Category: Ties

Ties o’ the Day want you to hear the tale of last night’s frozen woe. Here’s the background: The day before I went into the hospital, a vital part in the AC died a sudden death. The house toasted up oh-so quickly.  I immediately worried that Skitter would melt in the heat o’ the house unless the situation could be fixed immediately. Did I call the AC company and schedule a repair ASAP? No. I was having surgery early the next morning, and I had no idea when the heck I would be getting out of the hospital, so making an appointment for the repair folks to show up at a specific time wasn’t possible.

Suzanne was on a flight from Florida when the AC part gave up the ghost, so she was no help at that moment. When she got home late that night, we didn’t spend time worrying about how hot the house was– cuz we had only a few hours left to convince me to show up for my surgery. Apparently, when I scheduled the surgery I wasn’t clear about the fact that the doctor couldn’t operate on me if I wasn’t actually in the operating room to be sliced open. There isn’t an app for that.

I had no doubt Suzanne would handle the AC repair scheduling as soon as I lived through my procedure. I knew the house would be cooled to our satisfaction by the time I returned home from my medical odyssey. Skitter would be saved from melting! But I also knew the repair would cost more than necessary, because Suzanne would be handling it instead of me.

Suzanne likes gadgets and apps. A gadget that comes with its own app is irresistible to her. The AC dudes came and made the repair on the 4th of July, while I was still walking around the halls of Huntsman in my hospital nightie. Later, that day when Suzanne came to sit with me in the hospital, she immediately pulled out her iPhone to show me the app for remotely controlling the AC thermostat. But, of course, to use the app, she had to get a new “smart” thermostat control put on the wall. (Anybody want a working, not-smart thermostat?) And that’s not all she got us. Of course, she had to get a sensor that knows where we are in the house at all times, so wherever there’s a human being, the room is temperaturally correct.

Anyhoo… We have all accidentally “butt dialed” a phone call or have been butt dialed ourselves. Heck, I’ve even “cleavage dialed” a person or two. Last night, as I snored the night away, I somehow rolled over on my phone and some part of my body “skin dialed” the AC app temperature setting– changing it to somewhere in the vicinity of below zero. In the middle of the night, I woke up in Antarctica. I reset the temperature setting to the right temp, but I was still so cold I had to dress like this to get back to sleep. Count ’em: 8 ties, 3 sweaters, and 3 hats.

No more sleeping with the phone on the bed, which wouldn’t have happened if Suzanne had been in it. The moral of this tale is that if Suzanne gets new gadgets with apps, she shouldn’t leave me all alone while she goes camping for four days with her Champagne Garden Club.

Robbing a Loomis armored truck as it waits in front of Dick’s Market is not a brilliant idea. Even Tie o’ the Day knows that. It’s especially not a smart idea for me, cuz I kinda stand out. I’d be way too easy for witnesses to identify. I can just hear the witnesses in the parking lot all report the same things about the perpetrator: “I saw a purple tie, and the license plate on the red truck said HELEN W.” Heck, let’s all be honest. Most of us have, at one time or another in our lives, thought about robbing a bank–in a not-serious way, I hope. We talk about it because of the money, but also for the challenge of making a perfect plan that is soooo much better than the plans of stoopid criminals who bungle their schemes. We watch TV crime shows about the hapless thieves, and we are positive we could pull off the robbery without a hitch– whatever they’re attempting to steal. “Pretend robbery” planning also leads into the conversation game we all play on occasion when we talk about what we’d do if we had a filthy, obscene, bigly amount of cash. And, of course, we all know we are never going to earn that kind of money from our jobs, so we’re stuck cogitating about things like winning the lottery or robbing Fort Knox. We say that if we somehow end up with a pile o’ money, we’ll buy our parents a new house, and we’ll give money to charity, and we’ll build a school, and we’ll end world hunger, and so on. But guess what? You know damn well that if we hit it rich, we’d immediately quit our jobs. And the first thing we’d truly do with our new-found fortune is to blow it all on a fancy-shmancy car, an airplane, and a yacht. Oh, and a case of Junior Mints. Anyhoo…Entering Dick’s Market, I walked right past the armored truck, waving cordially to the driver. Inside the store, I spent the tiny fortune in my teeny pocket to buy a maple-frosted apple fritter. I can attest to the fact that the fritter was rich– even if I’m not. 🤣

Ties o’ the Day– and Skitter– were the first to put their butts on the reclining loveseat that came to live with us this morning. All I did was walk the delivery dudes to the door, and by the time I got back to the living room to try out this new piece o’ furniture, these selfish things were already seated and asleep. Dang! I’m the one who’s supposed to take it easy for a couple more months! I would feel differently about it if Ties and Skitter had chipped in a buck or two or a thousand to pay for the loveseat. Quite frankly, I feel used. Really, though, my behind is just jealous and can’t wait for Ties and Skitter to wake up, so it can have a very long turn at reclining. I thought about dragging the furniture-hoggers off the thing, but I was taught to let sleeping dogs– and sleeping ties–lie. I was raised right. I was not raised in a barn. I was raised in a bee warehouse. 🛋 🐝