Month: November 2018

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Climbing The Walls

Snowflake Bow Tie o’ the Day is as enamored with this piece of wall art as I am. These climbers have muscles and spirit. They climb this same wall, 24/7. 365. This artwork is on display in the lobby of the office building where my primary doctor, Dr. Blaze, does his doctoring.

I had an appointment with Dr. Blaze today, regarding my painfully misbehaving right shoulder. As I suspected it would be, Dr. Blaze told me it’s MRI time. And he referred me to an orthopedic surgeon.

Let me be clear about this point: I do not want to have another operation this year. Or ever. But if I do have to get my shoulder amputated or some other macabre thing done to it, I need to have it taken care of by the end of this calendar year. With my pancreatic surgery a few months ago, I definitely reached my insurance out-of-pocket expenses for the year– so no matter what medical tests or procedures I might need over the next six weeks, my health insurance will pay for every penny. On January 1st, 2019, all the deductibles re-set. Ah, the cycle of insurance life.

If I’m going to break a leg while cooking… if my shoulder is going to disintegrate… if a shard of metal plans to lodge itself under one of my fingernails… if I’m going to be the victim of defenestration… it needs to happen in the next six weeks, so I don’t have to pay any health insurance deductibles.

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Big Christmas Wreath, Big Bow

Wreath-and-Santa Tie o’ the Day watched its cousin, Christmas Bow o’ the City o’ Farmington, ascend to its seasonal spot on its bigly Christmas Wreath o’ Farmington. If City Hall says it’s time to be mindful of the season, it is officially time for the reindeer games to begin. That makes me feel extra justified in bringing out the holiday neckwear this early.

Suzanne and I sit at this spot during her lunch hour whenever she’s not working through lunch. When it’s warm enough, we sit at the picnic tables in the park here. When it’s chilly, we hang out in the car. It’s only two blocks away from her office, but it gives her a break from the work environment. We could drive farther away, but why waste lunch time driving to and from.

Meeting for lunch is one of those relationship maintenance things we do. Some days are so hectic that we don’t even see each other around the house. After she gets home from work, I might being doing “x” on one floor of the house while she’s doing “y” on the other floor. And don’t even get me started on how easily couples can get in a rut and start treating each other like they’re just part of the furniture.

Relationship maintenance is also why we make a point of going to brunch every Sunday. And it’s why we do Bee Pig Date Night. And it’s why we vacay whenever we get the chance. And it’s why we go to concerts, etc. a lot. It’s all about checking in with each other and being truly present in our relationship. We also keep each other out of trouble by being with each other– except for the trouble we occasionally get into together. Causing trouble together can bring you closer too.

We do have our own outside interests too. That’s also good for maintaining a healthy relationship. If you don’t do things separately, what do you have to talk about that you don’t already know about each other? A person in a relationship needs to go out into the world alone so they can bring stories home to tell their significant other. It makes for good conversation. It helps you not get bored with each other. And I can say from personal experience that acting out your stories– or singing them in a fake opera voice– adds a layer of entertainment for your person as they listen to your adventures.

Suzanne has her Champagne Garden Club and her no-name book club, among other things she does without me. I have my tie/bow tie/cravat/ascot/bolo shopping excursions and my… well, I guess that’s about it for me in the outside world. When I’m out, I do have encounters with strangers who comment about whatever neckwear I’m sporting at any given time. I’m a hermit by choice. Oddly, I always have new, wild stories with which to regale Suzanne, whether I leave the house or not.  ‘Splain that one.

The trick to creating a healthy couple relationship is balance. You have to balance staying close to each other with staying your own independent self. You have to be one with each other, while remaining the singular self that is you. Trust me. I don’t know everything, but I’m right about this balance-in-a-relationship idea.

That’s my lesson for today. Thank you for reading. I don’t know why pontificating about things is sometimes what I do in my posts. Words just fall out of my head, and sometimes they’re about sorta serious topics. I’ll get funny again– probably by next post.

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I Lack Gift Wrapping Skills

Bow Tie o’ the Day presents an icon from a classic Christmas film: the moose-shaped glass from which the Griswold’s supped eggnog in CHRISTMAS VACATION. I have watched that movie at least 8,000 times, and I will watch it at least 8,000 more times before I die. I hope I can watch it 8,000 more times in Heaven/Hell– wherever I’m going to end up. This movie’s humor just never gets un-funny.

Yesterday, I asked Suzanne what kind of sewing machine she wants me to get her for Christmas this year. And do you know what she said for the first time ever? She said she doesn’t need one. I can’t believe she finally has enough sewing machines. (Don’t worry. I know it won’t last.) Last year I got her an embroidery machine, and I guess that topped off her collection. But now I’m stuck with trying to figure out what present to get her for Christmas. I know I can do exactly what I’ve done for the last year: hand her my laptop and my debit card, and let her go wild for every gifty occasion. The great thing about doing that is that I’m the one who gets surprised at the gifts I gave her for Christmas, birthday, Mothers Day, or whatever. That’s kinda fun for me to see what “I” got her.

But I would like to surprise Suzanne this Christmas. We already have two vacations planned for Spring and early Summer, so a trip is probably not the most surprisey thing to give her. She has every sewing/crafting/quilting/crocheting/etc. machine and/or gadget and supply known to mankind, so it can’t be something of that ilk. I’m stymied.

To make matters worse, our legal wedding anniversary is two days before Xmas, so there’s yet another gift I have to figure out. If Suzanne and I last until December 23– and there’s a pretty good chance we will– this will be our 5th anniversary. Traditionally, the proper gift for the 5th anniversary is supposed to be something wood. She won’t want a wood bow tie, so I gotta nix that. We don’t have a fireplace, so chopping her a pile of wood is unnecessary. I doubt books qualify as wood. She gets seasick, so a wood canoe won’t cut the mustard. Once more, I’m stymied.

See, I really have been putting a great deal of thought into what gifts to get Suzanne. I don’t wait until the last minute to shop for gifts, but clearly I’ve got a bit more cogitating to do. When I finally think of gifts, they are absolutely perfect for the intended recipient. I am a superb gift giver. Suzanne doesn’t have that particular talent. But I’ll save that story for another post, another day. I need to write it and post it on a day I can be sure Suzanne won’t have time to read it.

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A Two-fer O’ Ties

Peppermint Bow Tie o’ the Day is this year’s introduction to the Christmas neckwear. Let the holiday atTIEre season begin! I have to start displaying the collection this early, so you can see a representative cornucopia of holiday neckwear by the end of the season. You won’t see every last one of the holiday ties– just a select 100 or so. I’d be wearing them all year if I had to present them all.

Skitter decked herself out in her tartan Tie o’ the Day, in order to attend her award ceremony. I felt like she deserved some kind of prize for finally– after five years with us– being able to set aside her weird fear, and pee while on one of her walks. Finally, she peed somewhere other than on our own property. I still stand all amazed at her new ability.

I managed to dig out my 1980 Miss Liberty trophy to give to Skitter, to acknowledge her triumph. Skitter didn’t even mind that whatever was atop the trophy had broken off and got lost a couple of decades ago. Skitter’s hairy chest filled with pride as she accepted her trophy– although she thought it was too pokey to sleep with in her crate.

I put it on top of Suzanne’s Ultimate SewingBox for all to see. Since I placed the trophy up there, Skitter has made eye contact with nothing else. I can’t blame her for being dizzy with glee about getting an award. She has worked hard to turn into a real dog.

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Working Out With Errands

As my t-shirt says, bow ties ARE cool, and so is Tie o’ the Day with its herd of black-and-white neckties. I had to take clothes to the dry cleaners today and I thought I should fancy up a bit, so that’s why I had to don Tie. How much fancier can you get than wearing black-and-white ties? I do not own anything remotely like a tuxedo or I would have worn that too.

You see, I am still doing the recovering-after-surgery thing, so doing anything at all tends to exhaust me. I don’t want to leave my recliner. I walk Skitter, then I have to rest. I do chores around the house, then I crash again. But I make sure I do at least one errand each day. It gets me out of the house and it helps build my stamina. It also gives me a chance to do my clash fashion thing out among the masses. A person really should get out of their pajamas sometimes. And by “a person” I mean me.

As one of my house chores I have been cleaning up The Tie Room a little bit this week, which means I have been re-arranging the closet in there. I have some ties hanging in the closet, but shirts are most of what’s taking up the closet rod space. Over the weekend, I had this brilliant idea to organize my shirts by color. It did not work. Why? Because apparently I have about three shirts that aren’t blue. I am The Queen o’ Blue Shirts, so my closet is organized thus: three non-blue shirts at one end, and blue shirts on the remainder of the closet rod.

I told Suzanne that if I ever buy a shirt again– and I will– it will not be any shade of blue, no matter how groovy it might look. She simply looked at me with that look that says, “Helen, do you have one clue about the reality of how you are?” She’s right. Hello, more blue shirts.

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Takin’ Baby Dog Steps

Patriotic Bow Tie o’ the Day is as perplexed as I am about why Veterans Day was yesterday, but it is officially observed today.

It is one of my personal pet peeves that often if a holiday falls on a Sunday, we don’t observe it on that day. If a certain date is designated important enough to make it a holiday, we owe it to that important event– and to the folks who were part of it– to observe it on that specific date. If the holiday falls on a Sunday, honor it in a Sunday kind of way. Simple.

Ok, my rant about Sunday holidays is complete. Or not.  I hope the reason for celebrating a holiday on Monday when it falls on a Sunday isn’t just to get a three-day weekend out of it. Now that would be disrespectful– especially in the case of Veteran’s Day. Ok, now my rant is truly over.

And now, a different subject. Currently, in our house, we are celebrating two of Skitter’s accomplishments, both of which she happened to do on Saturday. These may seem like no big deal to you, but remember that Skitter rescued us after she had been severely abused and then abandoned. After five years with us, she is still quite skittish and wary of the world. But we think she might be coming farther out of her dog shell.

The first of Skitter’s two accomplishments occurred when I took her leash off its hook to take her outside for a walk to the mailbox. For the first time ever, she got excited at the sound of that leash. She bounded off her bed, danced around in a circle, and pounded my thigh while she stood on her hind legs. And then she actually stood still, waiting for me to clip on her leash. I’ve never had to force The Skit to go for a walk, but she’s never acted like she particularly liked it either. This new development is humongous. Skitter conquered this milestone we never thought she would. If she hadn’t done it in the previous five years with us, we figured it was never going to happen. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I broke down and cried about Skitter’s new progress.

Skitter’s second bigly accomplishment happened when we went for our second walk o’ that day. Hold onto your hats! You better sit down! This is huge! As soon as her paws hit the grass at the park,…… wait for it!….. SKITTER PEED WHILE WE WERE ON A WALK! Skitter has never peed anywhere except on our property. Can you believe it took five years of Skitter’s living in a secure, loving home– where she is spoiled to the moon and back– for her to have the courage to pee in the great outdoors of the city? I admit it: I broke down and cried for the second time that day.

I’m such a sappy gal.

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“Porcupine” Is A Fantastically Amusing Word To Say

Bow Tie o’ the Veterans Day added a patriotic touch to our Sunday Brunch at PORCUPINE, in SLC. Once again we brunched at a restaurant where we had never eaten before.

Suzanne went the omelet route, while I had the white wine-poached salmon. Suzanne assured me that eating something that has been poached in white wine does not count as drinking alcohol, so I felt fine about doing it. True enough, my salmon did not get me drunk, or even buzzed. It was tasty, but the next time I order it at PORCUPINE, I will definitely say, “Yo! Don’t drizzle no stinkin’ hollandaise sauce on top of my salmon!” A salmon does not need to swim upstream or on your plate in hollandaise sauce.

Those sorts of frou-frou touches are not only un-needed, they can often be dang annoying. For example, consider just some of the current plethora of Oreo flavors: watermelon, jelly donut, waffles & syrup, red velvet cake, cherry cola, kettle corn,  pumpkin spice, green tea, fruit punch, caramel apple, cotton candy, root beer float, S’mores, cinnamon bun, birthday cake with sprinkles, uh-oh (?), heads or tails (?), strawberry milkshake, Android (?), Swedish Fish, brownie batter, Peeps,… I could go on and on and on, but I must cease. I’m queasy just thinking about the lengthy list of flavor tangents. Who needs any of these filling flavors in an Oreo? Some of them are downright creepy. When will the bacon-flavored Oreos be on the market? I want to be sure I’m not at Dick’s Market on the day those blasphemous cookies hit the shelves.

My friends, this flavor-swinging is a sacrilege. The Oreo is an undeniably perfect culinary creation. Don’t mess with it. Don’t even “double stuf” it or make it thin. You can’t improve on THE Oreo. The only possible thing you can do to the Oreo by altering it is to crapify it– by small and bigly degrees. There is a word for this tinkering with an already-perfect product: bastardization. It means to lessen the perfectness of a thing while passing it off as equal to the real thing.

Hear ye! Hear ye! I will not be silent about this issue. I believe that candy-corn-flavored filling in an Oreo is a bastardization of a flawless, American cookie icon. Stick that in your Oreo and dunk it!

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Fly Your Flag

Bow Ties o’ the Day trumpet this message: “It’s Veterans Day. Do you know where your flag is?”

Hug a vet today. And every day. 🇺🇸

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I Must Be Losing My Touch

Tie o’ the Day reeks of prettiness. Just gaze at it a sec. See what I mean?

Hat o’ the Day is a new addition to my hat club. It showed up in my mailbox yesterday. I was not surprised at its arrival because– of course– I ordered it. Duh!

Anyhoo… My main bow tie supplier is Beau Ties Limited of Vermont. In my post photos, you’ve often seen me in their t-shirts and hats, as well as their bow ties. They make a bunch of misc. other stuff. For example, I have drinking glasses and a coffee mug with their bow tie logo stamped on them. And then there are the playing cards with bow tie backs. And a bow tie-emblazoned water bottle. And a lovely bow tie logo Christmas ornament they just sent me. And on and on. Heck, you can even send Beau Ties Limited of Vermont one of your neckties and they’ll turn it into a bow tie for you.

This sleep cap is a new item they’re peddling. I had to have one. It looks stunning, and that alone is enough reason to fork out a couple of bucks. But there is a practical reason I “need” this cap: My ears are cold from October to May, and I need a little sumpin’ sumpin’ to keep my ear tips warm. I like to sleep in a freezing bedroom, so this is a fashionable alternative to wearing a regular old beanie while I sleep.

A funny thing already happened to me and my new night cap. Last night, on our way home from our dinner/movie event at the U, Suzanne and I stopped to get the mail. There was a little package with my name on it, and I knew exactly what it was. At home, I opened my package while Suzanne was upstairs. I fell in love with my new sleep hat and immediately put it on. So there I was– sittin’ in the loveseat, wearing my glorious sleep hat, watching LivePD, and generally being me. Suzanne came downstairs and sat in the loveseat next to me. Picture it: I’m wearing my not-so-tame hat she’s never seen before. You can see it’s a silly, long, red-and-black flannel hat. With a tassel!!!! Suzanne said nothing about it. Nada. Not one word.

For five minutes, I waited for some kind of reaction from Suzanne. A word, a snicker, rolling eyes– a response of any kind. Nothing. Finally, I said, “Hey, do you notice anything different about me?” And she said something like, “Yeah. I saw your hat.” And then she immediately went back to looking through her JOANN’s sale ads.

Are my shenanigans getting dull, or is Suzanne starting to take my weirdness for granted? Either way, I gotta revamp my schtick.

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I Really Did Officially Study Constitutional Law

Tie o’ Last Night helped me go formal black tie to an event at the University of Utah. I even wore my black-and-white harlequin cape, but I coat-checked it at the door. Thus, you don’t see it in this picture. Every now and again, during our grand evening, I got a jolt of panic– wondering if someone had maybe seen my beauteous cape and stolen it. But then I’d remember: It’s a very out-there cape, and there’s probably not another soul on the planet who could make that look work. My capes will always be safe from theft, I think.

I’m always telling you that Suzanne is a bigly deal in the public school system. And she is. Lately, one of her tasks has been to deal with the topic of Women in Leadership– particularly the LACK of women holding leadership positions in public education.

As a result of some of her efforts, she got an invite to last night’s dinner at the U, which was followed by a screening of the documentary, RBG– about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. What a brilliant mind, in the tiniest body. I did not know that over her career as a lawyer, she had argued six cases in front of the Supreme Court, winning five of the six.

My fave amusing part of the film was when the camera followed her during her normal workout. She’s 86, and she lifts weights. She also does push-ups, along with the rest of her challenging workout regimen. Just watching her made me tired. But it also made me feel inspired, and not just to work out. It inspired me to think more about what I can do to make the future a little better for others I will never know– because, of course, I’ll be dead. But the future won’t.

BTW  I’ve written at least three times about seeing WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?– the documentary about Mr. Rogers. I’ve watched it a few times, and I’ll watch it many more. His wisdom is filled with common sense love. As I watched RBG last night, I felt like I was watching a different-but-same continuation of WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?. Both Rogers’ and Ginsburg’s lives have been about loving your neighbor and treating them with dignity. What a way to be.