Witty & Wise Ties, Trivia & Lies
Hey, here’s another of Momo’s milkweed pod nativity scenes. And then there are two Snoopy Ties o’ the Day, and three Bow Ties o’ the Day with their teddy bears, wrapped gifts, and an itty-bitty train.
The neckwear and I have been caught up in some Christmas adventures. We’ll update you ASAP. Keep eyeing the bow ties and ties. And remember to say your HO’s to all you greet.
HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 76 Bow ties. 147 Neckties.
Just canines. Bow Tie o’ the Day and Ties o’ the Day say, “Woofy Christmas.” And don’t mind the ugly X-mas Jacket o’ the Day. It already knows it’s ugly. It certainly would be more handsome if it had a few mutts on its print, but it is what it is.
My rotator cuff had more of its prescribed physical therapy early this morning. PT isn’t going well. My PT guy evaluated my progress and said, “I hate to tell you, but…” A shoulder operation is likely, around the end of January. I’ll be religiously going to pointless PT until then, so AETNA will be convinced I need the operation my shoulder doc and physical therapist already know I need. But, ok. Whatever it takes for my insurance to ante up the bucks for the surgical repair bill. Oh, joy.
HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 73 Bow ties. 145 Neckties.
Roll call of Bow Ties o’ the Day: four sweater designs, but not exactly ugly ones. Ties o’ the Day range from traditionally decorated Christmas trees, to a dabbin’ Santa, to emojis (emojii?) decked out for X-mas amid traditional Christmas icons. My favorite festive emoji is the peppermint pile o’ poop. How could that not be my fave? Admit it. It’s your fave-rave, as well.
HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 72 Bow ties. 140 Neckties.
Tie o’ the Day is one of my favorite clever ties. Mom is a fanatic about snowmen, as well as funny cleverness, so I thought I’d let her surround snowman Tie. These photos of Mom are from the mid-70’s. And they were taken at two different Christmas’s. It’s nice to see Mom as the recipient of gifts, since she’s always been so overly gifty to everyone else.
In years when Dad’s bees couldn’t find enough bloom to produce enough honey, we were money-less. I never knew it, until I looked back at those years, from my adulthood. Our Christmas’s were never a clue that we were poor. Mom and Dad… er… Santa always found a way to give us kids plenty. And it was usually more than we probably deserved, although I have a belief about kids and Christmas: All kids deserve the world. I don’t mean just stuff, and I don’t mean kids should be spoiled into narcissism. I mean they deserve a universe of love and security and, yes, a gift or two. That’s everything to a kid who’s been raised to have a compassionate heart.
You’d be surprised how many children do not feel loved or secure or hope for their futures. I always felt valued. I look back now at people I grew up with, and I see with mature eyes that more than a handful of them grew up in homes that were places of abuse, poverty, and defeat. A lot of them couldn’t get themselves out of that cycle.
Maybe if I– and my friends– had been able to see it then, we could have helped them rise. I kick myself now for what I didn’t see then. And although we say it’s never too late, life has taught us all that isn’t always true. Sometimes, our compassion can’t change a bloody thing for someone else. They’ve tried. We’ve tried. And it is too late for some people to make a new life. Sometimes a person has no choices. We want to think they do, but in our hearts we know– from where they are now– they don’t have choices.
But we should never cease shooting our compassion and hope their way. Our compassion for others expands our souls. Mostly, it can be a small comfort to those who suffer in lowly situations. Mom and Dad taught me that lesson. Love on, my friends.
HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 68 Bow ties. 137 Neckties.
Bow Tie o’ the Day brings brass musical instruments for playing Christmas music in regal style. One Tie o’ the Day gives us more holiday balls. Three Ties o’ the Day tell us “Merry Christmas.” Backwards. And the final Tie o’ the Day echoes the grouchy sentiments of Hat o’ the Day. Backwards, both.
The mirrored words are, of course, backwards. I meant to do that. No, really I did. I’m making a point about how my brand new stoopid arm sling has got me doing even more things the wrong way. It is yet another obstacle to movement. I’ve been griping to you about my right shoulder, which has only gotten worse with physical therapy. You’d think that since I’m left handed, my right shoulder wouldn’t keep me from doing basic things– like opening pickle jars or turning a difficult doorknob. The problem is this: The only things I do with my left hand are eat and write. That’s it. So I am basically right-handed, which means I’m mostly right-shouldered. Which means my left hand is not all that automatic about small, normal, everyday tasks. This is my predicament. This is what I’m BAH HUMBUGGING about today. This is what I’m plain ol’ BUGGING y’all about in these posts.
But I think the photos I post of holiday neckwear are still worth taking a gander at, even if you don’t read the accompanying complaining words. I can’t believe we’ll be done with Christmas neckwear posts in just a week. And then Kwanzaa’s coming up. I also still need to write the Hanukkah post I didn’t get to write during Hanukkah, cuz I had a bipolar issue. Apparently, holidays never end– even when they’re over.
HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 68 Bow ties. 136 Neckties.
One “real” Bow Tie o’ the Day. Six Ties o’ the Day. And this is my Ugly Sweater Vest o’ the Day T-shirt. My lame shoulder and I just returned from a morning of physical therapy, and I couldn’t manage to get my right arm in the this t-shirt. It also makes it difficult for me to type, so I’ll keep this short. I’m off to raid the freezer. I need to ice my shoulder, and I need to eat Popsicles with my working arm while I do it.
HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 67 Bow ties. 131 Neckties.
The Tree o’ Bra’s. Flashback! Picture it! December, 1982. An apartment building in Ogden, UT, called Harrison Heights, directly west of Weber State College. (It was still a college back then.) Picture six WSC female students living in one apartment. Three of the six hailed from Delta. Those three gals? Yours truly, Terilyn Anderson, and Tauna Louder.
We had few lights or ornaments for trimming our Christmas tree, so we came up with our own speshul decor. (This is why you should always have clean underwear.) All visitors to our abode enjoyed our sexily festive tree. Especially the Elders Quorum. And I seem to recall our bra tree provoked plenty o’ guessing about which bra belonged to which broad. Ho, ho, ho and ho, ho, ho! Six, count ’em. Six.
I’m still amused about our brassiere-clad tree. But when I found this photo, I– being who I am– wanted to see how the tree might have looked if I had lived alone and had been going through a fit of bow tie mania. I think Bow Ties o’ the Day look superbly fa-la-la-la-la pasted on the picture of the tree. But the bras win, cups down. We girls chose the right when we chose the bra theme.
I can’t believe I still had this photo in my files. These little surprises rock. Such “finds” make cleaning out boxes and bins and files infinitely interesting. On one hand, I want to be done going through musty old boxes and dusty envelopes. I want the culling project finished right now. On the other hand, I hope I never get to the end of mysterious boxes and bins and files of lost treasures.
BTW I’m adding these six, cut-out catalog Bow Ties o’ the Day to our seasons’ tally total, because I do have these actual bow ties in my collection. The HOLIDAY TIE TALLY, as of this post: 66 Bow ties. 125 Neckties. And there are plenty more to come, in the final week before X-mas.
Bow Tie o’ the Day and Tie o’ the Day remind me that my growing-out-my-hair situation could be worse than it is. I could have no hair at all. Personally, I think these bald skulls look pretty wocka-wocka in Santa hats.
Seriously, I want to shave my head again– after I’ve grown it out this one last time. I’ve shaved it twice in my life. The first time, I did it in the late 80’s. I liked it. But it was in Utah, so it didn’t go over all that well at the time.
I was fine with being a hairless outsider. But soon after I shaved my noggin, Suzanne and I were on the sidewalk in front of ZCMI, and some dude had to be tough and rude about my bald head. I actually felt like we were in danger. And all because of my apparently world-ending bald head. When I’ve ended up in that kind of situation, I’ve always been able to deal with it. But it wasn’t fair that my hairlessness put Suzanne in danger. No matter how much I liked my no-hairs head, I would not do that to her again. I kept my head hatted until my hairs grew out enough to be non-threatening to the status quo.
Flash forward to the early 2000’s, when my Delta hairdo-er, Miss Sandy, did me the honor of shaving my head, as per my request. I figured times had changed a bit in Utah, and the whole state would be ready for my shiny head. I was, in fact, relatively safe and rarely mocked– especially in Delta, where no one dared to hassle Dad’s baby girl.
But clearly, I didn’t keep my head shaved. When I shaved it that second time, Suzanne said NO MORE BALDY. According to her, my head isn’t shaped right to have a bald head. The shape of my head didn’t seem to bother her in 1986. She liked it back then. But I’m not going to argue with Suzanne. She puts up with so much of my comedy malarkey, the least I can do is keep my misshapen head all furred up and hidden from her and from the unsuspecting world.
HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 60 Bow ties. 125 Neckties.
This is the last “in case” picture I snapped a few days ago when I was still capable of using my right arm. I must resort to other, one-armed measures for taking pix from this day forth. Of course, there is a possibility I’ll wake up in the morning with a somewhat usable right arm. Let’s hope. I think my roto cuff is feeling a touch better, just in time for my next physical therapy appointment. The PT will then make it scream again.
Anyhoo… Bow Tie o’ the Day is covered in red, abstract tree foliage, while one Tie o’ the Day is full of shiny green and red Christmas trees, set on a background of midnight black. Grand.
And the wordy Tie o’ the Day? I was hanging with a bunch o’ this Tie o’ the Day’s HO’s who were trying to turn their lives around. Get it? Cuz the word HO is turned around backwards in the mirror. That was a good example of a groaner joke/pun. But just because a joke/pun might be a mere groaner, that doesn’t mean it’s not funny. Groan on!
The middle Tie o’ the Day brings up a very serious topic for me. I’ve been meaning to address this subject ever since I began posting selfies. It’s about time I finally come clean. The subject is my eyebrows. Check out Santa’s unruly eyebrows on Tie. You may have noticed in other posts that my eyebrows have a bigly presence in my selfies– though not in this one. They aren’t like Andy Rooney’s eyebrows. His were in need of being raked daily, and they stuck out far enough from his brow that they served as an umbrella for his grandchildren when it rained.
Nope. My eyebrows aren’t quite that prominent. But they are a defining feature on my face. I do take the time to eliminate the unibrow look, although I think the unibrow look is very becoming to the artist, Frida Kahlo. But other than making sure I have two eyebrows instead of one, I keep my eyebrows un-mowed, dye-free, organic, gluten-free, non-GMO, and free-range.
The reason I let my eyebrows be what they are is simple. The will inevitably disappear like my Mom’s have done. Oh, she’s still got the hairs there, but they turned translucent a couple of decades ago. In fact, Mom has twice had eyebrows tattooed on. The tats didn’t take for very long. Her eyebrows are back to being see-through.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that whatever happened to drain Mom’s eyebrows of color will eventually happen to mine, so I’m keeping every last eyebrow hair for as long as I can. I appreciate each one every day I wake up and see they’re still visible. And even though I have a bunch of tats on my body, most of which I can show people without being arrested for public indecency, I refuse to tat up my eyebrows. It just seems oogy to me for some reason.
I’m hoping you too can take as much joy as I do in seeing my somewhat-unruly eyebrows daily, until they go invisible. It’s not like you have a choice. Except if you quit visiting TIE O’ THE DAY. Don’t do that, okay?
HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 59 Bow ties. 124 Neckties.
Two Bow Ties o’ the Day and Six Ties o’ the Day provide almost enough emphasis to accurately put across my wish to spend Christmas at a beach with a wavy, warm ocean in front of it. My butt’s cold.
But this morning, the closest I can get to my beachy holiday is to spread out a beach towel on my sheet before I sleep in, whereupon I will dream of palm trees and sailboats and swimming. And my dreams will be covered in a blanket of white sand as bigly as the blue-eyed ocean I can imagine.
HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 58 Bow ties. 121 Neckties.