Apparently, the same anonymous gift-giver who sent me the Christmas underwear I modeled last week decided I needed some tux-y New Year’s Eve underwear. Thank you for knowing what I’m all about, whoever you are!
Hey, don’t you think my pose in this photo makes me look like a statue of some important historical figure? If I become famous enough to be statue-worthy, I hope my statue looks exactly like this picture.
Suzanne and I usually spend New Year’s Eve at home. Neither one of us likes to be in a moving car in the city on a holiday that might as well be called “Burp, if ya got ’em!” So here I be in my pajamas, wearing my new anonymously-given tux underwear and my old tux-y bow tie socks. My Christmas light-themed suitcoat adds holiday party class, and it’s also a reminder to me to take the X-mas lights down tomorrow or the next day.
Three of the six Ties o’ the Day are decked out with party drinks. One of the other three ties is just glimmery. One has lips for kissing at midnight. And one is giving us the fireworks during the kiss. I try to cover it all.
There really are two Bow Ties o’ the Day wrapped around my neck, although the photo doesn’t really show the black martini-covered bow tie. But you can’t miss the balloons on the main Bow Tie o’ the Day. Balloons can be part of any type of party, but I’m wearing balloon Bow Tie o’ the Day here especially in honor of my bro-in-law, Nuk, whose birthday is on New Year’s Eve. Nuk is a champion funny man, as well as a champion human being. You da Nuk, Kent Shaw!
Have a ball, folks. Be safe, folks. Call me if you need a ride home tonight, folks. See ya next year in the morning, folks.
HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 105 Bow ties. 216 Neckties. We finish our tally-ing in tomorrow evening’s post.
Here’s Bow Tie o’ Christmas Eve, when Suzanne and I took ourselves out for a double-celebration. Since our anniversary is December 23rd, and X-mas is the 25th, we threw the occasions together on Christmas Eve at one splendid dinner at Log Haven, up Millcreek Canyon. Plenty of glittery snow and trees and mountains. Gorgeous, even in the dark evening.
Since the traditional gift for the 5th wedding anniversary is supposed to be something made of wood, I just had to make dinner reservations at LOG Haven. How could I not keep with the “wood” theme? Log Haven is basically a log cabin. Okay, it’s a log mansion which a guy built for his wife as an anniversary gift in the 1920’s. See, I put thought into these things. It matters how their meanings reflect what we celebrate if at all possible. I don’t just throw a dart at a map of eatin’ places.
We had never been to Log Haven before. It was incredible, complete with snowy trees and mountain views and a sunset down the canyon. It was worth saving up for. And save your pennies for a couple of months– you must.
My wintry cape gave us a surprising highlight of the evening. As we emerged from the car and Suzanne handed the keys to the valet, a man in a tux happened to be walking toward us. Upon seeing the cape, he stopped in his tracks. I was so afraid he was going to say: NO CAPES ALLOWED IN THIS FROU-FROU ESTABLISHMENT! I was sore afraid. But he said, “Oh my, we don’t normally get things that classy here.” A few minutes later, we noticed he was the restaurant’s piano player. Play on, kind sir! I figure what he said is further proof of the wintry cape’s coolness, cuz the piano player sees all, and he should know.
Suzanne and I shared a butternut squash soup, which was beyond yummy. And we ate grilled calamari, which was a first. The only calamari we’d ever seen on a menu in our world-wide restaurant-hopping has been breaded. I had the prime rib, whiskey potatoes, and charred Brussels sprouts. I am not normally a Brussels sprouts gal, but I have been known to eat outside my comfort zone. I was pleased I did. Suzanne ate huge sea scallops. She also ordered a mid-priced bottle of fancy wine, which meant I would be driving home. The wine was an intriguing water-white. It was like no wine we had ever seen. Suzanne let me smell the wine, and then I vehemently kicked myself mightily for being an alcoholic and, therefore, unable to drink wine.
We did what’s becoming our new dessert routine, which means we each have dessert, and then we order a third dessert to take home with us. I chose the pineapple upside down cake, while Suzanne had something I can’t remember– and she’s still asleep so I can’t ask her. We chose a bread pudding to bring home to eat for breakfast the next day. All so good.
As for wood anniversary gifts… Suzanne gave me a circular wood lamp with inlaid lighting, which turns on when its two magnets almost meet. It now sits in the loft, where I write. I’m sure I will compose exquisite poems ‘neath its glow. She also gave me shelves made of teak wood. She will assemble the piece and hang it when I make up my mind where I want it, which I’m sure will also be in the loft.
I gave Suzanne a necklace with a Bolivian rosewood pendant, with 5 silver in-lays– one for each year. And I was proud of myself for thinking of hand-turned wood crochet hooks as a gift for her. She seemed surprised and infatuated with them. She has three, in three different woods: Rosewood, Quilt Maple, and Cocobolo wood. When she decides on exactly what style and wood she wants the hooks to be, she can get a set.
Suzanne and I have been together for decades, but it only counts legally as five years. I guess it’s kinda like dog years: Your dog might be 5, but it’s really closer to 35. Same with us. By my math, that means dog years equal lesbian years. That’s the only way it makes sense to me. (Har, har, har.)
We’ve had a fantabulous ride, even with the break from each other we took for a few years. That was part of the ride too. When I begin to think our life can’t possibly get any better, it always does. Even the rough patches seem to have an essential core of goodness.
Gratitude has to be a way of life if the good is going to surround you. I’m infinitely grateful Suzanne stopped to talk to me for the first time, in the Weber State College library in 1984. Every day of my life, I’m grateful for that.
Merry 5th Anniversary, Suzanne. My love for you deepens with every passing moment we are here.
I donned these Ties o’ the Day to wear alongside each other because they reminded me of a couple of people I know very well. Suzanne is one, and I am the other. Ties o’ the Day are accurate representations of our distinctive ways of moving through life.
Suzanne is the pretty red Tie o’ the Day, with its perfectly straight tree sides and its perfectly round tree ornaments. Suzanne is the trees being properly green. She’s the single gold line moving in thin curves, playfully and wildly in Tie’s background.
I am the red, what-the-hell-happened-here Tie o’ the Day. (I made it myself.) I am gold glitter, out of control. I’m a red nose, and pom-poms, and a deer whose eyes fell off. I’m a HO and a snowflake. I am full of empty spaces: hardened glue spots where I’ve lost some decorations from year to year. I am what is missing. I’m a silver tinsel pipe cleaner– – here for no reason except the silliness factor. Tie is as close to a fairly accurate description of my spirit as any.
Suzanne is practical and solid. She is careful and logical, and she plans for the long-term. She plans for the contingencies– for what might go wrong. Suzanne is back-up plans. Suzanne is the troubleshooter and builder. She is imagination and surprise. Suzanne is classic, and patterns, and a steady course. Suzanne is the straight man to my vaudeville act. She’s the breathtaking, bejeweled, antique chandelier from which I swing like a chimpanzee.
I am the comic relief. I am the in-your-face. I am the dark thinker. I am the cacophony, and the calm, and the storm on its way. I’m the rapidly-changing moods. I’m the screaming protest. I’m the creator of impractical amusements we need in order to remain sane. I’m the zig-zag. I’m the taser. I am the free spirit to come home to. I am the storyteller and the poet. I’m the loud, the clash, the funky. I’m the Care Bear and the conscience. I am the drowned and the saved. Oddly, Suzanne says I am the voice of reason. Imagine that.
And do you know what Suzanne’s doing right at this very moment in time? She’s sitting at her Ultimate SewingBox, making me another cape just because it will make me as joyful to wear it as it makes her to sew it.
I write this post as a preface to tomorrow morning’s post about our 5th wedding anniversary, which was last week. The traditional gift for the 5th anniversary is wood, and I had a heckuva time thinking of an appropriately snazzy wood gift for Suzanne. A Popsicle stick didn’t seem quite enough. It turned out we found swell presents for each other.
I can’t count Tie o’ the Day in our tally total, since I already showed and counted it last week. But here it is again, in a selfie from X-mas day, taken while Suzanne and I were getting ourselves dolled up to head to her parents’ house for the holiday gathering o’ the family. You can see by my cape that I was ready to walk out the door for the trek across Pinae Gardens to chat with folks– to celebrate the happy tidings and good family souls o’ the day.
HOLIDAY TIE TALLY holds: 102 Bow ties. 208 Neckties.
Tie o’ the Day is a delightful Christmas party must-have tie. It was a terrific find, but I can’t remember where I found it or how much I paid for it. It is both clever AND handy. It is especially handy at this season’s get-togethers, while my shoulder is being painfully dysfunctional. I’m down to one good arm for carrying things. I’ve gotten good at one-armed social hugging as well. A helpful Tie o’ the Day/ keeps the rotator cuff surgeon away.
Here we have Ugly Sweater T-shirt w/ gingerbread cookies and other g-bread creations. Also, we have one gingerbread person Bow Tie o’ the Day and three gingerbread dude Ties o’ the Day– baking a tasty theme. Two bonus, not-theme Ties o’ the Day present Santa opening his own X-mas gifts and Christmas dinosaurs.
Obviously, I am still mostly stuck on yesterday’s Office Depot experience, which I angrily posted about. I am still wrapped up in gingerbread BITE ME.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I wore an entirely fitting Tie o’ the Day on my foray into Office Depot this afternoon.
I needed toner for my printer, so Suzanne and I dashed to the Office Depot in Bountiful, to hurriedly grab two cartridges and get home by JUDGE JUDY o’clock. I managed to find one of the two toner colors I needed. The cartridge shelves were bare (and not because of X-mas), with little signs informing me I can order toner online.
In fact, 1/3 of the Office Depot had shelves like that– empty but with the little signs that might as well have said, “Too bad, sucker! Too bad you got off your couch and drove to our bigly brick-and-mortar store, which has almost nothing we advertise as being here. Too bad you wasted your time coming to see our clerks, each of which drives you bonkers with their ‘What can we help you with today?’, when our physical store has no more than one thing on your shopping list. ‘Sorry, we don’t have that in stock.’ Go home and order from our website, sucker.” That’s precisely what those signs on the bare shelves said to me. You can bet I wanted to say BITE ME! And I did think it and I did wave Tie o’ the Day in the direction of the clerks.
As we drove home, I griped incessantly about my yellow toner cartridge ordeal. And then Suzanne lost her marbles for a second and said words I never thought I would hear come out of her mouth, even if we live for all eternity. Suzanne said, “Just order the toner online.”
Excuse me!!! Blasphemy!!! It’s an office store! Suzanne knows dang well how I feel about going to office stores. She feels the same way I do about them. We basically have a fetish for office stores. We love any excuse to go to an office store to check out new Post-it Notes and pens and paper and staplers….. When we go to an office store, we want to see office products. We want to touch office products. We want to buy office products and put them in the car and drive home, giddy with anticipation.
And perhaps the saddest thing of all is that despite the inconvenience, I will continue to visit brick-and-mortar office stores for my office-y needs and wants. I’ll be like Ahab in MOBY DICK, stalking the white whale until his last breath. A yellow toner cartridge will drive me mad and be my doom. Glug, glug.
Bow Tie o’ the Day is covered in splendid little elves. To heck with Elf on a Shelf: I’m wearing Elves on a Bow Tie. (And I’m wearing my wintry cape, which I intend to wear all winter– except when I’m wearing other capes.)
Way in the back of this photo, almost out of the frame, you can see the back of Suzanne’s head. She has literally turned her back on me. I am being shunned!
It started out innocently enough. We drove up to Nuttall’s in Layton to pick up Suzanne’s sewing machine, which had been there having a tune-up. If you don’t know Nuttall’s in Layton, all you need to know is that it’s like JOANN. It’s JOANN lite.
I did a stoopid thing at Nuttall’s. I’ve told you before that when Suzanne and I shop at fabric/craft stores, what that really means is this: We go into the store together, where I walk around for five minutes, then leave the store to go somewhere else. After a couple of hours, Suzanne texts me that she’s in the check-out line and ready to be fetched, and I drive back to retrieve her and her fabric booty. It ends up being a lovely shopping venture for both of us.
But yesterday at Nuttall’s, I decided I would be really nice and actually shop the rows of fabric right alongside Suzanne. We are chums, after all. After making it down one aisle of splendiferous bolts of fabric. Suzanne said, “I’m done.” She turned to leave. Well, see, I realized my mistake right away: I had spoken. I had pointed out fabric I thought was cape-worthy. I had committed the sin of distracting Suzanne while she was in a fabric store. I should have known better.
I knew Suzanne wanted to stay longer to gaze at the full bolts of material and think of the possible projects she could construct with each and every one. And I wanted her to do it because it makes her happy. I promised her I would act like I didn’t even know her and her tuned-up sewing machine. Off she went, back into the bowels o’ the bolts. And I wandered around trying to stay out of her peripheral vision.
I thought of driving somewhere else while she studied the material. I thought of going to the car to people-watch and listen to The Shins. But nope. I wanted Suzanne to see me roaming around the fabric store, lovingly ignoring her. I wanted her to see the reality of how she had cast me out.
I wandered over to the bigly-armed sewing/quilting machines, where I asked a Nuttall’s clerk very loud questions about their finer points. I looked at prices. I felt like I was looking at car prices. (That’s not an exaggeration.) I asked the clerk even more questions, very loudly.
Suddenly, Suzanne began to pay attention to me. I’m sure she was contemplating whether or not I was already thinking about making one of the machines a birthday present for her, even though her bday isn’t until July. I’m sure she was asking herself: Is one of these giant machines in my future? Of course not. We’d need to take all of the walls out of all the bedrooms to make room for one of these behemoths to live in the house with us. Maybe she wants a bigger house to put it in. (Not gonna happen.) But my interest in the machines got Suzanne’s attention. Bow Tie o’ the Day and my wintry cape and I were no longer shunned by Suzanne, and she came back to reality.
Suzanne found all the fabric she wanted, and now the Layton Nuttall’s is out of business until they get another shipment of material. I kid you not. When Suzanne was done loading up the car, it had become a lowrider.
These two Bow Ties o’ the Day push the holiday bow tally to an even 100, which was one of my goals. I’m still rooting around in the nooks and crannies of The Tie Room to make sure I’ve gathered ’em all for the season. I’d hate for you to not see every last one of them, even though there’s no way I could actually wear each one. And I want the tally to rise even more.
I wore the gold-reindeer-on-velvet bow tie to the Christmas afternoon food-and-family fest at Suzanne’s parents’ house. I wore it especially for MyBlaine (bro-in-law) and MyColton (nephew-in-law), who are pretty much mountain men. I aim to please those good ol’ tall boys, and I’m honored to be related to ’em. However, I had to ditch my bigly-racked bow tie soon after I arrived at the affair, cuz its antlers kept poking my chin and neck as I talked and hugged folks. Maybe MyBlaine will mount it for me to hang on my wall.
The amazing Liam (grandnephew) wound up at our house after the family party. I almost threw him back out into the snow. First, he wanted nothing to do with me, and that’s not right. It was only Skitter he wanted to play with. And worst of all, Liam wouldn’t wear Tie o’ the Day. Even with a funny dog and paw prints on the tie I picked out for him, he wanted nary a thing to do with wearing it. I managed to snap a picture of Liam with Skitter and Tie o’ the Day anyway. Despite his tie misbehavior, I let Liam stay with us and play inside the toasty house with Skitter. It was Christmas, so I had to be nice.
Ties o’ the Day make a quick, story-less appearance this morning. This celebration time of year is keeping me hopping with escapades galore, and I have little time to post about my adventures. Same for this post. The neckwear and I will write what we can, when we can. We’ll catch you up on things ASAP. But keep enjoying the ties while they last. We’re about Christmas-tied out.
HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 98 Bow ties. 200 Neckties. We hit our necktie goal!
