Category: Ties

[I know, I know. This is the third time I’m re-posting this jewel. After I posted a photo of some of my flannel wardrobe yesterday, I got a few requests to put up “the flannelrama post” again. It is my pleasure to oblige.]

I have looked out at the Atlantic Ocean, from a castle turret on a hill on the west coast of Ireland. I have driven down Main Street in Delta, UT with a wind-blown tumbleweed the size of a Christmas tree stuck in the front grill of my car. I have mooned. I have streaked. I have sat naked in a lawn chair at a nude beach in Rehoboth, Delaware. I have canoed on the Potomac River while eating sushi.

In honor of the craziness of the Delta Fourth of July chairs-on-main-street-for-days custom, I have set up lawn chairs—and tied them together—on the side of the road in front of my Delta house, to create a fake 4th of July parade route, complete with horse poop and saltwater taffy scattered in the road. And Mom and I have sat in those lawn chairs, waiting for the parade that never came—just so people could see us and wonder. (And a parade did come by once. Story to be told later.)

I have drunk shots of pepper vodka on a picnic blanket, at an Allison Krauss concert, on the grass in front of the Washington Monument. I have driven in the West Desert for hours at night, with my headlights off, while listening to music no one’s ever heard of. I have been trapped in a stuck elevator. I have played arcade games along the Jersey Shore. I have been to Six Flags amusement parks in three different states. I have returned a lost wallet.

I have taught every type of writing class they offer at The University of Utah and at Salt Lake Community College. I have led book groups for inmates at the Utah State Prison. I have taught writing in a middle school in inner-city Baltimore. I have twice run the Georgetown 10K in Washington, D.C. while drunk. I have seen Dad catch fish bare-handed. I have spent 24 hours in Boston, and I saw everything there was to see. I have seen over 100 concerts in my life. I have ice skated all the way across the Reservoir and back. I have had 2/3 of my pancreas hacked away. I have seen a jackalope and a chupacabra in the same night.

But the one thing I have not experienced until now is an event called FLANNELRAMA at JOANN.

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I have now seen and done everything. 😜

As my morning post implied, I ate popcorn for breakfast. I ate ice cream for lunch, like I said I would. Then I made the awful mistake of watching the news. I really do know better than to do that when I want to remain jolly, but I believe—as Thomas Jefferson did—that the worst threat to our representative democracy is uninformed citizens, so I regularly force myself to pay attention to current affairs. But watching the news around election time tends to throw me into a funk of the funkiest of depths.

Fortunately, I am who I am. I have my Tie Room, the closet of which is full of props for silly purposes. It’s also where I keep my Suzanne-made capes and my face masks and my hats, and a bunch of other miscellany. I found my QWERTY keyboard Tie o’ the Day for when I do some writing later today. I made my outfit selections for the day, and dressed up for the purpose of cheering myself while I did household chores. As I always do when I’m cleaning, I sing the Glen Campbell song, “(Such Are The) Dreams Of The Everyday Housewife” at the top of my lungs. You really should stop by and hear me sing it sometime, but bring your earplugs just to be on the safe side.

Sure enough, while choring around in my swell duds, I started to forget about the contentious gobbledy-gook I saw on the news. In fact, I was feeling quite magician-like in my cape as I folded clothes. The doorbell rang in the middle of my choring, and I grabbed a face mask before opening the front door. It was the Amazon prime dudette making her nearly-daily-since-the-pandemic-started delivery to our abode. I stood there caped and cowboy-booted, in all my oblivious glory. The delivery woman commented positively on key aspects of my regalia. In fact, after I explained that Suzanne make all my capes, she asked if I thought Suzanne would make her one. She said I am the reason she looks forward to delivering packages in our zip code. Apparently, she saw me riding my bike around the neighborhood a few weeks ago, pulling the magnificent Skitter in her dog trailer behind me. I am very well aware that after Ms. prime driver drops off packages at our house, she likely gets back in her van with tales to tell her family when she gets home. In small ways like this, I aim to make the planet a bit better place than the news says it is.

In the late 70’s, when I was in high school, Mom had this swell idea to completely redecorate a bedroom for me. Mom did all the work herself. New paint, new carpet (lime green!!!), new walltex. The walltex had been a problem. I was not agreeing to any of the scads of samples she showed me. They were girly, and cutesy, and otherwise uninteresting to me. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful for what Mom was trying to do, but I was not pleased with the choices she presented me. I was ready to throw in the towel and just pretend to really, really, really like whatever she showed me next—so she could get the project underway and git ‘er done. And then Mom brought me a sample of the walltex you see here, with its rustic farmhouse vibe. Call me Holly Hobbie, but I immediately agreed to it from the very insides of my innards. I liked it bigly time.Mom liked it so well, she left it on the walls for years. A couple of decades later, when I was long gone from my childhood home, Mom redecorated the bedroom once again. On my next birthday or Christmas (I forget which occasion it was), I opened up the present from Mom to find this strip of my high school walltex in a custom-built wood frame, ready for hanging on the wall as a picture. She remembered all those years how hard we had struggled to find a walltex design I would be happy about living with. It was a sweet surprise for me to receive this old piece of walltex so many years later. It’s another of Mom’s skills: Mom knows how to pull off the Grand Gesture when giving a gift, even if it is simply a piece of used wallpaper.