So Suzanne said, “I need to return some shoes to Nordstrom Rack. Wanna go with me?” I said, “Heck, yeah!” All the errand required was going to the RETURN desk, handing over the shoes, then getting a refund. That’s it. That’s all. And you know exactly how it ended. The mission was accomplished. We were headed to the door, when Suzanne asked, “Is it okay if I look around at a few things?” To be fair, if she hadn’t said it, I would have. Fast forward to an hour later, and I’m leaving the check-out counter with a full shopping bag—newly empty wallet in hand—wondering how an errand that began as a $50 refund ended up costing $400. Refunds are pricey. 😜
I am so tired this morning. I won’t lie: I will be taking a long morning nap. I walked the floors last night, in what I can only describe as my own slapstick episode of the Keystone Cops. I blame my tinnitus. I blame a phone app. And I blame Suzanne. I blame everything and everyone except me.
Here’s what happened: I fell asleep the minute my head hit the pillow, so my night of rest started out just as it should have. I woke up a couple of hours later to the sound of water running. I got out of bed and walked through all the rooms on the second floor, pressing my ear to the walls, listening for running water. I could hear it everywhere and nowhere. I figured it was just my tinnitus acting up extra loudly, so I went back to bed. But the sound soon woke me up again. I investigated further and discovered the sprinklers were on outside, so that must be the culprit I was hearing. Back to bed again, I went. I wasn’t asleep for very long when the sound of water running seemed to get even louder. I looked out the windows—front and back—and saw that the sprinklers were off. I cursed my tinnitus, but I still wasn’t completely convinced I there wasn’t water running somewhere in the house. There was something not quite tinnitus-y about what I was hearing. I went downstairs to listen to all the walls I had not listened to yet. I was coming up with no answers. Finally, I crept back upstairs to try to ignore the water-water-everywhere-that-wasn’t-really-there, so I could get some shut-eye. It was 4:30 AM. The stoopid tinnitus in my head was real. The sound of water running was real, too, I tell you! I flew out of bed yet again, more determined than ever to locate the watery culprit that was causing me to lose sleep. I got down on my hands and knees while I listened to the bedroom floor. If the sound wasn’t in the walls, it had to be in the floor. And that’s when I heard the sound I was able to follow to the source. I slithered my way around the side of the bed to Suzanne’s bedside steamer trunk, upon which was her phone. Apparently, she’d had difficulty falling asleep and had decided to use her relaxation app to play water sounds to help her drift off to sleep. If I had only known! I can sleep to water sounds, if I know they are not doing water damage. It was the worry, not the sounds themselves, which had me on edge. Must. Sleep. Now.
This showed up on my Wayback Machine Photo Feed today. Here’s our baby-man Rowan, wearing a formal Bow Tie o’ the Day for his prom, in May of 2015. I cannot believe he will be 24 in August. I guarantee you that as well as Rowan filled out the tux-and-bow-tie at his prom back in the day of these photos, he would fill it out even better as the manly man he is now. He has definitely grown. I taught him how to sport neckwear, at least.
Yup, I’m at Farmington Health Center again—for what will be my 4th COVID-19 test. The lithotripsy procedure I’ve been waiting for is scheduled for Monday, and to get into the hospital to undergo it, I must once again prove I do not have COVID-19. Hey, I’ve had my shots. I am not worried I have it. Regarding my test, Suzanne said to me this morning as she left for work, “Be positive, test negative!” She thinks she’s so clever. And she is.
My shaman Bow Tie o’ the Day is a nod to my spiritual bent. I am neither superstitious, nor a casualty of blind faith. I do, however, feel vibes of deeper threads always at work in the world around me. I play around with kismet, coincidences, connections, lucky streaks, and signs—fully aware that I am playing with, and creating, the very meaning that I crave. It’s an attitude that works for me. I can vouch for it for you, too.
Somehow, Suzanne managed to wrangle a day off yesterday, so we drove to Delta-bama to visit our hero—Big Helen. Skitter was a sly mutt, cuz she gave Mom a bigly bag of candy, totally ignoring Mom’s glucose levels. Every time I looked in their direction, Skitter was handing Mom another Swedish Fish. I knew we would be in trouble the next time the nurses checked Mom’s sugar. And we were. The nurse told Mom there was an insulin shot coming her way. As we were leaving Millard Care and Rehab, we walked Mom to her lunch table—trying to hide her from any syringe-wielding nurses. But the staff at MCR doesn’t miss a thing. The nurse accosted Mom with a shot in the hall. All’s right with Mom’s blood sugar again. Hey, Mom’s 90. If she wants Swedish Fish, she’s getting Swedish Fish. Besides, it was Skitter who gave her the bag of candy anyway, so you can’t blame me.
BTW Here’s a factoid about Mom: Whenever a nurse prepares to test Mom’s blood, Mom ALWAYS gives them her middle finger to prick. It amuses the nurses, and it amuses Mom to sort of flip the bird at her situation. Everyone wins. I love Mom.
After a pandemic year of not doing our weekly brunching out, Suzanne made us brunch reservations at Cafe Niche. I was relieved to embark on some of our “old normal” events—sort of. We still had to wear masks in common areas of the restaurant, but I have to be honest and say that I like some of the “new normal” that I hope will not go back to pre-pandemic times. I like that there is now more space between the tables in restaurants. I like that hand sanitizer is strategically placed throughout the restaurant. I really like that I don’t have to touch a physical menu that has a battalion of other peoples’ sticky fingerprints on it. It was such heaven to use my phone to scan the code at the table, then read the menu right on my personal screen. I like that salt-and-pepper shakers—and condiment bottles—don’t sit out on the table to be pawed by forty customers per day. I’m not an OCD germaphobe, but it has always bugged me that every diner who sits at a given table throughout the day touches the stuff to be used there. I like that the server now brings me a personal portion of whatever seasoning or condiment I ask for. I so hope I find these changes in whatever dining establishment where we end up brunching this coming Sunday. I’ll keep y’all updated on things of such high import.
FYI If I ask her next month, Suzanne might not even remember what she ate at brunch yesterday. However, if I ask her in five years about the foliage outside Cafe Niche in May of 2021, she will remember exactly what was blooming there. Just sayin.’
There is “cool.” And then there is “Skitter-cool.” In her hat and Tie o’ the Day, Skitter exudes cool-osity from every fur follicle. This is how The Skit faces a Monday. Since she woke up, she’s been listening to nothing but Lucinda Williams cd’s. And just what is Skitter’s fave-rave Lucinda Williams song to sing along with? “2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten,” of course. 💿🎙
The LDS Primary songs of my youth continue to make it impossible for me to wallow in tedious labor. “Saturday” is a song that has gone through my head every Saturday for more than fifty years now. I can’t help it. It’s just there, being the soundtrack of one entire day of every week. Some people work all week long just to get to the excitement of a wild Saturday night on the town, but that’s not how it works for me. Because of the aforementioned song, “Saturday,” from the official Primary songbook, being permanently stuck in my head, Saturday is tasks, chores, and to-do lists. But it’s oh-so fun because there’s a song to sing about it.
Like any good kid song, it is simple, and so it easily accommodates new lines about the real-life Saturday tasks I find myself engaged in. One of my best “true” lines came about because my dad—not too long before he passed away—had been on his back in the driveway, fixing something underneath his forklift. Later that Saturday afternoon, he was puzzled because he couldn’t find his lower dentures. Mom was poking around in every nook and cranny of their house to find them. I asked Dad where he had been working. I got the rake and headed for the forklift. Dad was yelling to me out the front window that he didn’t have his teeth at the forklift, so I didn’t need to look there; meanwhile, Mom came outside to give me a run-down of all the places where she hadn’t found his lowers; and just at that moment Suzanne called from Ogden, needing something. My dogs circled my feet, wanting me to throw the ball for them. My head was full of all these voices. I answered the phone and said to Suzanne, “Whatever it is, handle it. I can’t talk to you right now because I’m busy raking the gravel for Dad’s dentures. Click.” Thus, the following line was born, and I forever added it to “Saturday:” “We rake the gravel, and look for Dad’s teeth,/so we can be ready for Sunday.”
I did, in fact, find Dad’s lowers in the gravel under the forklift. My instincts were correct. He had put them in the chest pocket of his overalls while he worked, and they had slid out of the pocket as he tinkered. Suzanne later told me she thought I was drunk on the phone, because it didn’t make any sense to her why I would be raking gravel to find Dad’s teeth. Like any really good story, it didn’t make any sense at all. Of course it didn’t make sense: It was true!
I’ve been wearing my COVID-19 model Mask o’ the Day quite a bit lately, as my way of acknowledging the wind-down of the pandemic. I think it pairs nicely with purple/lavender Bow Tie o’ the Day.
I got a FaceTime call from Gracie and her parents last night, during which Skitter and I got to watch Gracie open the birthday gifts we left for her earlier in the day. Among the books and sweets and star-shaped sunglasses we thought she’d like, we gave her some balls and a tee-ball mitt—clearly her first mitt, cuz she had no idea what to do with it. Like the whip-smart gal she is, though, she immediately figured out how to make dandy use of the mitt. She decided it was a hat and wore it on her head. I like that girl’s style! She looked smokin’ in the tee-ball mitt hat. I see bigly things for her in her fashion-forward future.
