I had a heckuva difficult time deciding what bow tie to wear this morning, so I took the easy way out and decided to wear my bow tie-covered ascot. When in doubt, wear as many bow ties as you can, as often as you can, and in any way you can. That little recommendation fits right in line with the goals of clash fashion. Wear bigly, clash bigly. Clash bigly, or go home!
With this philosophy in mind, I present to you, in one piece of neckwear, Ascot o’ the Day and Bow Ties o’ the Day combined. As an added bonus, I am pleased to give you Bow Tie Sunglasses o’ the Day, which I plan to hand over to my ever-sunglasses-wearing mother when I visit her next. Watch out for that!
Floppy Bow Tie o’ the Day tops off my clashy attire this afternoon. Honestly, I am sick of red and green right now. I needed a whole lotta other colors going on. I didn’t go anywhere today, I just needed to dapper-up in non-Christmas colors for my trek to the mail with Skitter, aka, The Skit.
Skitter is not pleased that the temperature outside was 13 degrees at 4 PM, which is when we walked to the mailbox. But she pouts now if she doesn’t have her little walkie to the mail, no matter the weather. She will not let me escape to fetch it on my own in the car. Perhaps she’s afraid I won’t know how to get there and back by myself.
But I think it has more to do with the fact that she pretty much had to be dragged on a walk for the last five years, and now that she’s finally figured out walks are not scary, she MUST go for he daily mail walk. She likes it so much I walk her to the mailbox on Sundays and holidays when the mail isn’t even delivered. I will never tell her I’m pulling a trick on her for her own benefit. I don’t want Skitter to think I would lie to her.
And do you know what? Skitter doesn’t “walk” on her walks. She prances. For the entire walk! She prances like Lipizzaner horses when they perform. YouTube them, and envision Skitter prancing in the mix among them. If I ever figure out how to post video, I’ll be sure you get to see Skitter’s marvelous prissy gait. And you simply must see her “chew dance.” Words can’t convey these two Wonders of the Skitter World, which I am fortunate to witness and experience each and every day.
Anyhoo… I boxed up the holiday bow ties this afternoon, and I put away the holiday attire and doodads. Storing all that away is helping me in my attempt to reorganize The Tie Room. I’m convinced there is some unused space in there somewhere. I haven’t found it yet, but I did fill two big garbage bags with stuff to take to D.I. tomorrow. I also managed to uncover a pair of earrings I lost over the summer. And I found a buried bag of chocolate Twizzlers from who knows when. Suffice it to say, it wouldn’t be possible for me to eat said licorice unless I had a jackhammer. I certainly didn’t have one handy, so into the garbage the petrified package went.
That is a tragic fate for such a terrific food. Chocolate Twizzlers deserve a far better send-off. At least they got to mummify in the hallowed presence of neckwear. A most pleasant death, I’m sure.
Wood Bow Tie o’ the Day brings us back to the realm of routine days without celebratory hoopla. The Christmas break is officially over. If the neckwear says it’s over, it’s over.
As I was putting the holiday ties into their storage boxes last night– where they will hibernate until November– I found myself in a sort of meditative state. As I curled each one into another and laid them in the bin, I felt Zen-y. I was so into the regular procedure, I lost myself in peacefulness. It was weird.
Of course, I only knew this weird thing had happened when I came back to myself. When I awoke from my nap of the mind, I was astonished about how the calm that came into in my crazy head was all because I was carefully laying ties into their hibernation. It’s a yearly routine, and it requires touching each tie and making the exact same movements to place it in its box, over 200 times. There is a rhythm to it. It doesn’t require thinking. It requires simply being.
It got me cogitating about how people lose themselves, for example, in gardening. The planting, the pruning, and etc. need to be done over and over and over. There’s a routine and a rhythm in working in a garden, and it can be relaxing.
Routine household chores can be like that. They are work, but they can be calming. Doing them can make you Zen-y. You can get in a zone that makes you let go of all the crap you need to let go of. (Of course, household chores are not as elegant as gardening.) We perform a zillion other routines that cause the same peaceful effect. Hobbies, especially, can do that. Religious rituals can function like that.
But there is a negative effect that can come of the regular, the routine, the same-old-same-old. The negative is that we can fall from peaceful dreaminess too far into only ourselves. That kind of thing can make us forget we are here to care about others. We can also get tunnel vision and forget to discover the unfound and to try new things. We can forget there are things out there that we haven’t yet imagined. You can’t feel joy if you’ve lost your imagination.
BTW I’m putting away the holiday bow ties this evening. If I get as Zen-y about it as I did with the neckties. I’ll let you know.
Tie o’ the Day I’m wearing is a tie for Hanukkah. My sideways Bow Tie o’ the Day is in honor of Kwanzaa. I have to apologize for not doing my official Hanukkah and Kwanzaa posts. (I will handle those holiday posts next year. I promise. Unless…) I planned to write about those two other celebrations, and then my extreme bipolar depression hit me. I spent most of December in a funk that kept me from focusing on certain things. It was all I could do to sometimes kinda fake having the Christmas spirit. It was even difficult to keep the holiday neckwear theme going on TIE O’ THE DAY posts. I’ll be fine. I always am. My head will eventually swing back into a relatively level mental equilibrium.
Anyhoo…
Sing it along with me and Willie Nelson : “To all the Neckwear o’ the Day I’ve worn before…”
Look at what Suzanne and I caught over this Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa season. To heck with fish stories, I tell bow tie and tie stories. And what I’m going to tell you next is not a fib. I’m not stretching the truth when I say the total poundage of the season’s festive neckwear I wore adds up to 32.2 pounds. Yup. Since mid-November, I’ve worn 4.8 pounds of Bow Ties o’ the Day, and 27.4 pounds of Ties o’ the Day. Gee, no wonder one of my rotator cuffs is a pain in the shoulder. All that additional tie tying and bow tie clasping. All that extra carrying o’ the ties and bow ties.
Drum roll, please! The final HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 107 Bow ties. 217 Neckties. The end.
Apparently, the same anonymous gift-giver who sent me the Christmas underwear I modeled last week decided I needed some tux-y New Year’s Eve underwear. Thank you for knowing what I’m all about, whoever you are!
Hey, don’t you think my pose in this photo makes me look like a statue of some important historical figure? If I become famous enough to be statue-worthy, I hope my statue looks exactly like this picture.
Suzanne and I usually spend New Year’s Eve at home. Neither one of us likes to be in a moving car in the city on a holiday that might as well be called “Burp, if ya got ’em!” So here I be in my pajamas, wearing my new anonymously-given tux underwear and my old tux-y bow tie socks. My Christmas light-themed suitcoat adds holiday party class, and it’s also a reminder to me to take the X-mas lights down tomorrow or the next day.
Three of the six Ties o’ the Day are decked out with party drinks. One of the other three ties is just glimmery. One has lips for kissing at midnight. And one is giving us the fireworks during the kiss. I try to cover it all.
There really are two Bow Ties o’ the Day wrapped around my neck, although the photo doesn’t really show the black martini-covered bow tie. But you can’t miss the balloons on the main Bow Tie o’ the Day. Balloons can be part of any type of party, but I’m wearing balloon Bow Tie o’ the Day here especially in honor of my bro-in-law, Nuk, whose birthday is on New Year’s Eve. Nuk is a champion funny man, as well as a champion human being. You da Nuk, Kent Shaw!
Have a ball, folks. Be safe, folks. Call me if you need a ride home tonight, folks. See ya next year in the morning, folks.
HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 105 Bow ties. 216 Neckties. We finish our tally-ing in tomorrow evening’s post.
Here’s Bow Tie o’ Christmas Eve, when Suzanne and I took ourselves out for a double-celebration. Since our anniversary is December 23rd, and X-mas is the 25th, we threw the occasions together on Christmas Eve at one splendid dinner at Log Haven, up Millcreek Canyon. Plenty of glittery snow and trees and mountains. Gorgeous, even in the dark evening.
Since the traditional gift for the 5th wedding anniversary is supposed to be something made of wood, I just had to make dinner reservations at LOG Haven. How could I not keep with the “wood” theme? Log Haven is basically a log cabin. Okay, it’s a log mansion which a guy built for his wife as an anniversary gift in the 1920’s. See, I put thought into these things. It matters how their meanings reflect what we celebrate if at all possible. I don’t just throw a dart at a map of eatin’ places.
We had never been to Log Haven before. It was incredible, complete with snowy trees and mountain views and a sunset down the canyon. It was worth saving up for. And save your pennies for a couple of months– you must.
My wintry cape gave us a surprising highlight of the evening. As we emerged from the car and Suzanne handed the keys to the valet, a man in a tux happened to be walking toward us. Upon seeing the cape, he stopped in his tracks. I was so afraid he was going to say: NO CAPES ALLOWED IN THIS FROU-FROU ESTABLISHMENT! I was sore afraid. But he said, “Oh my, we don’t normally get things that classy here.” A few minutes later, we noticed he was the restaurant’s piano player. Play on, kind sir! I figure what he said is further proof of the wintry cape’s coolness, cuz the piano player sees all, and he should know.
Suzanne and I shared a butternut squash soup, which was beyond yummy. And we ate grilled calamari, which was a first. The only calamari we’d ever seen on a menu in our world-wide restaurant-hopping has been breaded. I had the prime rib, whiskey potatoes, and charred Brussels sprouts. I am not normally a Brussels sprouts gal, but I have been known to eat outside my comfort zone. I was pleased I did. Suzanne ate huge sea scallops. She also ordered a mid-priced bottle of fancy wine, which meant I would be driving home. The wine was an intriguing water-white. It was like no wine we had ever seen. Suzanne let me smell the wine, and then I vehemently kicked myself mightily for being an alcoholic and, therefore, unable to drink wine.
We did what’s becoming our new dessert routine, which means we each have dessert, and then we order a third dessert to take home with us. I chose the pineapple upside down cake, while Suzanne had something I can’t remember– and she’s still asleep so I can’t ask her. We chose a bread pudding to bring home to eat for breakfast the next day. All so good.
As for wood anniversary gifts… Suzanne gave me a circular wood lamp with inlaid lighting, which turns on when its two magnets almost meet. It now sits in the loft, where I write. I’m sure I will compose exquisite poems ‘neath its glow. She also gave me shelves made of teak wood. She will assemble the piece and hang it when I make up my mind where I want it, which I’m sure will also be in the loft.
I gave Suzanne a necklace with a Bolivian rosewood pendant, with 5 silver in-lays– one for each year. And I was proud of myself for thinking of hand-turned wood crochet hooks as a gift for her. She seemed surprised and infatuated with them. She has three, in three different woods: Rosewood, Quilt Maple, and Cocobolo wood. When she decides on exactly what style and wood she wants the hooks to be, she can get a set.
Suzanne and I have been together for decades, but it only counts legally as five years. I guess it’s kinda like dog years: Your dog might be 5, but it’s really closer to 35. Same with us. By my math, that means dog years equal lesbian years. That’s the only way it makes sense to me. (Har, har, har.)
We’ve had a fantabulous ride, even with the break from each other we took for a few years. That was part of the ride too. When I begin to think our life can’t possibly get any better, it always does. Even the rough patches seem to have an essential core of goodness.
Gratitude has to be a way of life if the good is going to surround you. I’m infinitely grateful Suzanne stopped to talk to me for the first time, in the Weber State College library in 1984. Every day of my life, I’m grateful for that.
Merry 5th Anniversary, Suzanne. My love for you deepens with every passing moment we are here.
These two Bow Ties o’ the Day push the holiday bow tally to an even 100, which was one of my goals. I’m still rooting around in the nooks and crannies of The Tie Room to make sure I’ve gathered ’em all for the season. I’d hate for you to not see every last one of them, even though there’s no way I could actually wear each one. And I want the tally to rise even more.
I wore the gold-reindeer-on-velvet bow tie to the Christmas afternoon food-and-family fest at Suzanne’s parents’ house. I wore it especially for MyBlaine (bro-in-law) and MyColton (nephew-in-law), who are pretty much mountain men. I aim to please those good ol’ tall boys, and I’m honored to be related to ’em. However, I had to ditch my bigly-racked bow tie soon after I arrived at the affair, cuz its antlers kept poking my chin and neck as I talked and hugged folks. Maybe MyBlaine will mount it for me to hang on my wall.
The amazing Liam (grandnephew) wound up at our house after the family party. I almost threw him back out into the snow. First, he wanted nothing to do with me, and that’s not right. It was only Skitter he wanted to play with. And worst of all, Liam wouldn’t wear Tie o’ the Day. Even with a funny dog and paw prints on the tie I picked out for him, he wanted nary a thing to do with wearing it. I managed to snap a picture of Liam with Skitter and Tie o’ the Day anyway. Despite his tie misbehavior, I let Liam stay with us and play inside the toasty house with Skitter. It was Christmas, so I had to be nice.
Yes, it’s Christmas mid-morning. And we all know what that means: Suzanne still hasn’t gotten her festive arse out of bed. It also means I woke up Skitter; dragged her downstairs, where I wrapped a red bow and gold-glittered antlers around her; and put her Santa hat on her tired head, at which time she said, “To heck with this. I’m going back to sleep.”
But was I going to let the contagion of everybody’s early-morning exhaustion get in my Christmas way? No, sir. I crowned my head with cheesy holiday antlers– with lights on ’em, which don’t work. I suited up in my ostentatious Jolly Guy jacket, even throwing a Christmas-y handkerchief in its pocket.
And why did I do all this, despite my own hankering to make a bigly commotion which will wake Suzanne so she’ll bah humbug-ly descend the stairs, so I can finally open my presents? I did it for you. Yes, I did. I did it so you could have a Bow Tie o’ the Day X-mas present waiting for you on your screen after you recover from the early morning wrapping paper tornado that flew through your living room.
HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 91 Bow ties. 167 Neckties. Don’t worry. We’re not done with the count just quite yet.
Just canines. Bow Tie o’ the Day and Ties o’ the Day say, “Woofy Christmas.” And don’t mind the ugly X-mas Jacket o’ the Day. It already knows it’s ugly. It certainly would be more handsome if it had a few mutts on its print, but it is what it is.
My rotator cuff had more of its prescribed physical therapy early this morning. PT isn’t going well. My PT guy evaluated my progress and said, “I hate to tell you, but…” A shoulder operation is likely, around the end of January. I’ll be religiously going to pointless PT until then, so AETNA will be convinced I need the operation my shoulder doc and physical therapist already know I need. But, ok. Whatever it takes for my insurance to ante up the bucks for the surgical repair bill. Oh, joy.
Roll call of Bow Ties o’ the Day: four sweater designs, but not exactly ugly ones. Ties o’ the Day range from traditionally decorated Christmas trees, to a dabbin’ Santa, to emojis (emojii?) decked out for X-mas amid traditional Christmas icons. My favorite festive emoji is the peppermint pile o’ poop. How could that not be my fave? Admit it. It’s your fave-rave, as well.
