Category: Ties

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Two Reds Do Make A Right

 

Tie o’ the Day shows us a spot-on example of creating clash fashion by using different degrees of one color. The red of my shirt, paired with the red of my tie, sets forth two clashing reds that also sorta kinda blend into each other.

If your tie doesn’t jump out and grab attention, you are not clashing correctly. The trick to creating satisfactory clash out of the “same” colors is to close-but-not-quite match them. The hues must be different enough from each other that it’s clear you weren’t attempting to be matchy  in the first place. They must clash to the extent that it is clear to everyone who sees you that you purposely meant to not match. Choose a single color and go with it. Almost.

And look! These two reds helped me pull a whole new face for my photo. I’ve never mugged like this before. Although it’s not a complicated face to make, I had no idea I was capable of making it. I think it’s important to learn how to do something new every day. 😜

While I was in The Tie Room choosing Tie this afternoon, I took a quick gander at the ties– just the regular ties–  hanging in my closet. I have only a dozen ties whose colors are mainly red. It appears the majority of my ties are covered in blues. 2nd Place goes to hues of purple. I’ve got a thing for purples. The ties in last place are green. I’ve got probably only five or six green ties in my collection. It’s not that I don’t like the color green, it’s just that I haven’t found many green ties that stand out enough for my purposes. There are few loud and/or fun green ties out there . There are even relatively few green X-mas ties, but I do have some.

Speaking of Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa holiday ties and bow ties… Don’t forget that I have so many to wear that– in order for you to see every last one I’ve collected– I will have to sometimes wear more than two per day, even though I’ll begin wearing them the day after Thanksgiving. It’s what I have to do, in order to wear them all by Christmas. Tie + photograph = website post. Whew! I’m tired just thinking about all that extra work.

Seriously, I look forward to showing y’all all that merry holiday neckwear. Sing with me: “It’s the most/wonderful time/of the year.”

BTW   The Ultimate SewingBox is being assembled as I’m typing this. I’m hoping I can write about the all-done furniture in tomorrow morning’s post. For now, I’m off to take photos of the various stages toward its completion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I Can’t Think Of Anything To Write

But that won’t stop me. In fact, Bow Ties o’ the Day/Tie o’ the Day encouraged me to press on with our post. And I listen to this tie because it allows me to not have to decide between wearing a bow tie or wearing a regular tie. Sometimes a girl just needs to wear both types of neckwear.

How are we going to come up with something to write about? Well, I have a tried-and-true method for figuring out a starting point– whether it’s for a post, a story, or a poem. I grab a dictionary, open it up to a random page, then put my finger on a word. I have to write something about that specific word. That’s my rule.

For this post, the first word I touched was a dirty word, so we’ll bypass that one. The second word I touched– the one we can use– was “mucilage.” I know. Weird. It shares the same word root as “mucus.” And of course it means an adhesive gum or glue, usually made from plants. Yes, it looks and feels like mucus.

I wondered mightily what to say about mucilage, and then I remembered a crafty glue/mucilage concoction called Mod Podge, which I always heard pronounced MODGE Podge. Ah, the 70’s! (It’s still around in craft stores, although it kinda disappeared for a couple of decades. Throwback!)

Mod Podge dried almost completely clear, no matter what you spread it on. It was a mostly transparent glue, but it dried with a matte finish. Aside from brushing completed puzzles with Mod Podge so they wouldn’t fall apart, or cutting out pictures and Mod Podging them to pieces of wood, the main thing I did with Mod Podge is use it to coat rocks I had painted, to protect the paint and to give the rock a matte look.

We were all doing it. We painted our pet rocks. We painted faces on our rocks– like doing their make-up, I suppose. We painted what adults considered hippie words on rocks, like PEACE, LOVE, GROOVY, HARMONY– evil, counterculture words. The size of the rock didn’t matter. Rocks tiny enough you could keep them in your pocket. Rocks bigly enough you could decorate your front porch with them. Rocks you could put in your school locker or on your desk. What were we thinking? But it was a heckuva blast.

So that’s my mucilage story, for what it’s worth. And if you didn’t know Mod Podge before, now you do. And if you didn’t know mucilage before, now you do. If you see the word MUCILAGE and can’t remember what it means, try to see MUCUS. That’ll remind you.

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Even The Ties Are Disappointed

Tie o’ the Day understands. We know what you came to see: The Ultimate SewingBox. Sorry to disappoint. Our scheduled assembler had to do other stuff last night, so he couldn’t come over and put together Suzanne’s new best friend. But he’s promised to be here tomorrow night to perform his miracle. Hey, he’s a young buck, so he has a lot of fish to fry, as they say. And there are a lot of fish in the sea, as they also say. And he has a right to sow his wild oats– as they also say. Okay, I’m done with the clichés now. We’re practicing our patience while anticipating the bigly outcome.

I decided to put together some autumn colors clash for the photo today. And in the photo you can also see a pile of boxes containing body parts of The Ultimate SewingBox. And, hey, it’s just one of the piles o’ parts.

When I assemble things– whether I use the instructions or not– the finished product does not in any way resemble what it’s supposed to be. At least I know that truth about myself. To be successful in life, a person’s gotta know their strengths and weaknesses. In fact, I don’t buy anything that must be assembled, unless I can think of some victim who will be willing to do it for me.

I don’t mind paying. Name your price. Hell, I’ll double it. I’ll bake you cookies. I’ll wash your car. I’ll have your babies. Just do it for me, please. And while you’re assembling the thing, I won’t stand over your shoulder and tell you how I think you should do it either. You are free to construct away. 🔨

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Wearing Shotgun Shells

Shotgun shells Tie o’ the Day is one of those ties your face has to be no more than an inch away from, in order for you to decipher what it is. Tie is named by its maker “The Buck Starts Here.” As in buckshot. Clever, eh? My neckwear collection is overflowing at this point, so a tie/bow tie has to have a little extra sumpin’ sumpin’ about it, to be worthy of me adding it to the population of The Tie Room. Clearly, I like Tie. It’s a surprise to have any kind of weaponry on a tie– let alone bullets.

Tonight, Tie and I have made ourselves a pot roast. I haven’t made a pot roast for two or three years, at least. Suzanne started eating a specific diet a few years ago, and pot roast is not on its list of approved menu items. Actually, she can eat the roast if it’s a beef roast, but she’s not allowed to consume the potatoes or carrots. And if you can’t eat the potatoes and carrots with your roast, you ain’t eatin’ an official pot roast.

I’m supportive of Suzanne’s new eating habits. She’s lost 65 pounds. I feel guilty if I eat certain things in front of her, so I try not to do that. And because I don’t want to tempt her into eating her forbidden foods, I wait until she’s not around before I cook the not-good-for-Suzanne recipes. Like pot roast. Suzanne is out at a work dinner tonight, so I am free. Free, I tell you. I’ve thrown food caution to the food wind, and built myself a feast. I’d invite y’all over, but I’m so over-hungry for what I’ve cooked that I don’t want to share it this time. Next time, maybe.

And after I eat, I have to make certain I get rid of all the evidence. There can be no leftovers in the fridge, and I will definitely have to air out the house. There must be no trace of an old-fashioned, meat-and-‘tatoes dinner.

I like carbs and fat. So sue me.

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O, Happy Day!!!

Tie o’ the Day’s bucking broncos are pleased to announce that today is a joyous, exciting day for Suzanne. It’s a day she has waited for since we filled up our garage with boxes o’ parts for assembling The Ultimate SewingBox a couple of months ago. We have finally wrangled a talented put-togetherer to build the bigly piece o’ furniture. Suzanne’s nephew, Colton the Cowboy, is coming to our place this evening to do the task. The instructions say it should take somewhere around three hours to put the beast together. I’m betting Colton won’t need that much time to do it. He’s that proficient at stuff like this. (I’ll post pictures of The Ultimate SewingBox in its various stages of assemblage.)

Whew! When the thing is assembled and all its boxes disposed of, we will be able to park a car in the garage again. But mostly, Suzanne will have what will surely be her fave piece o’ furniture of her life. I am not using hyperbole when I say that.

Yes, The Ultimate SewingBox will be standing in the living room on our new flooring. Some people have a fireplace as the centerpiece of their living room, or maybe a piano. We thought of having a custom built-in bookcase across an entire wall of the room as our focal point. But when Suzanne saw The Ultimate SewingBox, and when I said OK to it, the bookcase was off the plan list. The Ultimate SewingBox will fill most of that wall. If there’s room for nothing else in our living room except a folding chair for my butt, the television, and The Ultimate SewingBox, that’s absolutely cool with me.

Suzanne originally planned to put the behemoth in her craft room upstairs, but I used my VETO power on that idea. I would like to see Suzanne occasionally, and if The Ultimate SewingBox is in her craft room, I will never see her again. Thus, The Ultimate SewingBox will become the designated focal point of our living room. It will make me happy to see Suzanne a lot. And not only just to see her, but to see her feeling ecstatic. When she’s happy about something, she has this barely perceptible smile on her face, but you know the smile is there, because her cheeks go up. With The Ultimate SewingBox, she’s going to be so happy for so long that her cheek muscles will constantly be sore. That’s as it should be.

BTW   In regard to my DI hat, I don’t want you to be misled into thinking that Deseret Industries has a gift shop. Nah, the DI on this hat stands for Dauphin Island. When I saw it there, I had to get it. How could I not buy a hat with “DI” embroidered on it? Most of the world doesn’t have a clue about the existence of Deseret Industries, but I do. We do. It’s enough that a DI hat is amusing to the Utah crowd, at least.

And another BTW   I use the exact full name of The Ultimate SewingBox whenever I mention it, cuz the name makes me chuckle. It’s so definitive and audacious and important-sounding. 📦

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Halo, My Name Is HELEN W

Golden-hued Tie o’ the Day was kind enough to escort me  as I drove my truck for the first time since surgery. We drove out to Suzanne’s office to sit with her during her minuscule lunch hour, which lasted only about 20 minutes today. Apparently, she’s the most important person in the building, and they can’t get anything done without her,  even during her lunch hour.

The last time I drove my jalopy was June 27th– the day before my operation. My voyage today was yet another milestone in my recovery. I waited longer than you might think I needed to wait to drive it, but you have to understand my beloved Hombre. It is twenty years old. It has a manual transmission, and the clutch is not friendly. The driver’s seat has a tear in it which makes your butt sit on part of its metal frame. Plus, Hombre gives a bouncy, bumpy ride. Riding in it is like riding an earthquake.

I survived the brief ride, but my innards are pulling, and my shifting and clutch muscles ache because they haven’t been used in exactly that way for three months.

The thing about conquering the milestones in your healing is that you have to push your limits, in order to know your limits. And you can’t tell you’ve gone dangerously past your limits until you’ve already done it. By then, it’s too late to not hurt yourself. You have to learn to nudge your limits gently. So far, I’ve been lucky to not do irreparable damage when I’ve gone a bit too far. And do you know what the biggest pain about working to regain your normal movements is? After a serious surgery, your limits are not bigly at all. Baby steps is all you can take, and even baby steps sometimes injure you.

BTW Hey! Check out the halo effect on me in this photo. This is the first and last time I will be mistaken for an angel. 😇

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The Tropical Aftermath

Tie o’ the Day is as close as we got to sailing during our ocean trip. Suzanne has this itty-BIGly motion sickness problem. Because of this, she has to wear a Rx patch whenever we fly, and she has to be the driver whenever we travel somewhere in a car– even if we’re going just around the block. It’s just a Suzanne thing, and even though I quite enjoy driving, I automatically ride shotgun when we’re off to the races in a motor vehicle. Boats, ferries, rafts, etc. are not even possibilities in the Suzanne universe.

On our initial drive around Dauphin Island, we were not just getting our bearings, we were surveying the damages left by Tropical Storm Gordon. AND HERE’S WHERE I’M SCREECHING TO A HALT!

Tropical Storm Gordon was just barely not blow-y enough to be a hurricane. If its winds had been blowing 1– count ’em– 1 mph harder, it would have been an official hurricane. If it’s that close, I’m declaring it a hurricane. There. Hurricane Gordon. Doesn’t that make it sound more dramatic? And drama is the point of all things, right?

Think about it: The term “tropical” before the word “storm” makes it sound like the storm is going to be fun and relaxing. It sounds like you might as well be saying, “Hey, remember to bring your tropical beach towel to the tropical beach.” Tropical drinks, tropical vacations, tropical punch. Those are all fun. Storms with winds of 73 mph are not fun, just because you use the word “tropical” in front of the word “storm.”

So we got to the island two days after “Hurricane” Gordon had passed through. The island seemed to have taken the event in stride. “Oh, that little ol’ wind and those little ol’ waves.” The island’s residents are used to these weather events. And, true enough, things looked quite normal. Bow Tie o’ the Day on my visor in the rental car noticed a bit of standing water and piles of sand along the roads by the empty vacation homes.

Sneakers Bow Tie o’ the Day poses with me by a pile o’ sand (not a sand dune) that had been scraped off the road and piled the same way we plow and pile snow here in Utah during the winter. Piles o’ white sand, piles o’ white sand, everywhere.

Sneakers Bow Tie also poses in front of one huge, blue vacation home, which happens to have been built next door to a rickety green shack. This photo doesn’t show the contrast in homes as clearly as I’d like, but I couldn’t go on private property to get a more striking picture. It’s a visual comment on the economic realities of this country. Fortunately, the dilapidated home survived as well as the pricey, new vacation home.

FYI  All the houses on the island are built on “stilts” to protect them and their contents from the routine, temporary flooding caused by routine storms passing through. I refer to the houses as RumpelSTILTskin homes.

 

 

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You Don’t Know, Until You Go

Our trip to Dauphin Island was planned and paid for months before we knew I’d need my surgery. Once I found out it was imperative they butcher part of my Hanky Panky, I had to decide whether to have my little pancreas operation right away, or to wait until our schedule was open again in November. But it was best to let them cut me open as soon as it could be arranged.

If I got cut open ASAP in late-June, that would give me nine weeks of recovery time before our trip. We– including the surgeon– figured the two months between surgery and vacay would give me enough convalescent time to be in shape to go on a low-energy vacation, so we decided not to cancel or reschedule our trip.

For the nine weeks that I was stuck in the house using all my energy to recuperate, being ready for our Alabama trip was my light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel goal. It was a milestone I worked to achieve. I knew I had to take extra good care of myself if I was going to be ready to head out across the country. Suzanne and I took gingerly good care of me during those weeks.

As the trip date approached, I was excited but apprehensive. I felt like I was well enough to fly away, but I worried vacation would be too hard on my old, healing body. I was concerned that I might play too hard. But while in ‘Bama, I worked at being careful, and I managed to have the most mellow vacay adventure of my life. I had a ball. A lazy, enjoyable ball.

Even so, Suzanne and I soon realized the trip had happened a little too early in the course of my recovery. In this photo, Tie o’ the Day’s colorful ocean buoys are attempting to buoy up my spirits. I had to spend most of this day sprawled out resting on the couch, as I am doing in this shot. I wasn’t even up for beaching.

Couch potato rest, or no couch potato rest, we still had to eat– so Suzanne went out into the town alone to slay a beast for us to consume. She went to the Lighthouse Bakery and slayed us a couple of trophy cinnamon rolls. She promptly dragged their carcasses back to the condo. She’s got a sharp eye, and that’s what makes her a spot-on hunter. I’m glad it was Cinnamon Roll Season on Dauphin Island.

The pastry was health-giving, and I was later able to waller off the couch and go to the beach that evening– where we watched the sun set over the ocean. And of course I wore my new, sexy swimming suit.

It will be revealed in the next post.

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We Meant To Post, But We Couldn’t

My plan was to keep churning out TIE O’ THE DAY posts during our vacation. (We know you miss us when we’re dormant.) However, the dastardly Tropical Storm Gordon– which we barely missed– had knocked out internet access on Dauphin Island, so the posts took a timeout. The neckwear did not, and I will certainly let you see what we and our family o’ ties were up to.

We begin with this photo of Suzanne and me at the baggage carousel in the Mobile Regional Airport, on the first day of our trip. Suzanne was tasked with carrying ALL our bags, since I’m still not lifting or toting anything like the luggage we packed. Each piece was so heavy that somebody must have packed cinder blocks. Besides the two suitcases she’s wrangling in this photo, Suzanne is carrying my computer bag and my Bag o’ Bow Ties, while wearing her own backpack/purse. She’s trying to figure out a strategy for getting all the bags to the rental car. I was kind and offered to carry the small Bag o’ Bow Ties and the rental car paperwork. It was the least I could do. The absolute least.

I, on the other hand, was busy wearing my shirt cape and posing. Note wood Bow Tie o’ the Day’s wings, which I had carefully chosen to wear on the plane in order to give a little extra assistance to the pilots. The flights to Atlanta, then to Mobile were a success, so wearing Bow Tie worked. Obviously.

And let me add this: You know how as you’re leaving the airplane each crew member stands at the door repeating “buh-bye” or “have a good day” to each passenger? I got to hear “Cool bow tie!” from a crew member. It broke up the insincere, monotonous exit chatter. That alone is worth wearing a bow tie around your neck in the clammy humidity of Alabama. 🛩

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Unless We’re Not

Tie o’ the Day and I are closely checkin’ the weather for the days of our upcoming vacation. We are scheduled to leave for Dauphin Island, AL– a few miles off the coast of Alabama– on Thursday morning. It seems that a little tropical storm named Gordon is trying to become a hurricane in that coastal region right now.

Are we still going to our little beach? Heck, yes. Remember, we’ve survived Delta wind for decades– real wind. And who doesn’t want to experience a tropical storm and/or hurricane getaway? Not everybody gets a chance to vacation in a hurricane. Besides, Gordon’s supposed to be only a Category 1 hurricane. And it might not even turn into one at all. It might miss our little island completely. Also, whatever it ends up being is supposed to happen before Thursday. But– you know the weather.

When we planned our getaway months ago, we checked into when hurricane season is generally over. It was supposed to over by now. Oh, well. The manager of the condo we’ve rented touched bases with us yesterday and said that we shouldn’t worry about changing our plans. And she lives there, so she should know. Sounds like when these teeny-powerful storms happen, they are more of an annoyance than actually dangerous.

We will likely get rain in the storm’s aftermath. We’ve packed an umbrella. Even though we may not get as much beach time as we anticipated, that’s ok. There are other things to do and places to see that tourists don’t necessarily think to do/see if they spend all their time at the beach. Suzanne and I enjoy wherever we are together.

For me and Suzanne, no hurricane is gonna detour our vacay parade. We’re not changing our plans, even though we have trip insurance and easily could. I’ve been chained to the house, recovering for most of the last 2 months, and I need to go somewhere. I need some bigly fun. Bigly, but relaxing. Even experiencing a hurricane sounds better to me than sitting around the house one minute longer. I guess I can wait two days– since I have to. We’re going!

I can already imagine the bow tie/tie posts that are gonna come out of this adventure o’ weather. And I even have a dashing new swimming suit that will amuse you. 🌊 ✈️