Month: September 2018

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Arrow v. Whim? Arrow AND Whim? Arrowhim.

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I are practicing our scary faces for Halloween, even though it’s still September. Clearly, we need to work on more looks o’ horror. We woke up this morning and simply decided we wanted to give in to our whim to wear our orange and black today.

It is said that we should follow our arrows. I agree with that advice. I also believe in indulging our whims, To me, your arrow is usually a big, abstract, directional kind of concept– like where you want to go in your career; how you want your family to be; your personal goals and values.

Whims– on the other hand– are very specific things that add panache and wonder to your life. They should celebrate your individuality and give you singular joy. It’s usually  best if your whims reflect your arrow, but sometimes you need a whim to be so out-there that it knocks your arrow’s arc into a better path than you aimed your arrow in the first place.

Both things matter. I do have to say that, although I’m a dang good see-er o’ the expansive picture o’ The Big Arrow, I’ve become quite wrapped up in committing as many whims as I can at this point in my life. Hey, folks! We’re all running low on years.

The best way I can explain it is that we spend so much of our adulthood making sure we’re following our Big Arrow (family, career, education, etc.), and then at some point we realize our Big Arrow’s traveling just fine without our constant fussing over it. Ain’t really no knockin’ it off its path now. We don’t need to worry quite so much about the trajectory of the Big Arrow we’ve tended so well for years. The aim of our Big Arrow is true. It has become who we are. It is the sum of our lives. We decided its path long ago and adjusted it as needed. We we can now use the auto pilot we’ve achieved through decades of living our Big Arrow. Our autopilot can do its job to get us to our desired cosmological destination.

Now’s the time for whims. We should “whim around.” We should have whimsical attitudes. We should do things in a “whimmerly” way. We should exercise our “whimmers”. We should expand our “whimmerosity.” We should do “whimmerrific” activities. I could continue to come up with oodles more words o’ whimsy– real and made-up. But you get the idea.

I am my own Whim-meister.  You are your own Whim-meister. Play on. 🤡 😜

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We Be Trackin’ The Critters

Bow Tie o’ the Day displays a host of animal tracks. And Shirt o’ the Day shows my own style o’ track-makers. We’re both looking ahead to the upcoming Fall critter seasons.

I hail from a hunting-obsessed home. In our house, the first day of the deer hunt was a bigger deal than Christmas morning, and I am not exaggerating. It’s an undisputed fact.

I knew how to reload perfectly weighted bullets at my dad’s bullet press before I had even been baptized. I fished. I killed pheasants, rabbits, and allegedly a deer. But I haven’t been a hunter since I was 16. I have nothing against ethical hunting. It just isn’t in me to do it. The thrill is gone, as they say.

But every Fall brings back amazing memories of trailing behind Dad– mighty hunter extraordinaire– on opening day of the deer hunt. When I see hunters getting themselves ready for their various Fall hunts, I can’t help but think about my Dad’s knowledge of– and enthusiasm for– hunting. I see folks buying orange and/or camo clothing this time of year. I know they’re re-loading bullets or buying ammo. They are target shooting to sight-in their scopes. In fact, I can already hear the “practice” gunshots in the hills above our house. Of course, I can’t see or hear all the hunting preparations going on around me, but it’s enough to just know it’s going on. Just knowing the hunts are happening makes me feel Dad’s presence near me.

When I was a kid, a friend once asked me if Dad was as mean as he looked. I started laughing, and then I started snort-laughing. Dad was a big guy. He had a huge presence. But he was a soft-hearted jokester. And despite his stature, he was a gentle man. And a gentleman.

As an adult, I finally figured out why someone could think Dad was mean. I was once accused of looking mean myself, so I pondered the topic. I stared in the mirror and tried on some different faces until I got back to my regular face, and there it was. I could finally see it. In fact, it was in every face I pulled, to some extent. But it was most prominent in my regular face. My face was Dad’s face, and I saw that we have the same serious-looking forehead lines and the same look-right-through-you eyes. Both characteristics are there in almost every face I can muster. (They are present even in my baby photos. And in his as well.) I see the clenched, focused lines even in my silly faces. When I surveyed a bunch of photos of Dad, even when he smiled, the forehead lines and knowing eyes were there. Those serious, focused forehead lines, together with our x-ray eyes, can be mistaken for meanness at times, I suppose. I don’t see “mean” in our faces. I see “serious” and “focus” and “I know who you are” and some “don’t mess with the people I love” in our faces.

Dad and I probably missed our career callings. If we look so intimidating, we probably should have been bouncers in a bar. Or Beyonce’s bodyguards. Or UFC fighters. Or Mafia enforcers. 🍺 🥊 🔫 We coulda been somebody!

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And On A Sunday, No Less

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I did some grand manipulating yesterday. Suzanne was, of course, the victim of it. She always is. But I’m an up-front manipulator. I make it clear that I’m doing it. She plays along, and let’s me be successful.

For example, I wanted to go to Sunday brunch yesterday. Suzanne would have preferred I declare a Pajama Day and that we not go anywhere at all. She knew my innards had been painfully tugging at me for a couple of days, and she wanted me to rest. She was thinking of what I needed.

So I did this little speech about how I was feeling oodles better than a few days ago, but I didn’t feel quite well enough to cook breakfast, and I didn’t want her to cook because she’s been working such long hours, and then coming home to cook and clean and heft and tote and yada yada. And how I felt sooo bad she’s had to carry the whole work/home burden for two months, as well as take care of me and blah blah blah. And so I told her that since I didn’t feel quite better enough to cook, it’s only right that she drive us somewhere to brunch, and I pick up the tab. (As if our money is separate.)

The manipulation worked. I knew what I was doing. She knew what I was doing. And don’t think for one second that she doesn’t use the same manipulation tactic on me. Honest, open manipulation is my fave kind of manipulation.

So off we headed to SLC, to yet another restaurant we’ve never tried before: PURGATORY. Yes, on the Sabbath. Suzanne had a breakfast burger without a bun. I had a bacon-egg-french fry-beans-pickled onion-salsa breakfast burrito. We were both pleased with our entrees. We ate on the deck, and when we were done, we sat there for another hour or more– iPhones in hand– searching online for outlandish cowboy boots for me. I have no idea how our conversation led us to the topic of cowboy boots. But, oh, the choices we found!

I asked Suzanne if she had a problem with me wearing cowboy boots with my shorts. She was all for it. I mean– I wore them with my shorts as a kid, and the Bible says we’re supposed to be childlike. And it was, in fact, the Sabbath. So Sunday brunch was a little bit like a Sunday School lesson, I guess. My spirit is joyful that we went to PURGATORY on the Sabbath.

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Goodbye, Dauphin Island, AL. For Now.

I wore white, flip-flop Bow Tie o’ the Day on our flight back from Alabama. And Suzanne wore her new sun bonnet (I love that word), so it wouldn’t count as a carry-on.

Suzanne’s hat is purely practical, for use in the sun. Suzanne does not wear hats, otherwise. It’s not that she doesn’t like hats. It’s more like hats don’t like her. It doesn’t matter what style of hat it is. Suzanne and hats don’t look pleasant when they are combined. Suzanne knows this fact, and wears hats only for health reasons– like avoiding sunburns in the summer and frostbite in the winter. And even if she’s wearing a hat for a good reason, we all know better than to look at her when she’s got one on her head. She doesn’t even look at herself in the mirror if she’s wearing a hat. I kid you not. For your viewing safety, Suzanne and I worked extremely hard at making this photo of her in a hat somewhat look-at-able.

This is my final official Dauphin Island post. But– as I do with my months-ago surgery– I’m sure I’ll occasionally find a reason to bring up the topic again and again. You can count on me to yammer on about our island respite for the next decade or two. I’m like that. As I’m sure you’ve already learned by now.

 

 

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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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Not Speechless

Although mustache Bow Tie o’ the Day isn’t visible– and although this photo is only slightly different from one I already posted in my swimming suit post– this  picture is one of my all-time faves of me. And I don’t like many pics of me at all. But I think this expresses me and my outlook, scrunched into one pic. I think it’s a pretty accurate representation of my attitude as I move through the world. It shows my relationship to the world. Here are some captions I’ve come up with that fit what I see of me in the picture. These are things I can imagine myself saying in this photo. They are words which sorta give you a tiny peek at my philosophies and my life-posture.

  • I love my life this much!
  • Would ya look at this?!
  • Does this swimming suit make my butt look big?
  • Suzanne, this is the exact spot where we’re building a beach house when you retire!
  • Everybody come see this!
  • What do you mean, you forgot the marshmallows for the s’mores?
  • I ain’t goin’ back to work!
  • (When things are tough) Yeah, I’ve got this!
  • (When things are relentlessly tough) Bring it on!
  • (When things are toughest) Is that all you’ve got?
  • Who drank my last Diet Coke?
  • Is all of this picturesque earth just for little ol’ me?
  • (Singing, from the hymn) “The wind and the waves shall obey my will…”
  • I can see forever from here!
  • I can’t believe people would rather start wars than sit on their beach towels together on an ocean beach, around a bonfire, watching sunsets.
  • Wow! I get to have all of this scene’s elegance AND a cool swimming suit!
  • This is photoshopped, right?
  • Hey, wind, water, sky, sun, clouds, sand, swimming suit! Come here and let me give you this big bear hug.

If you’ve got a caption you think captures my spirit in this photo, feel free to share it. I’m curious to know what kinds of things others think I could be saying in this picture.

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Accessories To The Fact

 

Bow ties have infinite uses. For example, when I was overdoing it at the beach one afternoon, Bow Tie o’ the Day selflessly wrapped itself around my ankles like a pair of shackles, to keep me sitting down in one place. It forced me to rest up for a few minutes. I appreciate a thoughtful bow tie.

A couple of days before we left home for Dauphin Island, I chose this bright green color of nail polish to adorn my fingernails and toenails for the trip. Suzanne nail polished away. I didn’t realize until I put on my flip-flops when we when were headed to the beach for the first time that the green polish color was one of the two colors on my only pair of flip-flops. I matched, but it was too late to do anything about it at that point, since Suzanne didn’t bring her cosmetic bag o’ nail polish to the island.

This is the last known photo of my flip-flops. Later this day, I was enjoying myself so heartily that I out-did my right flip-flop, by walking through– not on– the water. My toughness and the ocean murdered it.

After we were done at the beach, (Can you really truly ever be done with the beach?) we went to the one touristy-stuff store on the island to find me some new flip-flops. We had no luck, because although Beach Planet had hundreds of flip-flops that fit me, I refused to pay beach prices– on principle. I found a $2 pair of thongs for $24.99. No sale. Hence, I wore my Nike’s for the duration of the trip.

The Beach Planet shopping outing was still a success because Suzanne got 5 pairs of earrings and a barrette. And she found me a pair of earrings too– paisley, of course. And I found this hat. And that was just our first trip to that store.

 

 

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Yes, I Am An Actual Grown-Up

Me and Bow Tie o’ the Day, in my sexy swimming suit. September 9, 2018. The beach at sunset, on Dauphin Island, AL. USA.

Ever since I was a kid, I have wanted one of these old timey, 1890’s-era swimming suits. I can’t believe I’ve gone 54 years without getting one. I finally found a place that sells these, but then I had a tough decision to make: Do I buy the green one, the red one, or the blue one? I went with the green.

This style of swimming suit pairs perfectly with a wood, curly-mustache Bow Tie o’ the Day to top it off. The island’s beaches will never recover from experiencing me in my unconventional swimming suit and bow tie. (Excuse the Nike’s I’m wearing on the beach in this photo. I killed one of my flip-flops the day before, and these were the only other shoes I had. Going barefoot on this section of the beach wasn’t an option, cuz of broken seashells.)

One of the perks of being an adult is being able to express your outrageously whimsical side without having to explain what the heck you’re thinking. Some people might want you to explain, but you do not have to. Nobody’s going to ground you. Some people might stare quizzically and otherwise try to figure out your game. But you know that you don’t have a game. You don’t have a lurking reason or ulterior motive to engage in your harmless whim, except that you just want to do it. And I hope you know you don’t need a reason beyond giving yourself some joy.

Life is full of heartaches. Some are beyond your control. Some, you create for yourself. But, ultimately, you are responsible for making your own happiness, no matter your situation. You’re alive, and I hope you’re trying to make your spins around the sun as exhilarating and captivating as possible– for you and for those in your orbit.

I am so pleased with my awesome swimming suit– and the enthusiastic reactions to it– that I’m thinking of designating a day of the week to wearing it everywhere, year-round. Maybe I’ll declare every Wednesday to be Old Timey Swimming Suit Hump Day. And ya know what? That gives me a tidy excuse to buy the swimming suit in the other two colors. You can’t wear the same color of swimming suit every Old Timey Swimming Suit Hump Day, right? Wardrobe, wardrobe, wardrobe!

 

 

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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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Bow Ties Will Be Bow Ties

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in what I’m doing that I forget my bow ties have minds of their own– even on Dauphin Island. They are not living, breathing beings, but they are alive in their own way. At least, mine are alive somehow. In fact, they are downright scamptastic!

Suzanne and I were hanging around on the beach, doing our own thing. I looked away from my back-up Bow Ties o’ the Day for only the tiniest of moments, and when I looked back, they were gone. When I finally found them, I was both livid and relieved at the same time. It seems they had gotten it into their bow heads to stake out a section of beach for themselves. As you can see in these photos, they were doing typical beach things: sunbathing and getting buried in the sand.

I couldn’t be angry with them, but I did give them a rousing come-to-Jesus talk, during which I gave them the parent line about how they need to tell me where they’re going and when they’ll be back, or they’ll be grounded until they’re in a retirement home. Running off unannounced is not acceptable behavior, even for bow ties. My bow ties don’t have cell phones, so I have no way to contact them when they scurry off. I can’t afford that many phone lines.