Look at what Art Deco-style Bow Tie o’ the Day and I found at Dick’s Market when we were crossing items off our grocery list this afternoon! It’s the 2019 pre-Spring season’s first bag of Whopper’s Mini Robin Eggs– to be selfishly hidden in my Tie Room goodie stash. That’s worth celebrating in and of itself. The annual appearance of these candy eggs is a hint that Spring is just a bunny-hop away, which means Summer’s on the not-too-far-out-there horizon.
We also got an added bonus when we were pleasantly shocked to spy a long shelf of a new snack product made and named just for us: Pasta Bow Ties. (Not bow tie pasta, which we already know all about.) How groovy is that? Pasta Bow Ties are described on the package as a “baked puffed snack.” Bow Tie and I threw a bag of each of the three flavors we could find into the shopping cart. I haven’t yet tasted the goodies, but I’ll give you my tastebuds’ verdict after I do. Out of Meatball Parm, Smooth Cheddar, and Honey Butter flavors, I am bound to find at least one flavor of baked, puffed pasta to my liking. We’ll see.
Oh, and I noticed a witty detail about the snack’s packaging: bow tie-shaped bar codes on each bag’s butt. The cleverness of that little bow tie bar code will make me smile for at least a week. Joy is in the details, folks. Your joy depends on your noticing the tiniest of wonderful things around you. Those zillions of tiny things will be there to save your sanity when the bigly things turn to shit.
Did I type that word out loud? Well, I must have meant it.
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’.
Since I declared yesterday to be a Pajama Day, I need to report that I did, in fact, loiter around the house in my mismatch-y pj’s and old-timey sleep hat for every minute of my Saturday. Well, I did leave the house once for about 45 seconds, for which event I changed into a striking wood-polka-dotted-pink-glitter Bow Tie o’ the Day. And, of course, I had to step into my Sloggers cow-print boots and don my harlequin-design cape for a dash to my car, to retrieve the new MUMFORD AND SONS cd I had left in there. (Oddly enough, the cd is titled DELTA.) Every Pajama Day requires tunes!
Oh, yes. I must also report that I did eat ice cream for each of my three meals, as per Pajama Day protocol. The entire TILLAMOOK tub of Caramel Butter Pecan ice cream has passed on into the vast, warm Heaven o’ my tummy. Pajama Day or not, today I’m opening up the tub of TILLAMOOK brand S’mores ice cream.
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.
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.
Over the weekend, I saw Suzanne stretching out a cornucopia of clothing items on the kitchen island. With her sewing, crafting, and whatever-ing relentlessly happening around the house, I notice not-ordinary things like that all the time. I don’t always ask about them. Sometimes I treat whatever’s going on like a game– to see if I can figure out the activity’s result. Sometimes I want to know what’s going on, and sometimes I’m sure I don’t. I simply use my powers of observation most of the time.
And so I did, with Suzanne’s clothing on the kitchen island. I heard a buzzing noise, looked over, and saw Suzanne shaving her clothing with her battery-powered lint and hair remover gadget. I don’t recall ever owning clothes in need of an occasional shave, but apparently Suzanne has a few outfits whose goal is to attract globules o’ lint. Or she secretly works in a lint factory. I dunno. Fortunately, she doesn’t have to lather shaving cream on her clothing items before she shaves them.
I did, however, have to change my clothes– even my socks– after I returned home from taking Skitter to the vet this morning. I was more of a fur ball than Skitter by the time we were done with her exam and tests. She shook so ferociously during the appointment it was as if she was ejecting each hair on her body at me, one at a time– like a firing squad of arrows from Tie o’ the Day’s Cupids. Like it’s MY fault she’s got a bladder infection. (We think that’ll be her diagnosis. We expect her test results tomorrow.)
I was surprised to discover Skitter’s solo photo here isn’t a blur of fur. I guess I caught her in mid-quake. Even as she sat there on the exam table, her eyes begged me to get her out of there. I heard her thinking, “If you really loved me, you’d help me escape. Please, please, please. You rescued me once before.” I think I heard her soul howl at me telepathically.
I felt bad about things from the minute I woke up this morning, because I knew what was ahead for Skitter. She naively dressed up in her red flannel Bow Tie o’ the Day for an undisclosed outing with me. She had no clue the destination would be the Parrish Creek Veterinary Clinic. Some things you just shouldn’t tell your dog until you absolutely have to. As we exited the car at the clinic, I was already apologizing to The Skit for the inevitable rectal thermometer, and for whatever the dog urine extractor is called.
But as I type this post, Skitter is sitting beside me at the other end of the loveseat. She has already forgiven me. How do I know? Because she is completely buried under three Suzanne-made blankets– except she has stretched out one of her front legs in my direction, such that her paw is touching my leg. I’d love to snap a pic of Skitter’s precious paw on my thigh to show you, but if I move to pick up my phone, it will startle her. And then there goes the photo op. I’m just going to sit here and enjoy watching it until she moves it.
Blessings are sometimes no bigger than a dog’s paw on your leg. I hope you notice your tiny blessings. They surround you. Just look.
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.
