Red and black Tie o’ the Day, with Chupa Chups lollipops Cufflinks o’ the Day, are pleased to sponsor Suzanne’s face update:
Suzanne says she’s okay. She says her scraped up face only hurts when she wears it. (Her pic in yesterday’s post still amuses and saddens me, simultaneously.) All I know is that the state of her face did not stop her from spending Sunday and Monday ironing fabric and cutting it into hundreds of one-and-a-half-inch strips with which to make yet another a quilt top. Suzanne creates a quilt top, therefore she is fine.
Now she’s off to work, where– when asked about her face– she will make up some tall tale about how I did it to her, so she won’t seem like such a klutz to her colleagues. And then she’ll finally tell them the real story of her innate inability to walk safely and her natural ability to trip over air. Everyone will laugh, including Suzanne, and then they’ll all get back to running the school district where they spend their careers working to improve public education for our children, despite the Utah State Legislature’s meddling and unwillingness to provide the necessary funds to pay for what public schools need. At least the Legislature has plenty of money for a new prison we don’t need. Just sayin’.
LOL Bow Tie o’ the Day and I soooo wish we had been there. Saturday evening, while I was still having Pajama Day, Suzanne drove to Ogden to attend a friend’s 60th birthday party. When she got there, as she stepped up from the road to the driveway, she tripped on the little half-inch-tall lip between the two. CRASH, went the bottle of wine she was carrying to the shindig. FLUMP went the gift bag she held. And Suzanne caught her fall with her face. Her coat got soaked with the wine she fell on. Thank the heavens, none of the broken bottle glass stabbed her. She didn’t do any irreparable harm to herself.
It was a surprise party and the birthday girl was due to arrive any minute. Friends rushed from the house to clean up the debris in the driveway and to scrape up Suzanne before the birthday girl arrived. They all scurried back into the house and their hiding places ASAP, while asking Suzanne how much she’d had to drink already. Not a drop.
But I sooo wish I had been there, for two reasons. First, Suzanne and I are both convinced if I had been with her the debacle wouldn’t have happened. If I had been there, I would have been carrying part of what Suzanne held. She would have been able to concentrate more on walking. And second, if she tripped with me there, I probably would have grabbed her before she hit the concrete OR she would have been able to catch herself by grabbing onto me. While she was at the party, she sent me this picture (without the bow tie), and the following text: “This is what happens when you don’t come with me.” True, that. I am a pretty capable walker.
Okay. There’s a third reason I wish I had been there. I would’ve had a bird’s-eye view of Suzanne’s circus act. Who wouldn’t want to see something like that? Trust me, she thinks it’s funny too (until she looks at her face in the mirror). I am sorry I missed the slapstick moment.
Suzanne knows she is a klutz, and we laugh about her clumsiness episodes regularly. There is a litany of tales I could tell about Suzanne’s lack of grace– from her running into a doorframe pole, to her slipping flat onto her back at the Delta bowling alley, toher tripping on the sidewalk at Thriftway, to her parking one of her car’s tires in a coverless manhole, and her weed-whacking her calf, and so on. It’s a blessing she has a good perspective on her abilities and her lack of abilities. Her unintended antics give us reason to laugh often. So far, she has not caused herself major bodily trauma. I cross my fingers.
Seriously, as amused as we are about Suzanne’s odd mis-haps, I wish she’d leave her extraordinary clumsiness behind. We’re too old for this. She’s gonna break a hip. Of course, then I could put her in Millard Care and Rehab as Mom’s roommate, so they could compare hip woes and talk about me and what a trial I am to be around. I could visit them both at the same time. If those two roomed together, that room would be a true carnival ride. Their visitors would walk out breathless but wanting to go back for another ride, again and again.
Tie o’ the Day shares its exuberant field of hearts. And we both wish y’all a Merry Valentine’s Day. If you are attached to someone, let them know they are precious and irreplaceable. Make it absolutely certain they know how you feel about them. If you are single, let yourself know you are precious and irreplaceable– because you are. You are enough, exactly because you’re you.
And then remind yourself you should treat your beloved and yourself this way every day, not just on Valentine’s Day. It’s the least you can do for someone who is so necessary to the grateful beating of your vast, glad heart.
Mom even let Dad know he was her one-and-only when he was out of town working the bees for a few days. She always tucked away a lovey-dovey or funny card in his suitcase for him to find when he got back to his motel room for the night. And I mean she stuck a card in there EVERY TIME he was off with his bees.
On one bee trip to California, Dad found a humongous ratty, dirty bra that had been left under his motel bed by a previous guest. He stuck it in his suitcase, hoping to get a rise out of Mom when she opened it to retrieve his dirty clothes to wash. So Dad got home, Mom got the clothes out of the suitcase. Dad was waiting to get yelled at for having a California girlfriend, and he heard nothing. No response from Mom. Finally, Mom tells Dad she’s not worried one bit he was with some dame because the bra is dirty and skanky, and she knows there is no way he would sleep with someone that dirty and gross. His prank. Her clever response. It turned out to be a great joke, on both their parts.
Dad got a bonus laugh about it when he told his coffee drinking buddies at Top’s the next morning. They were shocked he had dared put a bra in his suitcase for Mom to find. They said their wives would have killed them if they’d done that.
Mom thought the whole thing was so funny that she’s been telling the story to anyone who’ll listen since it happened, in the 70’s.
Five Valentine-red Bow Ties o’ the Day are proud to provide a recipe we think you’ll find tasty. It’s cheesy and bready. Who could find fault with that?
Actually, I really can’t call this a “recipe.” Mom’s recipes ranged from easy-peasy to intricate and near-impossible. This is a simple one. Three ingredients are all you need. Oh, and you’ll also need an oven.
1 loaf of French bread. 1 stick or 1/2 stick of butter. And one jar of Kraft Old English Spread.
Lay a sheet of foil across a cookie sheet. You do not want to have to clean baked-on cheese off your cookie sheet. Use the foil.
Hand-mix the cheese spread and butter together. Mom generally uses the whole stick of butter, although I’ve seen her use just half a stick. I always use just the half.
Skin ALL the crust off the bread. Ditch the crust.
Cover the entire loaf of bread with the cheese/butter spread. Spread it as evenly as you can. Since the size of French bread loaves vary, you might or might not use the entire amount of spread. If you want a thin layer of cheese on the entire loaf, you’ll probably have enough to cover two loaves.
Throw the loaf on your foil, and bake for 10-ish minutes at 350 degrees. Ovens vary, you know.
Although it’s this simple to make, it’s important to keep an eye on the browning of the cheese. You need to experiment with how crispy/browned you want the top. You do not want the entire loaf crispy/browned. Well, maybe you do. I suggest experimenting many times with different levels of crispy/brown. That gives you an excuse to eat a ton of cheese bread.
The other thing you’ll want to experiment with is how thick you want your cheese spread layer to be.
I recommend you slice the cheese bread (an electric knife works best) while it’s still hot. And put it on the table hot. But it’s still yummy when it has cooled off.
As any good cook knows, even with an easy recipe the taste is in the details. Mom’s excellent cooking was the result of tweaking good recipes to make them better, and her knack for timing. She cooked primarily by sight, smell, and taste. Measuring ingredients wasn’t much of a concern to her. She guesstimated a lot.
That’s what makes it difficult to pin down her actual recipes. If someone wanted a recipe, she’d give them one, but she also invited them to come to the house while she made what they were asking about. Her candy-type creations are especially almost impossible to re-create, even if you watched her make it and tried to write everything down. She was always changing the way she did it or adding a new twist or a different ingredient. [I’ll write more about Mom’s recipe collection and locating specific recipes in another post.]
Oh. About the potato chips and Diet Coke in the photo. Those are to snack on while you make cheese bread.
The company I buy most of my bow ties from (Beau Ties LTD) names each design of its bows. Bow Tie o’ the Day’s name is KISS GOLD, because it is based on Gustav Klimt’s painting called THE KISS, a photo of which I’ve provided here. (And look, there’s a cape involved in the painting’s smooch.) Cufflinks o’ the Day provide mini lips, for added thematic detail. After I got dressed, I made one of the lips links give Skitter a kiss, and it was about the right size for her lips. Note: I don’t usually make my cufflinks kiss Skitter on the lips.
Because it’s almost Valentine’s Day, I should say something about kisses. But I’m at a loss as to how to begin or end writing about a kiss. There is so much to say, and yet no pile o’ words comes close to approximating how it feels to experience kisses. Like the kiss from your soulmate. Or how it feels to kiss your baby for the first time. Or how it feels to give your crying teenager an it’ll-get-better kiss, after they experienced an unfairness at school. Or how it feels to kiss a beloved parent’s forehead for the last time, before the casket lid is closed. I could go on. There are infinite kinds of kisses, and they can mean infinite things. Sometimes a single, solitary kiss can express a multitude of meanings, layer upon layer.
But about kissing or about being kissed, or about what a kiss even is exactly– I dunno. I am a writer, and all this “kiss” stuff is one topic I know I don’t have the skills to write about in a way that could possibly say what I want to say, and say it in the way I want to say it. Kisses leave me speechless, which is probably the most accurate, graceful thing I can say about kissing.
Having praised all kisses, I will now present the exception that proves the rule (at least for me). Here goes: Slobbery kisses on the cheek from aunts are yucky! The horror! The horror! (Not all my aunts, but most.) When we’d go visit an aunt or an aunt would come to our place, the first moment that aunt would see me, I could see it coming. I’d hide, I’d duck, I’d bob-and-weave but I couldn’t dodge the slobbery aunt kisses.
“Aunt Kiss Slobber” never dried. You were always somewhere a paper towel or tissue wasn’t handy, and you didn’t want that kiss goop anywhere on your sleeve. But you didn’t want to wipe it off with your hand because you knew you could never wash your hand completely clean of it– no matter how long and roughly you scrubbed. It would forever feel like it was there, sticky and ewwwww. Forget about your cheek. It’s toast. There’s no saving it. It’s just plain invisibly scarred for time and all eternity.
Decades ago when I was a wee one, up Oak City Canyon for a family gathering, I received an aunt kiss so wet I knew I would surely die of gross. I ran to the creek, grabbed the first leaves I could find, and used them to wipe, wipe, wipe that goo off my face till it hurt. I dunked my head in the water, holding it under as long as I could stand it. My cheek stung like the dickens and I was sure the aunt kiss had eaten clean through my cheek to my teeth. But nope. The leaves I’d grabbed to wipe it off were stinging nettle. I was too young to know my canyon foliage yet. [Do not misunderstand me: I loved my aunts, just not their over-the-top cheek kisses. Even now, I’d choose stinging nettle over an aunt slobber.]
When you become an aunt, you understand the impulse to cover your nieces and nephews in kisses and hugs. When you become an aunt, you automatically receive The Calling: you are endowed with the aunt power that makes it impossible for nieces or nephews to dodge your hugs and kisses. Despite the Aunt Calling, the memory of slobbery aunt kisses has always haunted me. As a result, I have never given a slobbery aunt kiss. I get a gold star for that.
As far as slobbery aunt kisses go, my recommendation to young nieces and nephews all across the planet is this: Since you’re never going to escape your aunts’ kisses, position yourself strategically in front of them, such that they end up kissing the same cheek every time. That cheek will be tainted, but you’ll still have one pure, uncontaminated cheek left for your soulmate.
BTW I know many a grandma gives slobbery kisses too. But that’s different. That is Grandma Slobber, and that’s the best.
Entwined hearts Bow Tie o’ the Day is perfect for Mom. I have been told she’s having an extremely tough time missing Dad recently. Even though he’s gone, their love lives. It’s a time-space continuum thing.
This photo was taken almost 20 years ago. I think Mom is in the kitchen at the Palomar. Most likely, this was a Thanksgiving bash. Check out Mom’s attack face. She is darn well gonna conquer those two loaves of cheese bread. And note the oven burns on the back of Mom’s hand. You’ve heard of rug burn. Well, this is cheese bread burn. She burned her hands on the oven coils every time she made cheese bread. Every time, I tell you. Mom never met an oven glove she’d use. She was strictly a dishtowel gal.
In our house, the electric knife was used for cutting only two things: carving turkey and slicing cheese bread. It was basically used only on Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter. And then the gadget was put back in its little 70’s original box, and into the kitchen cupboard where Mom and Dad kept the checkbook. The knife laid in its skinny box all alone for 363 days a year. Poor thing. I should have put a bow tie in with it for company.
Mom’s cheese bread is a sacred food. Many of you have had the privilege of tasting Mom’s confections over the years, and you know she was an excellent all-around cook. But Mom’s cheese bread was something she made almost exclusively for family holiday dinners. It was a rare gem. And it was the key food item of those dinners. Dinner did not happen without the cheese bread. Kinds of salads changed. Different versions of potatoes joined the basic mashed potatoes. You’d think the turkey would be the star of these feasts, but it was always about the cheese bread.
And it was war. The most desired slices of cheese bread are the ends, where the cheese-to-bread ratio is the highest. If you managed to score one of the ends, it was only because you managed to steal one before someone else stole it.
At some point after dinner, there was what I’ll refer to as The Semi-Annual Battle Over the Tinfoil On Which the Cheesebread Was Cooked. The tinfoil cheese was like the cherry on top. It was like the prize in the cereal box. The foil was covered in baked-on, cheese bread drippings. Dad usually won that war. And then he would sit at the head of the table, picking carmelized blobs of cheese off the tinfoil—obnoxiously, so we couldn’t help but watch it happen. And we drooled through the torture of witnessing the results of our defeat.
I have made this cheese bread for parties and dinners and potlucks in three states in this U.S. of A., and I can attest to its lusciousness. A couple of enemies became my friends because of this cheese bread. Its powers know no bounds. Hell, Mom’s cheese bread could probably find a way to balance the federal budget. It’s powers are that incredible.
I threw together my BE MINE Bow Tie o’ the Day and my hearts Cape o’ the Day–with nicely clashing paisley, and Suzanne and I headed to Sunday brunch. It was our first time dining at TRADITION, a trendy restaurant near Liberty Park in SLC. It was a sort of pre-Valentine’s Day food outing.
Here I am, squinting into the sun, so I could do my traditional brunch selfie with the restaurant’s name in the photo.
Finding parking was a pain because the place was busy, and snow filled the gutters. It was fortunate we had reservations. In fact, Suzanne finally dropped me off at the door to hold our reservations while she searched hither and yon for a parking spot. She found one and promptly got stuck in the snow, whereupon two good samaritans (2 of the 3 Nephites?) descended to push her out of her dire straits. She finally got a not-so-snowy spot, and into the restaurant she breezed. And I say “breezed” because the wind literally blew her in through the doorway.
The restaurant’s decor was simple and modern, but it was clearly not a place you could have a conversation. Everyone seemed to be yacking, but I have no clue how they understood each other. Suzanne and I yelled our conversation and still had to repeat most of what we said. I am not exaggerating. The din reminded me of a full school lunchroom. It was worse than that, though, because school lunchrooms are larger, so people and their conversations are more spread out.
And how was the food at TRADITION? I had the maple and oatmeal crusted chicken, and sourdough pancakes. You know how I like to try new food at new places. I want to like whatever new dish is on the plate in front of me. At the very least, I want my meal to be edible. Thumbs up on the chicken. Thumbs down on the pancakes. And they sounded yummy. Not! Suzanne and I aren’t opposed to eating at the place again, if for some reason we find ourselves in the neighborhood, but we wouldn’t go out of our way to return. We won’t end up there because we get a craving for the food.
Maybe as I’m growing older, my taste buds are becoming less adventurous. Maybe they are harking back to my younghood. I’m beginning to want the same old familiar food, over and over. Of course, I can’t get any of Mom’s food anymore, so I mean the next lower level of the same old, simple food. I like my steak, pizza, tuna sandwiches, spaghetti. I mean– funeral potatoes never sound like a bad idea to me anymore.
My current pet peeve about most finer restaurant menu’s is that aioli is everywhere. Lemon-insfused aoili. Spice-infused aioli. Garlic-infused aioli. Pomegrante-infused aioli. Oh, please! “Infused” is basically a fancy word for “flavored.” And “aioli” is mayonnaise.
I hereby inform all dining establishment owners: Your whatever-infused aioli does not need to be on every food creation you offer. You also do not need to charge a buck more because you print this exotic-sounding item on your menu. If you see me coming, whatever I order, hold the aioli. I will be the one in the cape and bow tie. If you value my patronage, DO NOT DRIZZLE AIOLI ON, IN, OR AROUND MY FOOD! I can bring my own mini bottle of mayo with me to your establishment if that will help you out.
Bow Ties o’ the Day say MERRY BIRTHDAY! to my nephew, Kyle. And to my niece, Angie. They share a birth date, but not birth years. At least, I’m pretty close to certain I remember they were both born on February 10th.
I’m at the age when facts which I absolutely know to be true somehow feel a bit iffy. I woke up this morning, looked at the calendar, and thought, “Hey, it’s Kyle’s and Angie’s birthday! I better do a celebratory birthday post!” And ever since that moment, I have questioned if my memory is recollecting correctly. Could I text ’em and ask? Yeah. Could I call my sisters to verify their kids’ birthdays? Yeah. But that would be admitting I don’t know everything I’ve always known. That would be defeat. I will not do it. I would rather take a chance on being wrong than out-and-out admit I’m hazy on facts I’ve known for decades.
If my memory turns out to be correct today, I’m a fabulous aunt with a terrific memory. If my recall-er has failed me, Kyle and Angie will at least appreciate my effort. But they’ll know my noggin is slippin’. I’ll be found out.
FYI The dearly-departed deer you see posing with me and Kyle is my first and last venison kill. One was enough for me. Yes, Kyle is larger than this Bambi. Dad mounted the antlers for me and I still have them. I should probably make them into a keychain.
Tie o’ the Day is one of my fave Valentine’s ties. I like the lips and hearts covering the teddy bears’ scant clothing, and of course I am enamored with the bow ties.
My dad was a burly bear of a guy. In fact, he seemed larger than he actually was. Ronald Edmond Wright had a gigantic presence. He had “it.” But he was one of the most gentle men I’ve encountered in my life. If it had been possible, he would’ve hugged every one of his millions of bees to show them they were loved.
But he stuck to hugging Mom and us and our pets. Dad was protective of Mom in ways large and small. They were in a restaurant once, and some dudes at the next table were swearing while they talked. Dad gave them “the look.” They continued on, as if to show they’d speak any way they wanted. Dad said as nicely as he could, while giving them “the look” again, “This is my wife, and I won’t make her to listen to that kind of language.” They continued spewing their profanity. Dad stood up. They immediately cleaned up their language. Chivalry was alive and kicking when Dad was with Mom.
I’m sure you don’t believe it, but I wasn’t a rebellious kid. I don’t think I ever had a real “fight” with Dad when I was a teenager, but I remember loudly arguing with Mom a couple of times. The arguments were about my hair, believe it or not. Mom was never happy with my hair. Well heck, I wasn’t happy with my hair either. But it’s her fault I inherited her lifeless, style-resistant locks.
Anyhoo… One day after school, Mom and I were having one of these yelling matches, and I finally hauled off to my bedroom in tears. Dad got home from work and heard the tail-end of the yelling, as well as Mom’s version of my whole, overly-dramatic teenage outburst. After a while, he came into my room to see how I was doing. I launched into my side of things– about how Mom was always on my back, and she was always unfair, and she was always wrong, blah, blah, blah. The usual teenage crapola.
Dad listened to my tirade and let me get it all out of my system, then he said, “I love you. But no matter who is right or who is wrong, I am always on your mother’s side. I will always stand with your mother.”
At the time, what Dad said to me made me even more angry. How could “right” and “wrong” not be what matters? And then I grew up, and found myself working to forge a lasting relationship like my parents had. I now understand exactly what Dad meant about the importance of standing by your spouse (or partner, significant other, etc.), against all conflict.
With its random bandaids, Tie o’ the Day represents love and the pain love inevitably causes us. We’ve all needed to heal our hearts when they have been broken. If we allow ourselves to love, our hearts will break many times while we live. Family members and friends pass away. Our pets meet death. Maybe someone we fell in love with fell out of love with us. Maybe we lose hope, and our dreams die.
If we choose to, we can empathize with each other’s broken hearts, because most kinds of losses happen to everyone. If they haven’t happened to you yet, they will. We’re part of the human race, and our lives follow similar trajectories. Birth. Relationships. Work. Aspirations. Death.
Loving is worth any pain that might accompany it. A broken heart is often the cost of a full heart. And broken hearts can be instructive. We have the power to look inside that broken heart at all the mistakes we made which caused the heartbreak in the first place. We can learn from those mistakes, and we can get a little better at the practice of love.
Two months after Mom and Dad graduated from Delta High School, they got married in the Manti Temple. Dad had barely turned 18, and Mom didn’t turn 18 until two months later. They were youngsters. Nobody should get married that young, in my opinion. The odds of a couple that young–and therefore that dumb– staying together are miniscule. Mom and Dad somehow found a way to kick the odds and stick together. They lasted 59 years together before Dad died, in December 2007.
Dad suffered through his pain for two years. He stayed with us for as long as he could– for all of us, and especially for Mom. During the last two weeks of Dad’s life, Mom often told him it was okay for him to let go. She told him she would be okay. She told him we would all take care of her. Dad knew we would. But I believe one of the reasons Dad held on for so long is that he was trying to make it another few months, to be with Mom on their 60th wedding anniversary.
Of course, no matter when Dad died, Mom’s heart was going to break anyway. And when he finally did let go, her heart did break. Eleven years later, it’s still broken. But Mom’s heart is also still full of memories and time and the adoration Dad gave her. It’s impossible for that kind of splendid stuff to ever fall out of even the most broken heart.
