I soooo wish Mom and I had been wearing Bow Ties o’ the Day like these when this photo was snapped in front of my kidhood house. I think Mom’s holding my nephew, Jeff. He was her first grandchild, and he is certain he is her favorite. Check out Mom’s hair. Once again her hair looks like it just got did. What a put-together broad! Mom has always been a hair-done-once-a-week-whether-it-needs-it-or-not woman.
Guess which photo star is I?! I chose today’s photo offering as evidence that I have always had my own style. I have always been fashion-forward. I wish I still had these cowboy boots. I would bronze them like parents used to bronze their babies’ first pair of shoes, and then display them on an important shelf in their living room for visitors to gaze upon. I remember riding my bike in these boots. I remember walking up to the outdoor Delta pool twice daily in my swimming suit and cowboy boots. I wish I had a snapshot of that.
It was a sad day for me when I outgrew my cowboy boots. But I got over it pretty quickly when I discovered saddle shoes. (The saddle purse had not yet been born.) And after saddle shoes, I moved on to Hush Puppies, then Earth Shoes, and I am sure you’re aware that recently my feet have walked a mile in my many Sloggers. You think my middle name is Eileen? Heck, my middle name has always been STYLE.
I have shown you my Sloggers garden shoes collection in some of my post pictures over the past couple of years, and I have loved them so. I have worn Sloggers every day since I discovered them, but I am Sloggered-out. I feel the need for the changin’ o’ the footwear. I now want a different style of shoes. My Sloggers are pretty hashed anyway, so it’s a practical matter as well as a fashion move.
Perhaps a fancy pair of cowboy boots is in my near future. Now that it’s summer, I can recreate the style I exhibited in this photo every day. Shorts, boots, and neckwear. And, of course, I will add a touch of clash, which is my signature. A total ensemble like that strikes me as my next personal style trend. I hadn’t even thought of dressing like my 6-year-old me before I just wrote it. Now, I’m excited for the boot hunt!
Suzanne will roll her eyes, but enjoy every minute of my new-old style phase. It’s what she does. Somethin’ ain’t right with that girl.
Here’s Grace Anne Blackwelder in her church clothes on Father’s Day. She sported a formal, black and white frock. At one-month-old, she is already a classy dame. Her acre of hair is topped off with that colorful and bigly Hair Bow o’ Gracie’s Day. She is following in my bow tie steps already. Bishop Travis and Bishopette Collette better like her style or learn to hunker down and deal with it, cuz my bow tie influence on Gracie isn’t going anywhere. [Here, my Bow Tie o’ Father’s Day is the closest in fabric design I could find to one of Dad’s red hankies (sometimes blue), which he always carried. I never once caught Dad hanky-less, even when he was in the hospital having heart surgery.]
I promise I won’t continue to inundate y’all with pix o’ Amazing Grace forever. Over the years, one of the things I’ve learned is that we each feel like the babies in our families are the absolute cutest, and we are certain everyone else wants to see dozens of pictures of them. Guess what?! They don’t. They might wanna see a couple of pix of your babies; but after looking at a few photos of the family babies you love, they’re saying to themselves, “MY baby is cuter than your baby. Your baby looks like a chimpanzee. MY baby never looked like a chimpanzee. I hope your baby outgrows its chimp face.” And on and on.
I’m utterly intrigued by Miss Grace Anne, but TIE O’ THE DAY posts must continue to honor neckwear. Gracie’s parents can let her star regularly on THEIR social media pages. She is theirs, after all. If they want to, they can bombard others with pix of Grace to the point of others’ silent chimpanzee comparisons.
But for right now, permit me to be crazy about this wee mammal who we never thought would find her way into Bishop Travis’ and Bishopette Collette’s life. I think we had all given up on that possibility years ago. And suddenly, Gracie sauntered into their lives– and our lives– like she owns the place, like she was just taking her sweet time to get here. And now that she’s here, it’s like she wants us to put on our bow ties and party– complete with Funeral Potatoes. Or, at least, put on our bow ties and go to Sacrament Meeting. Smart chick.
Skitter is like Mom: Her eyes are sensitive to light, so she tends to wear sunglasses indoors quite often. Skitter is wearing Bow Tie o’ the Day shades this morning. You’ve seen these sunglasses on Mom, on me, and now on The Skit. We share well.
All the gifts in all the universes can’t save you from a mental illness like bipolar depression. Depression doesn’t care what material gifts you have been given. It doesn’t care about the gift you’ve received of being loved and wanted. It does what it wants to your head and, therefore, to your life.
I have mentioned before that I decided to do TMS to jump start my depressed feelers and level my mood. I had been “not feeling” for a while. Simultaneous to my “not feeling,” I was in a crippling depression. It might seem like a contradiction to “not feel” while also drowning in depression, but I assure you it’s possible. I have been there more times in my life than I’d like to count. This time was significantly more debilitating and dark. I honestly believe my mental illness was getting close to being terminal, if you get my drift: Bye, bye, Helen Jr.
Anyhoo… It’s been two weeks since I completed TMS, and I want to tell you what I’ve noticed. There’s been no bigly cookie at the end of the TMS rainbow for me, but I see and “feel” a trail of crumbs which will add up to at least half a cookie when I gather them and put them all together. As I wrote yesterday, TMS has been a smallish welcome gift– despite 36 treatments that felt like a woodpecker beak knocking at my skull.
I got part of my appetite back, which is probably good cuz my weight went down to 7th-grade level. I have been unable to focus my attention enough to read for the last year, and I didn’t even care about it. Not reading is sooooo not me. But I’ve been back to reading for the last month. My moods are back to being lighter, though not as light as my usual, weird “normal.”
I can’t say my “feelers” are back to feeling, but I get little bursts of feeling, so I’m confident TMS has helped to get that coming back to me. Until feeling shows up more often, I’ll stick to knowing what I anticipate I will feel in the future. Suzanne says I am talking more, which is a bigly change back to my true self– since I am a chatter-er like Mom. I’ll let you know when/if I notice other changes I think are TMS-related. TMS wasn’t magic for me, but it helped pull me up a couple of rungs on the slippery ladder in my depression pit.
Before TMS, aside from thinking it would be best for everyone if I jumped off the planet, the worst idea I ruminated over was…. hold on to your bike helmets…. are you sitting down?…. I told Suzanne I was going to shut down TIE O’ THE DAY. Forever. No more website. No more Facebook posts. I didn’t care about it or my stoopid neckwear anymore.
And I ranted to Suzanne about how I’m too old to write these stoopid posts about my stoopid, uninteresting life. And I ranted about how this stoopid tie/bow tie thing makes me look like a stoopid fool, and I should feel embarrassed. And I ranted about how nobody cares about my stoopid ideas about living better lives. And nobody thinks my writing is funny. Blah, blah, blah. You know… all that prattle, which is kinda true.
The tragedy! The tragedy! Junking TIE O’ THE DAY might have actually thrown me off the runaway train. Sticking with writing my posts– despite not caring about the venture for a while– anchored my depressed and sunken days with a purpose. I somehow convinced myself my readers would miss TIE O’ THE DAY to the extent that their souls would lose a wee bit of joy forever. Oh, if I were to quit writing and posting, it would destroy y’all’s lives! I told myself I had to keep TIE O’ THE DAY up and running, for the good of all mankind. I’m SuperBowTieLady, patron superhero of all neckwear!
Seriously, TMS has helped. Mostly, I am still here, and here is where I want to be. I’m not positive I would be here on this blue-skied day in June if I had decided against doing TMS.
M&M Bow Tie o’ Father’s Day comes to us courtesy of Nuk, my oldest sister, Mercedes’ husband of at least 8416 years. I swear they have been married since before the Pre-existence. Nuk got this M&M’s bow tie for Dad’s Day. Mercedes and Nuk always make sure they send me photos of whatever post-worthy neckwear they run into– even if they create it themselves. They are sometimes my photo suppliers. They are my dealers.
Nuk, whose given name is Kent, is one of the most hilarious people I have encountered in my long, long, long, crazy life. He can find a joke or snarky comment regarding anything. In the 80’s, when I attended Weber State, I had a professor who was boring to the point of actually putting me to sleep in class, more than once. In class, the prof had never once come close to being anything even resembling interesting, and he would not have recognized a sense of humor if Joan Rivers had come into class and performed a routine.
I lived with Mercedes and Nuk at the time, and I expressed to Nuk my frustration with Brother Boring. It just so happened Nuk knew the guy from some church work, so he had also experienced boring, mind-numbing time with my professor. With classic Nuk perspective, he simply said, “That man is drier than a popcorn fart.” Nuk nailed it. The truth is the truth.
Sunday was another Provo outing to attend church with my Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless, at Bishop Travis’ and Bishopette Collette’s ward. Of course, month-old Gracie was there too.
Since it was Pa’s Day, Bishop Travis held Gracie in his arms as he sat by the podium. Bishopette Collette’s plan was to let that happen for a few minutes and then go fetch the baby when she started to fuss. Neither Gracie nor Bishop Trav fussed one iota, so Gracie lay in her father’s arms the entire Sacrament Meeting. Bishop Travis grinned at Gracie constantly and kissed her tiny hands, while Bishopette Collette kept an eye on Gracie’s behavior from our bench, waiting desperately for a reason to go steal the baby from the Bishop. Though Gracie was positively fine being held by her dad, I think Collette was experiencing some separation anxiety.
My Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless and I sat on our bench wondering why the heck we even traveled to attend church with the Blackwelder’s if the baby wasn’t in our pew for us to fight over. Oh, that’s right: We went to church with the Blackwelder’s before Gracie arrived in their family. We’ve always loved the Bishop and Bishopette– with Grace Anne or no Grace Anne. It’s just that Bishop Travis and Bishopette Collette are a little too big for us to hold on our laps, coo at, call dibs on, and fight over.
Here is Grace before she got dressed up in her “church clothes.” I usually carry stick Bow Tie o’ the Day with me for occasions such as this. I wasn’t about to wake the sleeping beauty, Grace Anne, to put a real stunt bow tie on her for a photo. But I had to take a picture anyway. In fact, I snapped so many pix that by the time we left the Blackwelder home to attend church with them, my phone needed to be charged again. That’s a bunch o’ pix.
FYI If you ever want to put a real bow tie on an infant’s neck, I suggest you use a bow tie that’s past its prime. It doesn’t matter if its tag says it’s washable or can be sent to the dry cleaner. Use a bow tie you are never going to wear again, since bambinos have a tendency to produce spit-up, regular vomit, and even projectile vomit. Clearly, a necktie will receive more damage than a bow tie, but neither one is capable of remaining alive after being hit by any kind of vomit. Even plain old slobber can sometimes be deadly for neckwear.
Y’all have seen this Polaroid snapshot before, but it demands a repeat look. It’s perfect for Father’s Day. Check out the two Colonel Sanders-type Bow Ties o’ That Day hanging on the wall.
This picture was taken at my M.I.A. 1976 Daddy, Daughter Date night. It was held in the gym of the long-demolished Delta 2nd Ward church. I remember square-dancing with Dad and Grant Crane. When I look back on that night, except for a few moments of Grant, I remember only Dad. Somehow, it seemed no one else was there.
Bow Tie o’ the Day is brought to you courtesy of my oldest sibling, Mercedes. Her given name is Betty Rae, but she’s not fond of it. It’s mostly the “Rae” part that bugs her. And it bugs her bigly! She is known as B.T. (her initials) to most people. But I call her the exotic name, Mercedes. She is definitely exotic, in a Pleasant View, UT kind of way.
Anyhoo… Mercedes sent these photos to me yesterday. The decorative tiger used to be in Mom’s living room but now it lives with Mercedes and her husband, Nuk or Floyd or Kent. Yes, Kent also has “other” names. They are groovy enough people that a single name for each one of them can’t cover their bigly personalities.
I wasn’t surprised to see these bow tie photos show up on my phone. I wasn’t surprised my sister, Mercedes, took the time to cut the tiger’s cardboard “costume” pieces out of the Popsicle box they were printed on, then dress up a fake tiger for a picture. I was amused and appreciative.
I present the photos here to prove that I am not the only person on the planet who does weird stuff with bow ties in order to snap a photo which will then be sent out into the world for others to see. I present them as evidence my sister and I share the characteristic of doing odd things for no apparent reason whatsoever, except the fun-factor. To be honest though, I know Mercedes set up the entire scene just for me. So I guess her stunt truly had an actual purpose: Mercedes wanted to send me some love.
Bee Bow Tie o’ the Day gives a big Swarm o’ Bees salute to Dad for his birthday. Dad would have been 89 today. He made it to 77, which wasn’t nearly long enough for us. For him, it was sorta two years too long. He was in tremendous pain the last couple of years of his life. He endured it as long as he could, to stay with Mom. He didn’t want her to be alone. He finally listened to her when she told him it was okay for him to let go when he needed to. She told him she’d be okay because all of us would take care of her. He told me (and probably others), a few months before his death, that he’d had 75 great years. The last two years, he said, hadn’t been worth shit. He made it a point to never swear in front of women, so I knew he’d be leaving us soon.
This photo was taken at one of Momo’s birthday parties when she lived at Pleasant Acres. Dad’s in his Ronald E. Wright Uniform of beige workshirt and striped overalls. Mom is being Mom, complete with her just-done hairdo. My late grandma Wright, Momo, looks radiant with her pure, elegant white hair. My late Uncle Wally, who I miss too, is the other fellow. And I remember Momo’s birthday cake was yummy.
Tie o’ the Day is uncanny. It always knows what I’m thinking. I was cogitating about whether to address this topic in this morning’s post, and Tie voted GO AHEAD, before I even asked the question.
I’ve mentioned it before here in TIE O’ THE DAY posts, but I can’t remember ever saying it straight out: I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not ashamed of it either. I say it with humility, not out of humiliation. Those are two absolutely different things.
Today is the 12th of the month, and it’s also the 12th anniversary of my last beer. My sobriety birthday doesn’t always fall on June 12th. I go by the number of days (365 x 12= 4380), not the date I quit. This year it just happens to fall on the 12th.
And then there are AA’s 12 Steps. It is amazing how far you can rise just by taking 12 Steps. I’ve discovered I will have to take some of those steps over and over again for the rest of my life. I am careful with my sobriety, but it doesn’t stop me from living an expansive life. My sobriety is my Faberge egg. I must handle it with utmost care.
I can still be in bars or wherever alcohol is served. It’s not a problem to me that there is always a slew of wine bottles and champagne in our fridge. In fact, it’s actually one of the things which helps me not drink. When I open the refrigerator to grab a Diet Coke, I look those bottles of alcohol straight in the cork and walk away. Some alcoholics can’t do that, but I’m not the only one who can either. We’ve all got our individual ways of dealing with the baggage we carry and the wreckage we caused. And we’ve all got our lines we know we can’t cross if we are going to remain clean and sober. How we deal with our drinking problem is individual to each of us. I’m the only one who can keep me sober. I’m the only one who can keep me honest with myself.
Today, my lucky number seems to be 12. Today, I am clean and sober, just like I was yesterday. But today, I also know it’s dangerous to me if I get ahead of myself and start thinking it will be easy to get to 4381 days. That’s pride, in the worst sense of the word. That bad kind of pride lurks inside every soul. The best we can do is to get more skillful about keeping our negative pride to a minimum. (That’s meant for EVERYBODY about the pride thing, not just those with addictions.)
I still have to tell myself each day, “I can have a drink tomorrow.” So far, that little sentence has worked. “Tomorrow” hasn’t shown up yet. So far, it’s always “today.”
Hey! Look what I rescued. It’s my ties-themed 100 oz. mini-keg, which was my go-to sip cup for a couple of years after I bought it. Although it cracked inside last year, I never had the heart to throw it out. Its flex straw had a slight crack in it too, and the lid doesn’t fit tightly either, but its tie graphics are too perfect for me. 7-11 doesn’t sell the tie design anymore, so I can’t go buy another one. What’s a girl to do with a cracked 100 oz. ties mini-keg? For the last year it’s been mocking me by sitting in the garage whining out its jealousy of my new, differently designed. I was about to finally toss the battered, cracked mini-keg over the weekend. And then I had a genius idea I can’t believe I didn’t think of last year: DUCT TAPE. I’ll tape the inside cracks and let you know how it works out.
As I searched for the duct tape, Tie o’ the Day and I were contemplating the weirdities of my life. I don’t care who you are or how straight-laced and “normal” your life has been, you’ve found yourself in surreal situations here and there, when you wonder how you got in the predicament, and how you’ll ever get out of it. You didn’t set out to be in the situation. The scenario is so outlandish you couldn’t have purposely concocted it if you had wanted to. And you’re positive no one will believe you when you tell them the story.
Because I am I, I have a zillion of ’em. Because I am I, everyone knows my improbable tales really occurred. I call these odd goings-on My Greatest Hits. One of My Greatest Hits is courtesy of the 7-11 in Takoma Park, MD, in the mid-90’s. It doesn’t star a 7-11 mini keg, just a 7-11 Super Big Gulp cup.
Interstate 95 is the main N-S route on the East Coast. The traffic usually runs at a pretty good clip. I used to drive it every school day morning from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore’s inner city where I taught middle school. My drive to work usually took about 35 minutes.
But one morning, when I was just about to exit the freeway and head into West Baltimore, all lanes of the I-95 traffic going my way came to a halt. That was rare for that particular area of the freeway. Rarer still, an hour later no vehicle had moved a centimeter. Something bigly was surely shutting down the road. (It ended up being a many-car accident.) By that time, I had been sitting in the car for more than an hour. For me, that’s venturing into MUST PEE NOW territory. I had finished my Super Big Gulp of Diet Coke, and I needed to get rid of it. I don’t mean I needed to throw away the cup. A half-hour later, all drivers were still sitting in the precise same place we first were stopped. I was beyond desperation. I had no choice except to do what I had to do.
As a middle school teacher, I learned to always have back-up clean clothing in the car. Out of nowhere, middle schoolers can create unheard of messes, and it’s not uncommon for those messes to end up on the teacher– whether you were anywhere near ground zero or not. It’s nice to have clean clothes to step into. Anyhoo… In an attempt to make myself invisible in my car for a minute, I used my spare clothes to cover my front, side windows. I pulled down the visors. With my empty Super Big Gulp cup, I strategically did what had to be done. The contortionist skills I learned as a teenage mooner came in quite handy. Mission accomplished. Almost.
I extremely carefully got my pants back where they belonged. I opened my door and emptied the cup, which I didn’t want to keep in the car, but I don’t litter. I “baby wiped” my hands. (It was the pre- hand sanitizer era.) Although we had all been stuck going nowhere on I-95 for almost two hours, I felt much better.
As I took my back-up clothes down from the windows, I heard a knock. I was sure it was a cop who would soon give me a ticket for Public Urination or Public Indecency or some such charge that would put me on the Sex Offender Registry. But it wasn’t a cop. It was a soccer mom from the van behind me. She asked, “Can I borrow that cup? I gotta go too.” I said, “No, you may not borrow it. You must keep it. Please, for the love of all that’s holy, keep it. Take these Wet Wipes too.”
I kid you not. Soccer Mom was not the last person to use my cup. I watched my Super Big Gulp cup and the wipes travel up, down, and across a handful of the halted lane,s as we sat parked on I-95 whittling away our time in the pre- affordable cell phone era. The cup that almost ranneth over had a somewhat bonding effect on those who were there that day. That cup was the founder of a different kind of Relief Society. Those of us who got relief became friends for life, even though we didn’t talk to each other and we would never see each other again. We shared a similar moment.
I do not know who ended up with the Super Big Gulp cup and baby wipes.
BTW Speaking of my Delta, teenage mooning career, I once mooned a worker at the Taco Time drive-up window while driving and wearing overalls. Now that is a true and rare skill set. (Yes, young-un’s, Delta once had a Taco Time. And an A & W and an Arctic Circle.)
