Boy, was I surprised to see this sight when I opened the fridge to get a soda this morning. Bow Ties o’ the Day are clearly going stir crazy in the midst of this self-imposed quarantine. The bow ties haven’t been out of the house for far too long. Now, they’ve turned to housebound shenanigans to amuse themselves, and their jokes are always on me. I think it’s time I leash the necky critters and take them for a walk. I’ll make sure each one maintains the recommended 6 feet of “social distancing” if we run into any of the neighbors while we’re out.
I wore my hot dog/hamburger/pizza/fries Bow Tie o’ the Day to the grocery store. I didn’t need anything in particular, but I decided to join the neighborhood lemmings and buy a stockpile of whatever was left on the shelves. I was surprised to find shelves full of some of my favorite foods, like ice cream, potato chips, chocolate bars, CHEWY SPREE, and licorice. Junk food is not very nutritious, but it’ll do the job of keeping you alive during an emergency. During a pandemic, nobody’s going to be slamming you for your food choices. Nobody’s gonna be watching anybody’s calorie intake. Heck no! We’ve all got more important things on our minds, so a pandemic is the perfect time to eat whatever you want.
I generally tend to choose any and all foods from the Bow Tie Food Group. These foods are clearly marked with bow ties on the labels. The PRINGLES guy is wearing a bow tie, so I must have a can or dozen of that. The blackberry BUBLY water is likewise bow tie-marked. I must, therefore, fill my cart with a case of said blackberry BUBLY water. I already have bow tie pasta in the pantry, so it doesn’t bother me that the pasta shelves are already empty at Dick’s Market.
Well, I admit I’m probably not much more mature than I was. But I am another year older, as of last week. I declare my thanks for all the birthday regards which came my way from y’all. I try to never lose sight of all the kind people who have crossed my path throughout my life. And I mean you, of course, among others. By blessing, by luck, and by accident, I have always found good folks to know. I’ve encountered some mean beings here and there, but I have always tried to keep them at bay from me and the stellar humans I claim as my family and friends. If you believe in kindness and laughter, you are not just a name to me. You are my true clan.
In these photos, I present Bow Tie o’ My Birthday Dinner. Suzanne treated me to dinner in SLC at TABLE X, where our waiter scrounged up a candle for my birthday tiramisu after he heard it was my bday. Also, I liked the light fixture in the restaurant’s bathroom, so here it is for you to see. And finally, note Suzanne’s faces when she’s paying the check at the end of the evening. It looks like it was the teensiest bit painful for her and her debit card. But I’m worth it, she says. After all these years, I’ve still got her completely fooled.
Bow Tie o’ the Day had gone missing over the holidays. It took literally yesterday’s earthquake to find it. The only earthquake damage I could locate in the house was this rubble o’ books that fell from a bookshelf in the loft. And what was at the bottom of the rubble when I tidied up? My Christmas plaid slimline Bow Tie, which I’ve been looking for since the holiday season ended. I must have taken it off in the loft and set it down atop the stack of books, which finally crumbled yesterday in the quake. Finding Bow Tie was like getting the Crackerjack prize. And I mean the good Crackerjack prizes of yesteryear, not the “safe” paper things they give us now. Excuse my opinion, but you know darn well a Crackerjack or cereal prize is good only if you can choke on it, get it stuck up your nose, or cut yourself with it. A “safe” prize is just boring.😉
Anyhoo… We survived yesterday’s earthquake, with all but these bookshelf contents in tact. When the quake happened, I had been pondering the idea of getting out of bed. Suddenly, my grogginess was interrupted by what sounded and felt like the garbage truck was plowing right through the house. That was a very long 8-10 seconds, which felt like 8-10 minutes. I was now wide awake. Suzanne was fine. I was fine.
I wanted to head straight downstairs to survey any possible damage to the house, but first I had to release Skitter from her sleep crate at the foot of the bed. I was hoping the earthquake hadn’t already scared the morning pee out of the skittish Skitter, cuz I was not in the mood to wash her bedding and scrub her crate. So I opened her little crate door, and…. no Skitter ran out. Huh? Her crate doesn’t have multiple rooms. She can’t be hiding in its basement or attic or secret passageway. Where is the Skit? I knelt down to peer inside.
Skitter was in a crate corner. She had wound herself into a ball o’ fear so tight that she looked like a rolled-up hedgehog. I could have served her tightly curled body like a volleyball. Gradually, through the day, Skitter loosened herself. She would start to stretch out and look more like herself, then an aftershock would come along and undo some of her progress. By the end of the day Skitter had gotten a bit used to the earth’s tremors, and she was almost back to her abnormal normal. This morning, she seems to have forgotten all about the quake clamor. I admire the critter.
Bow Tie o’ the Day and I simply could not believe what we saw on a shelf at DICK’S MARKET while we were there shopping over the weekend. (FYI I was not shopping for toilet paper, or water, or hand sanitizer.) When we saw this product, we were stunned to realize that we coulda been bazillionaires when we had the house in Delta. We coulda turned the tumbleweed ranch which was our yard and surrounding property into this wisp of a product. We could have marketed little poof balls of our own organically grown tumbleweeds! Instead, we just burned the poor things year-round for a couple of decades. Those weeds multiplied and replenished the earth of Millard County, including my own corner property, as if somebody was being paid a bounty for each new tumbleweed that sprouted forth out of the ground. All that money never came to pass, and all those tumbleweeds went up in smoke—making me a cold-blooded tumbleweed killer, and leaving me with no bigly fortune for all of my effort. Ah, the lost possibilities. Ah, the coins which coulda been a’jinglin’ in my pocket.
Okay. I think these really are the last photos from our Nashville vacay. It was our last day in N-ville and wood guitar Bow Tie o’ the Day was happy to be out and about in such a city. We had to work to find the Carl Van Vechten Gallery, at Fisk University. GPS let us down the first time we tried to find it. We followed it faithfully to the point when it told us we were 50 feet from the museum—which we clearly were not. We fiddled around with the GPS entry and discovered that in reality, the museum was 2.5 miles away.
We had been wanting to visit this museum before we even left for Nashville, cuz they reportedly have a phenomenal collection of Alfred Stieglitz’s (Georgia O’ Keefe’s hubby) photographs. And they do have such a collection. But I guess it had been on loan to another museum; and although it was now back, it was still crated up downstairs. We were bigly disappointed, but we went through the Terry Adkins exhibit which currently inhabited the Stieglitz photos’ space. Our verdict on the art we saw was “meh.”
You see me here playing around the art offerings. I don’t know what the “antlers” installation was all about, but I come from a huntin’ family, so if they look like antlers, they’re antlers and I’ll take a pic of me “wearing” them. As far as the record label piece of art, the label closest to my right ear is for a song named “Peg Leg Woman.” Sounds like a song which would amuse me to no end.
The timing for our Nashville vacation might have been off for our visit to see the Stieglitz art at the Carl Van Vechten Gallery, but our timing was spot-on for missing the Nashville tornadoes last week. My oldest sister, Mercedes/BT, worries that Suzanne and I somehow violently affect the weather of the places we choose to travel. We went to Nashville—BOOM!—deadly tornadoes right after we left. We went to Dauphin Island, Alabama almost two years ago—BOOM!—Tropical Storm Gordon came ashore a day before we arrived. Remember the rarely-happens, days-long, bigly dump snowstorm in Tucson last year? Yup, I guess that was our doing too, cuz we had a trip planned there for just days later.
I’d like to think I had enough power to alter the planet that much. But I wouldn’t waste such power on weather. Nah, I’d use my power to change things more along the lines of eliminating poverty, illiteracy, hunger, addiction, animal cruelty, and general hate.
Oh, and I’d plop down the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Yankees on their own private island with no technology or chance for rescue—where they would be never be heard from again. Ah, a perfect world. 😇
After I gifted away this morning’s flag-filled Tie o’ the Day, I was only temporarily without neckwear. Of course, y’all know by now that I have plenty o’ patriotic ties and bow ties to choose from, so it wasn’t a problem to find this Tie o’ the Rest o’ the Day. I wore the “I VOTED” sticker on my forehead until I took this selfie. I made my voting sticker into an eyepatch, so I could be a pirate. Here’s a secret: If I made the rules of life, we’d all have to wear an eyepatch and play pirate at least once a week.
While my “I VOTED” sticker was still on my forehead, this second Tie o’ the Day and I had to scurry to Bountiful for my hearing appointment. I’ve worn a hearing aid in my right ear for almost two years now, and it does its job adequately. But now, I have tinnitus in my left ear which never shuts off its droning. It always sounds like water is running or the AM radio is static-ing in my left ear. If I experience the sound of silence at all, it is when I’m asleep. But that doesn’t count, cuz I’m asleep and don’t know what I am or am not hearing.
Anyhoo… Today at my hearing appointment, Dr. Earlobe—which is what I’ll call him—tested my hearing thoroughly. The good news is that my right ear hasn’t gotten worse since I got my hearing aid. The verdict on the tinnitus is what I knew it would be: I’m stuck with that. Ain’t no cure for the tinnitus, but we can likely manage it a bit. The bad news is that my left ear’s hearing ability is now where my right ear’s hearing was two years ago—way back when I first needed the hearing aid. Yup, I am soon going to be nicknamed Four Ears. In two weeks, I will be wearing hearing aids in both ears.
Look, I’m not griping when I talk about my medical woes o’ aging. I am simply sharing stories with y’all about whatever decrepitude is crepitating on/in my body at any given time. It’s just life. You know as well as I do—if you’re old enough—you will wake up with some new bone creak or varicose vein tomorrow. And tomorrow, and tomorrow,/ Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,/ To the last syllable of recorded time;/ And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!/ Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more. It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ signifying nothing./
Sorry ’bout that. I guess I went all Macbeth, thinking about how our bodies fall apart on us and how we might as well be zombies with crumbling bodies in our old age. 🤡
BTW See how I managed to write some highfalutin’ Shakespeare into a story about the ringing in my left ear? That felt good. ✍️ 💻 🤓
Flag Tie o’ the Day didn’t know it was going to happen. I didn’t even know it was going to happen. Nevertheless, Tie got adopted! All we were trying to do was vote in the Primaries, and one of the women working in the polling place just completely fell in love with Tie. She thanked me for wearing Tie. The poll worker and I talked briefly about ties and patriotism and voting, and then I took my ballot and cast my vote. Mission completed, I drove home wearing my “I VOTED” sticker on my forehead—which I will wear until the polls close, just in case somebody in my path today needs a reminder to do their civic duty.
But I got to cogitating about the good conversation I had with the poll worker this morning. I got thinking about how we always want the best for our kids. We want them to have all the advantages we can provide. I’m like that with all the little beings in my neckwear collection too. Can you imagine the amazing, patriotic life flaggy Tie could live if it got to be front-and-center at a polling place each and every election? What kind of tie mom would I be if I didn’t make sure Tie could be its best tie self?
So I drove back to my polling place, found the person I had conversed with earlier, and asked her what Tie’s life would be like if I handed Tie over to her. As I suspected, Tie o’ the Day will be worn at any event its new owner finds the least bit patriotic—especially on days when the polls are open. Tie’s new owner was eagerly grateful for the opportunity to give Tie a more stars-and-stripes life than I can. It was difficult for me to say my farewell to Tie, but it is a sacrifice I felt I had to make for Tie’s benefit. I don’t like to admit it, but sometimes a tie o’ mine can have a larger life with someone else.
Here’s how Mom showed up at my former Delta house one morning a few March’s ago. Mom is one person who is allowed to show up on TIE O’ THE DAY posts whether or not there’s any sort of tie anywhere in the snapshot. I kneel in honor of Mom’s massive, over-the-top coolness.
We went to Nashville about 30 hours after we got home from Valentine’s dinner, so I put these photos aside until now. Rest assured, I will never NOT post about Valentine’s dinner. It’s what I do, so here it is.
Like last year, I chose to wear my candy, conversation hearts Bow Tie o’ the Day for the bigly event. It’s one of my jumbo-sized bow ties, which are especially fun to wear because no one can ignore them.
I was lucky to get Suzanne and I dinner reservations at CURRENT, in SLC. The minute we walked in the door, we were accosted by admirers of my cape and Bow Tie. I always like to give proper credit to Suzanne, as the cape maker of my smashing frocks, so I love for her to be around when I get cape compliments. It’s so much better than just telling her about the accolades I hear when I’m out alone in a cape. Sometimes when I relay a cape compliment I’ve received, I think she doesn’t believe me that her seamstress ability is as eye-catching and successful as I try to express. But she knows how to create a fine cape. If ya wanna cape made, Suzanne is definitely your man.
Once we were seated upstairs for our din-din, Suzanne promptly managed to order a bottle of wine that cost more than dinner. She’s always thoughtful enough to let me smell the adult beverages. I can vouch for the fact that expensive wine has an expensive smell. And the aroma will have to be enough for me.
I ordered an appetizer which was mostly a mystery to me—even after I ate it. I recognized most of the words on its menu description, and I knew from dining at CURRENT in the past that it would show up looking glorious on the plate in front of me. It would be pretty and safe—whatever it was. I can attest that my appetizer had pesto and butternut puree and grilled bread, among other things. It was yummy. Suzanne had the crab bisque, with puff pastry crackers.
You can guess Suzanne had the scallops, and I had the prime rib. Always guess that’s what we had for a fancy dinner, and you’ll be right more often than not.
We didn’t decline dessert, even though we were stuffed. Our desserts were extravagantly pretty too. Mine was called Persian Love Cake, and I can’t explain it except to say I know it was covered in pistachios and fig jam, and at some point I was eating rose petals as part of it. ‘Twas tasty. I was so focused on my own dessert that I didn’t really pay attention to what Suzanne had. It was some kind of chocolate torte. I think.
At some point during dinner, my cheeks got kissed. I’m telling you right now that I did not wash my cheeks that evening. I did not wash the kisses off my cheeks the entire next day either. I finally did wash the lipstick away before we went to the airport to fly to Nashville.
