Category: Mercedes

Posted on

Christmas, An Anniversary, And A Birthday—Oh, My!

Grandma Anderson made the tastiest cinnamon rolls I have ever eaten.
Young and in love.
I’m the gloved Munchkin in this photo.
BT/Mercedes and Nuk met in an English class at Weber State—when it was just a college.

This hand-made Christmas stocking honoring Mom’s mom—Martha Lovell Anderson— was the last bit of holiday decor to be put away this year. Before I put it in a decoration bin, I easily turned it into Tie o’ the Day for a selfie by attaching it to my shirt with nothing more than a handy purple paperclip. The stocking, of course, has a December-y story.

When my oldest sister, BT/Mercedes, got hitched to Kent/Nuk in mid-December of 1967, Grandma Martha gifted the young couple two of her always-coveted, Martha-made quilts. One quilt was made using a log cabin pattern, and the other one used a double wedding ring pattern. Grandma also gave BT the direct order to use the quilts, not just keep them pristine on a shelf—to only be admired or used sparingly throughout their marriage. Use the quilts, BT and Nuk did for decades—until the blankets could no longer safely be washed without disintegrating. BT’s a creative gal, so she repurposed what was left of the two quilts by turning them into mantel-ready Christmas stockings which honored Grandma after her death. BT/Mercedes managed to make 15 of these socks out of the quilts’ remains—enough to give Mom and each of her sisters one; one for each of BT’s kids; as well as one for BT/Mercedes, me and the rest of our siblings. Amazing, isn’t it? By the way, three weeks ago, Betty and Kent celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary. That’s amazing, too. 👏🏻🙌👰🤵

But wait! There’s more! New Year’s Eve is always a double celebration in our family because it is also Nuk’s birthday. The Birthday Boy—who still wears his original Birthday Suit—turned 77 last week. But who’s counting?! 🎂🍾🎉

Posted on

Mr. Nuk’s Wild Ride

Finally! Nuk got his ride in my new truck. He’s a groovy bro-in-law. Of course BT/Mercedes—my oldest sister—and Suzanne rode with us as we snaked through the roads of Pleasant View and North Ogden. We even made a pilgrimage past the original Floyd’s house. (In case you don’t remember, Floyd was the most uninteresting professor I had during my time as a student at Weber State.) Before our ride, we had a lively chat and laugh fest. Nuk and BT/Mercedes are two of the best and funniest people I have ever known. I lived with them a couple of times when I was going to WSU, and I consider the time I spent in their house as absolute fun. I always felt safe and loved there, at a time in my life when I didn’t even know I most needed to feel safe and loved. You know—like anyone who is 17, I was young enough to know all the answers. I didn’t need anything or anybody: I was invincible. Nuk and BT/Mercedes loved me anyway. Now that I’m old enough to know none of the answers, they still love me. I am a lucky littlest sister.

Please note that the Bow Tie o’ the Day I chose to wear for our Maverick ride was one I rarely wear for hours at a time—because it’s very heavy. Bow Tie was crafted out of a bike tire inner tube. I especially like that it shows off its patch and its air stem.

Tune in later today for an official introduction to my new truck. You will even learn its name, and you’ll learn the story of why I couldn’t order a license plate with its name on it.

Posted on

Two Bigly Topics

Topic #1: Lent. Lent ends today. I failed in my efforts to abstain from junky food—particularly sweets. More than once, I failed. In an effort to be transparent, I’ll repent and write about my indiscretions later.

Topic #2: Mom. My bees-and-honeycomb Tie o’ the Day is pleased to inform y’all that Mom—the Mistress of Dad’s Bee yards for decades—can breathe more easily again, and she’s back safely in her pad at Millard Care and Rehab. She’s glad to be home finally, and hopes she won’t be making a return to the hospital, ever. She says it’s a nice hospital, but she also says NO THANKS to being a patient there again. She prefers her own room at the care center. I vote for that, too.

So Mom is once again where she belongs, and we siblings can again contend with Mom’s stealthy and regular routine of accidentally touching buttons on her phone that shut it off, and then we can’t get in touch with her. That causes us to get on our group text to ask who talked to Mom last and how was she, and which one of us is gonna call the care center to ask some kindly employee to hunt down Mom and turn on her phone, so we can all try to call her at once to make sure she’s in good shape and good spirits, and then we’ll jump back on the group text to update each other about how she is and what she said. We’ll report to each other that Mom’s hanging in there. (It’s 10 o’ clock, do you know where your mother is?)

Mercedes/BT and Ron and I occasionally report and compare the length of our phone conversations with Mom. If she chats with one of us for less than 2 minutes, that means she’s on her way to BINGO or crafts or a musical program some community group has brought into the care center. We’re always happy she’s got new things to see and outside townspeople to converse with. I don’t call Mom as often as Mercedes/BT and Ron check-in with her, because my conversations with Mom tend to be lengthy, no matter what time of the day or night I dial her number. Our conversations go on and on, and on some more. I think Mercedes/BT holds the top ten records for shortest calls with Mom, with some clocking in at around 30 seconds. It’s just one example of how we siblings have our individual styles when we’re each doing the very same thing: calling Mom to check on her. 📞

Posted on

A Meeting Of Sister Minds

Howdy! TIE O’ THE DAY is back in session. I will catch y’all up on some of the more memorable of my recent time-off escapades, so stay tuned for more holiday-ness over the next few posts.

These photos are from a brief—but rejuvenating—meet-up I was able to have with my oldest sister, BT/Mercedes, and her hubby, Nuk. As far as my attire goes, for the meet-up, I stayed with the colors of the Christmas season by wearing one red Sloggers shoe and one green Sloggers shoe. I also wore my seasonal wintry cape, which was made by Suzanne. In contrast, I added a non-holiday pink cravat as my Tie o’ the Day for the occasion.

As per usual, BT/Mercedes and I met-up at Barnes & Noble in Layton. We didn’t go inside, but Mercedes and I devour books like the world ends at midnight, so Barnes & Noble is a both a convenient and symbolic spot for us to meet. BT brought some goodies she wanted me to take to Mom when I drove down to Delta the next day, and I had a pile of books for BT which I thought she might like to scour through. We made the swap in the parking lot, where we had a gabfest in the cold. BT just had to read the bumper stickers on my car, and then she said to me, “You’re just like me, only funner!” Trust me—she’s a mega-fun person, in her own right. I learned much about how to entertain others from her. She’s the firstborn. I am the baby of the family, who showed up 15 years after her. As I have probably said about us before, we are exactly the same person—except for the million significant ways we differ from each other. I do think we make a swell set of bookends (and bookworms) for the family, though. 📚📖

Posted on

And Then Life Happened

A funny thing happened on the way to see Mom on her 91st birthday yesterday. Well, I guess it wasn’t a funny thing, and we never really got on our way. The car was packed with birthday stuff and Skitter’s bed, but my stoopid Cranky Hanky Panky decided it wasn’t in the mood to drive 300 miles in one day—not for me, not for Mom, not for any reason. I’ve argued with my stoopid pancreas often over the last two decades, and I can usually talk it into cooperating at least a little bit when it’s truly important. But not yesterday. Nope. I couldn’t wrestle my panky into compliance in any way, shape, or form. I even stooped so low as to promise my Cranky Hanky Panky I wouldn’t make it go through its surgery next month, if it would just be nice enough to lay low so we could visit Mom on her birthday. My stoopid pancreas knew I was lying. So I guess it’s not so stoopid after all. It got all the attention yesterday. And I didn’t get to go to Deltaville for Mom’s bigly day.

I have heard Mom had a bunch of guests drop by. I’ve heard she had a wonderful time. BT/Mercedes sent me this photo of Mom enjoying herself. I’m trying not to feel bad about not getting to be there, but I do. As soon as I can get my stoopid pancreas in gear, I’m taking a second 91st birthday to her.🎂🎈🎁

Posted on

Merry Birthday To The Bride

I adore my Mercedes!

Bow Ties o’ the Day send a hearty MERRY BIRTHDAY! to the first-born of the Ron and Helen Wright clan: my sister, Betty. She is more commonly known to her friends and family as BT or Bett. I call her Mercedes. She is not just my blood sibling. We are also linked by a fascination with words and what words can accomplish. We understand their power to elucidate complexities and to inspire change. We share the belief that words are real tools that can be wielded as compassionate embraces or as destructive weaponry. We both read like there’s no tomorrow. We both write. We take notes on everything we see, read, or do. We study as if there’s going to be a quiz. And there is, in fact, a quiz. It’s called life, and it happens every day we’re alive. The words we read and write and say—and the actions the words make happen—will determine if we pass. Mercedes is at the top of her class, as per usual. She aces the bigly test every day.

BTW For those of you who don’t know, Mercedes is the bride in the photo. I’m the wee beast. My Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless (SWWTRN) completes our sisters trio.

Posted on

Pandemic Hair And Nostalgia

I got out my going-to-Miss-Tiffany’s-to-get-my-hairs-cut Tie o’ the Day this morning. However, when I called to alert Miss Tiffany I’d be showing up if she had time for me and my head hairs today, I was informed that she had the day off. Oh, well. I was okay with having to re-arrange how I had planned my day to play out, but I didn’t want my hairs-cuttin’ scissors tie to feel disappointed it wouldn’t get to be in this afternoon’s post, so I dug through a box to find some old hairs photos for Tie to pose with.

Here are front and back pix of me and Rowan from 2009, inside the front door of our house in Ogden. We happened to both be growing out our hairs at about the same time then. When we finally had our head hairs chopped off later that year, we donated our locks to make wigs for cancer patients.

Rowan’s teacher in 2009, at Hillcrest Elementary, was Mrs. Cameron. Rowan wasn’t much of a school terror that year, so I only met Mrs. Cameron once, in passing, at a school event. She seemed pleasant enough, and she was a tremendous influence on Rowan at the time. We heard plenty of Mrs. Cameron stories from Rowan around the dinner table—none of which I can remember now. Flash forward to last year at about this time. My sister, BT/Mercedes, sent me a heartbroken text about one of her long-time friends dying suddenly of pancreatic cancer. BT said the woman was smart, and kind, and generous right down to her toes. According to BT, her friend was a genuinely good-hearted being. BT said she had been a teacher in Ogden schools, and her name was Jeanne Cameron.

I did some fact-checking with Suzanne and realized Rowan’s incredible 6th Grade teacher and my sister’s incredible friend were one and the same person. You know how I am about connections and coincidences—and what we are supposed to learn from them. This woman was important in my sister’s life for decades, and this woman was a significant player in Rowan’s life for only one key year. It wasn’t until ten years after Rowan was done with 6th Grade—and Mrs. Cameron had just passed away—that BT and I accidentally stumbled upon the coincidence. Does this tiny connection mean something bigly and specific about the universe? Probably not. On the other hand, I think it is—at the very least—a reminder that we are likely the constant beneficiaries of the work of “strangers” who are connected to us in ways we will likely never know. That is yet another reason we should be civil to people, whether we know them or not.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Merry Birthday To My Bigliest Sister!

When I lived in the Washington, D.C.-area, I wanted Dad to come see the sights. Knowing my parents as I do, I knew they didn’t like to both be away from their bee ranch at the same time, so Dad needed a travel pal to fly across the country with him. My sister, BT, to the rescue! She’s adventurous. Mercedes, as I usually refer to her, has never seen a tombstone, monument, or museum she didn’t have to check out. Add Dad to the equation and she was all in for the trip. Here are pix I snapped of them at the Lincoln Memorial and at Harpers’ Ferry, W VA. (Yes, it is on this trip when people who saw Dad walking in D. C. honked their horns and/or asked for his “Sean Connery” autograph.)

Today, TIE O’ THE DAY wishes the merriest of birthdays to BT, my first-born sibling! BT is yet another “porch worthy” icon in my life. This morning I wrote about imagining Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Mom lighting up my old Delta porch with scintillating conversation, and I want y’all to know that the “porch worthy” BT, my Mercedes, would be sitting right there—laughing with us all, way too loudly for the neighborhood to handle without checking on us to make sure we old ladies were not in any danger of a medical emergency.

BT and I are the oldest and youngest of the family, 15 years apart in age—near-matching bookends to our siblings. We look alike, especially in our school pictures. We share a love of not just reading books, but of studying them. It’s like neither one of us ever left school. I don’t know what we’re studying for, but I can guarantee that if you give either of us a pop quiz on just about anything relating to history, social sciences, and the humanities, we would probably both pass—especially if we did the quiz together. We are both interested in almost any topic.

BT and I are on similar wavelengths in terms of public policy and the importance of including the word “responsibilities” whenever we talk about the word “rights.” We share a whole-hearted belief in Mosiah 2:17, about the importance of serving our fellow beings. And we do not tolerate bullying, in any forum. To us, meanness has no place in any context where human beings gather to learn, work, or worship. We stand against the whole of that sort of unnecessary contention, even when it sometimes feels as if we two are standing alone.

We have similar minor pet peeves. We most certainly get agitated when people who should know better don’t spell and use words correctly and appropriately. In fact, we are both slightly—but proudly—snotty about clear language usage. BT and I would both be embarrassed to be caught somewhere with our grammar down around our ankles, so to speak.

I could go on. I could give you a million ways we mirror each other, and I could give you a million ways we don’t. Suffice it to say that I find my Mercedes to be interestingly different from me. I hope I am the same to her. I would hate to be BORINGLY different from her.

Love and peace to you on your birthday, my Sister Who Lets Me Name Her in my tblog.

Posted on

Yes, That Kind Of Day

You know the sort of day I’m writing about. Your bib apron is fastened to you with a Bow Tie o’ the Day on your back. You’ve worked too hard. You’ve played too hard. You’re so exhausted you collapse into a sudden sleep on the rug between the living room and the kitchen—still clutching your melting ice cream cone. Yup. That kind of day. 😂

FYI This is one of my sisters. TIE O’ THE DAY is pretty sure the star of this slide is my firstborn sibling, Mercedes/BT. It was taken in the early 50’s.