyway. At the parties we’d had up to that point, we had already done every harmlessly fun thing imaginable.

Flash forward to last summer when I had surgery. The day before I went into Huntsman, a package showed up at my front door. It contained a pair of crocheted slippers, with a bow tie crocheted into the design. It was, of course, from my old pal, Georgia. They were a sign.

I was scared about the surgery, and Suzanne was out of town. I was alone in my scaredy-cat emotions. That slipper-y gift of compassion literally kept me from canceling the operation, which I was so close to doing. Those hand-made, bow tie slippers gave me the push and courage necessary to go through with what I needed to do.

In the middle of one of the nights I was at Huntsman– after my surgery– I was in horrendous pain. I remember actually saying to a nurse, mostly jokingly, “Kill me now!” because the pain was so massive and relentless. As tough as I am, I’d had it. In fact, at some point that night, I thought I was literally going to die. I looked down at the end of the bed, and there were those bow tie slippers on my feet. And I thought to myself, “If I die, I will die with my bow tie slippers on.” I didn’t need boots to die in.

Thanks, Georgia. As I always say, Merry birthday!

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Stick With Your Brand, Or Else

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I scurried off to sit in Suzanne’s office and stare at her while she ate her yogurt for lunch. I drank two cans of Fresca from Suzanne’s personal office refrigerator, cuz the Diet Coke I had left in my car overnight was still frozen solid. Ya can’t drink something the consistency of a brick. Thus, I gulped the flowing, free Fresca available to me. Tasty-riffic, but…

Apparently, I’m not acclimated to the side effects of Fresca consumption, because my face has been stuck like this since I drank the first sip. That drinking happened six hours ago, and this mischievous expression just keeps hanging across my face. What’s even weirder is that I think this photo looks more like me than I usually look like myself.

Think on that idea for a minute. It’s as if– due to my reaction to a relatively small dose of Fresca– my face finally got stuck in its “true” look. Has Diet Coke disguised my own face from me and y’all for all these decades? Can I only reach my full Helen-potential if I switch to the “true” Fresca?

And here I go, down The Existential Sinkhole o’ Questions (TESo’Q). You know the one. You fall into it every now and again, when some occurrence or another discombobulates you. The questions are the same for us all: Who am I? What is my purpose? Where is all the Chapstick I’ve lost? Should I have done x, instead of doing y? Should I stay or should I go? Who’s yer daddy? What happens if I forget to forget that I forgot to not forget something I forgot I meant to never forget? Why am I here? Have I wasted my life? What’s my stripper name?

See there? That’s how The Existential Sinkhole o’ Questions can give you a headache. Once you start with your “bigly” existential questions, you can get yourself easily mired down in them, to the point you don’t actually go out and do your living. You can waste time treading water in the swirling TESo’S questions for years on end. Try to avoid that. Try to drive right past that nasty TESo’Q, if at all possible.

And if you wanna be a compassionate person about all this TESo’Q biz, here’s what you can do: After every time you pull yourself out of The Existential Sinkhole o’ Questions, surround the sinkhole with orange traffic cones, so others can more easily avoid taking the grungy plunge. Oh, and help pull them free of the dastardly pit when they ignore the traffic cones you laid out so thoughtfully for their benefit.

Admit it. None of us pays attention to the orange traffic cones all the time. That would be smart. We’re not smart: we’re people.