Month: May 2019

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It’s Hairs Thursday #12 All Day Long

With the help of Tie o’ the Day, the bigly clash fashion is on. This unmatched match o’ dots was a go-together must. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t usually “choose” my get-up: I grab the first shirt I find in the closet, and I take the first bow tie my eyes see from whichever bow tie drawer I open. Or I blindly nab a necktie from the closet, where they all hang in hibernation. Sometimes, on a special occasion, I will plan an outfit on purpose. Of course, for church I tone my outfits down a bit. Okay, I tone them down a lot. It is a humongous effort to lower the volume of my attire.

But when it comes to “doing” my hair, I don’t. And I never have. It’s not just that I can’t do anything with my scraggly, overgrown hair. I can’t do nothin’ with my hairs no matter how brilliantly they are cut. My hairs are against me. They are thin and straight beyond measure. And I personally have no talent for creating any kind of hairdo. Doing hair is a craft, an art. I can appreciate visual art of all kinds. However, I cannot create anything resembling any kind of visual art. Wash-‘n’-go is how I roll. That’s why I need masterful haircuts.

BTW For my Mormon readers: I am curious about something, and so far no one has been able to answer my question. Please help me out if you know the answer. Can men wear a white bow tie with LDS Temple clothes, or is only a white necktie allowed?

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Hairs Thursday #12: Morning Has Broken

Last night, Bow Tie o’ the Sleep and I slept dandily on the mustache pillowcase Suzanne made me. But I woke up with my head surrounded by scissors! 7 pairs of scissors! I believe the message Suzanne is sending here is this: HELEN EILEEN WRIGHT, CUT YOUR ATROCIOUS HAIRS ASAP!!! Even my hairs are hard for her to live with.

23 TMS treatments down, 13 to go.

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Too, Too Tired

Bow Tie o’ the Day sits in the TMS reception area with me and my droopy eyelids. You know all those naps you wouldn’t take when you were a kid? I now regret not napping every chance I was told to. I think I wouldn’t have to take naps all the time now, if I had just closed my eyes as a kid. I do like my naps, but I have things to do. I don’t want to “have to” nap– as an adult.

I also wish I had eaten ALL the food off ALL the dinner plates that were put on ALL the kitchen tables in front of me when I was a kid. I gotta watch what I eat at this point in my life. As a child, I could have eaten anything and burned it off immediately, and my arteries were clear as could be. But no! Kids have to be stubborn. “Hey, parent! You want me to eat this yummy cheeseburger? Even though I want to eat it, I refuse to do so. For no good reason, except to get on your nerves, I refuse to eat.” I know I’m not the only one who did this. What were we thinking?

The TMS treatment most certainly jolts me awake. The woman behind me in the second photo is my TMS technician, Tenzin. She gets my electromagnetic coil started at the right intensity and for the correct amount of time, then she drinks her coffee and watches me go through my session. She’s like my own personal lifeguard. She makes sure I do not go into seizures during treatment. Zapping awake the brain’s mood area– good. Having seizures– bad. I don’t worry about it. Tenzin knows what she’s doing.

Tenzin is as chapped as I am that somebody rearranged the furniture in the TMS room without our approval. There used to be a chair just a few feet away from my feet, where I could put The Purse and keep my eye on it during my treatment. But early one morning, Tenzin and I walked into the room and the chair was gone! Also, these two recliners were moved to the far side of the room. The Purse now has to sit in a recliner so far away from me I can hardly see its saddle on the horizon. I need binoculars. Tenzin can no longer see it at all from her desk. I have to squint so hard to make The Purse come into focus from so far away that I think I might yet have a seizure from which Tenzin, my personal lifeguard, must rescue me.

22 TMS treatments down, 14 to go.

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I Mustache Myself Where Things Are

Monocled mustache Tie o’ the Day completes our series of mustache neckwear. I actually have a real-life monocle, but I can’t find it. It is hiding somewhere in The Tie Room. I need to tidy up that place. I mean– if you can’t find your monocle, you better get serious and do some heavy duty room-keeping. It is never a chore to spend time arranging and rearranging the occupants of The Tie Room. If I would simply put things back in their proper places after I use them, I’d never have to sort out the room’s contents. On the other hand, if the place were always in order, I wouldn’t have to spend time in there– and I want to spend time in there, surrounded by my extensive collection of neckwear, hats, Sloggers, lapel pins, and cufflinks.

Some readers don’t believe The Tie Room exists. Well, it certainly does. And it is absolutely necessary for me to have an entire room dedicated to my fashion whims. I am often asked how many ties and bow ties I own. I never do an exact count– for three reasons. First, the population is constantly rising, so a neckwear count would never be accurate. Second, I can’t count that high. And third, if I actually did count my neck pieces, I wouldn’t be able to keep myself from telling Suzanne how many I’ve adopted– and that could be bigly bad for me.

It’s true Suzanne has a room full of her crafting and sewing supplies and doo-dads. And when I say it’s full, I mean you can’t walk around in it. Sewing and crafting stuff is different though. You can use things you sew and craft. They can serve practical needs. My bow ties are quite useless, beyond making me happy. I guess a lot of hobbies are “worthless,” but we love them. Maybe we love them precisely because they don’t do anything but make us happy. Our hobbies get us through bad days. Our hobbies are grown-up play.

If I had to give you a rough estimate as to the neckwear count, my best guess is that I have around probably 1,000 neckties and 2,000 bow ties. I have collected them for thirty years, but I have to admit I’ve wrangled most of them in the last six or seven.

I have made a promise to myself to cease collecting them when/if The Tie Room gets full. Let’s just say I’m slowing down my collecting. If I purchase a new piece now, it’s because it really, really, really, really, really catches my eye. I figure I’ve got maybe 20-25 years left on the face of the earth, and I don’t want to completely quit perusing and collecting neckwear. Therefore, I must be discriminating in my tie tastes if I want to keep actively expanding my collection until the second I die.

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Skitter Visits The Vet, Grudgingly

 

 

Hey! This is the last mustache Bow Tie o’ the Day. It is made of painted wood. Its simplicity of design makes it a must-have piece of neckwear for my collection. I have a mustache-y necktie for tomorrow, and then that’s it for our Mustache Days theme.

Skitter doesn’t have a mustache bow tie, but she wore her little collar bow tie to see her doctor today. She needed two booster shots. Every time we walk into her vet’s office, Skitter shakes like she’s her own private earthquake. When her appointment is done and we’re safely home, she gets mad at me for hauling her to the vet. She pouts for the rest of the day– like I had set out to hurt her sensitive, canine feelings. Tomorrow, she will have forgotten all about the vet visit, and I will be tops on her list again. She’ll be all hyped-up to play with me while I’m trying to get some work done.

I, on the other hand, look forward to showing up for Skitter’s vet appointments. I hate that it makes Skitter shiver, but… When Skitter and I are waiting in the reception area or the exam room, she keeps her paw on my arm so she can be sure I don’t get up and leave her there by her skittish self. It’s so sweet when she traps me with her paw. In fact, it’s downright CUTE. And you know how I hate the word CUTE, cuz it’s overused! But The Skit’s trembling paw on my arm is truly one thing the word CUTE was intended to describe.

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Cinco De Bison

We celebrated Cinco de Mayo yesterday by participating in nothing resembling a Cinco de Mayo festivity. (You might remember Skitter had already cracked open her piñata a couple of weeks ago, cuz she couldn’t wait any longer.) Mustache Bow Tie o’ the Day helped us pack up the car for an afternoon excursion. We loaded up Diet Coke, water, and bug spray. And we loaded up Skitter. We did not load up The Saddle Purse. Off we drove to Antelope Island– which I always call Cantaloupe Island, convinced someone somewhere someday will think it’s funny.

We stopped at the beach as soon as we got on the island. The lake is so low that we had to walk at least 1/4 mile from the real beach to get to the water. It was the first time Skitter had walked on sand, and it was the first time she had seen a lake. She did well, despite her fear. She did not venture into the water. I think she actually had fun, even though she stuck to my legs the entire adventure.

Our beach-hangin’ did not last long at all. We were at war with the brine flies. We found ourselves in the midst of a near-Biblical true pestilence. We were outnumbered, and our bug spray was no match for the brine flies’ superior weapons of annoyance. They were ultimately the victors. Surrender can be a wise and glorious thing sometimes. When we got home I discovered brine fly bites across my forehead where my hatband had been, and poor Skitter had bites inside her ears.

We spent most of our Cantaloupe Island trip in the car, and we had a fine time. The afternoon was bright. The drive was pretty. We drove the island’s roads, checking out the bigly bison and a few antelope. I met a bison and a deer, and they each wanted a turn wearing Bow Tie o’ the Day. I obliged.

 

 

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The Naming Of Things

‘Stache wood Bow Tie o’ the Day is yet another handlebar mustache. The handlebar style tends to stand out bigly from other styles, and so it is often used to represent all mustaches. If you find a ‘stache  decorating a product– coffee cups, t-shirts, etc.– it is most likely going to be a handlebar. And if I could grow a mustache, it would absolutely be a handlebar.

From the moment I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, it has never been difficult for me to say I’m bipolar. I do, however, have a heckuva difficult time saying I have a mental illness. For some reason, the term “mental illness” makes me uncomfortable. I’m not quite sure why, but I think it might have something to do with my idea of myself as an intelligent person.

To say there’s something “ill” about my “mental” self makes me worry that I’m not smart. The two I.Q. tests I’ve taken in my life say my intelligence is in “genius” territory. I dunno if I agree with that, but I have always prided myself on my ability to think well. I consider myself to be foremost a poet and an intellectual. It’s not boastful for me to say that: I simply know what my talents and strengths are. I don’t want to think I have an ill head.

I was prideful about my strengths and talents once, and it was a decade-long “once”: I thought my smart brain could out-think and defeat my mental illness. I thought my “genius” could save me. It didn’t, and it can’t.

20 TMS treatments down, 16 to go.

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What Did You Mean By That?

Mustache Bow Tie o’ the Day presents another story of my overthinking.

Since my TMS treatments are weekdays at 7 AM, I make sure to be up by 5. When I was younger, rising at 5 AM was no problem. But now that I am near-ancient, it’s a tough task. It takes me over an hour to get enough Diet Coke in me to open my eyes wide enough to drive the car safely. (A shower would help me wake up, but I prefer to shower AFTER the TMS session.) I need to be up by 5 to make sure I’m ready to drive to SLC at 6:30. You might chuckle at that, but I swear it’s true.

Before I go to bed before a treatment morning, I grab the clothes I’m gonna wear the next day and throw them in a pile so I don’t have to do any thinking when I first get out of bed. I can find my pile o’ clothes in the dark, so I don’t have to wake Suzanne by turning on the light. Well, yesterday morning I got dressed and all the way downstairs to the kitchen before I realized my pants felt funny. Sure enough, I had pulled them on backwards. Maybe you’ll remember from a previous post that I have no butt. I don’t have to unzip/unbutton to get my pants on. I just slide them on– ready for a day of having to make sure my pants don’t fall down cuz I have no butt. That’s why it took me a few minutes to notice something was not right in the jeans department. I thought briefly of wearing them backwards as just another part of the day’s clash fashion statement. But they were actually quite uncomfortable so I shed them and then re-pulled them up the correct way.

Today is Saturday, so I have no TMS. Of course, I woke up promptly at 5AM, wide awake. It wasn’t difficult to get out of bed at all, since I had no reason to. I mark it down to a cruel joke from the sleep gods. In the dark, I pulled on a t-shirt. I knew from the first moment I put it on that it was backwards.

You know me. I am always on a quest for meaning. Just a few days ago, I posted about getting a sign from the heavens because the car next to mine in a parking lot at my TMS clinic was the same weird color as the shoes I was wearing. And now this! Putting at least one piece of clothing on backwards two days in a row is a bigly coincidence– especially when I haven’t accidentally put on something backwards since I was a wee leprechaun.

And so, of course, I got right to ponderin’ about what the possible meaning of the alignment of these two backward clothing stars could mean. Is the universe trying to tell me I need to start walking backwards cuz some sort of dangerous unicorn is following me and will do me harm if I don’t see it and slay it first? Is it trying to say my clothes are hideous and I should go shopping for a new wardrobe?Did the universe prank me by putting a silly coincidence in my face– knowing I’d waste hours searching for the meaning of life in a backwards pair of Levis and an equally backwards t-shirt. (The gods must have a good laugh on me constantly.)

Or is the universe trying to say a cosmic thing to me about how I need to reverse my life’s course? You know what I finally decided? The message is this: I must sleep in my next day’s clothes! Or just get dressed in another room, with lights a’blazing.

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Here’s My Fave Wood Mustache Bow Tie

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I are preparing to iron our fancy shirts this morning, as is evidenced by the iron atop the ironing board beside me in this photo.

Although Bow Tie sports the same style of mustache as the bow tie I wore yesterday, the design is interestingly different. This is one humongous bow tie– taller and wider than the usual bow tie by more than an inch. Also, I think the detail of paired up, in-line bow ties on the bow tie itself is a fabulous touch.

Bow Tie was designed and created by a dude I found in Kearns whose hobby is making wood bow ties. He designed this one in honor of his elderly neighbor named MAX, who has worn a bow tie every day for decades. (Sound familiar?) Feeble Max has a collection of hundreds of bow ties, but his collection does not even come close to rivaling mine. I didn’t tell him that though. I thought it would be kind of me to let the dapper, ancient Max think he’s assembled the most populous bow tie collection on the continent. Kindness rules!

BTW   19 TMS treatments down, 17 to go.

 

 

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Hairs Thursday #11, Plus TMS Treatment #18

I don’t know what’s wrong with you people. Y’all seem to relish seeing my ugly hairs. You know how I can tell? Hairs Thursday tends to get the week’s highest number of hits from the website followers, and the number of Facebook responses are always robust. Get your fill of my horrendous hairs over the next few weeks, folks. They are doomed.

I can’t take it anymore. Even the ties and bow ties are tense about being around my coiffure. I can attest that it is horrifying to even sleep under my hairs. In fact, I noticed Suzanne is sick enough of the mop that she’s put her pruning shears on her nightstand. I think she’s trying to muster the courage to hack my hairs as I sleep. I’m smart enough to know that if she actually does the deed she will act completely innocent and claim she must have been sleep-haircutting. Suzanne’s a wily one, I tell you.

Anyhoo… Mustache Bow Tie o’ the Day got me thinking it’s about time to kinda have a neckwear theme, so I’m going to be wearing my mustache neckwear and accessories for the next week or so.

In one photo here, Bow Tie and I are simply showing you the clinic waiting room. Yeah, it’s not that exciting. I’m guessing there must be some kind of HGTV donation deal with the clinic though, cuz all of the televisions are always on HGTV. Plus, the waiting area has a zillion HGTV magazines. But I say, “Hey, if donations from HGTV help keep a mental health facility going, donate your little channel out.”

The other picture shows me and Bow Tie taking the purse for a walk and some sightseeing outside the Utah State Capitol building. We stopped there on our drive home from treatment this morning. My Diet Coke went along too, but it was too shy to be photographed.

FYI   This morning, I completed my 18th TMS session. I have 18 more ahead of me. It feels good to have half of the entire series behind me. 36 seemed like a zillion treatments at first.

After this many treatments, I’m a little discouraged that I am not feeling significant improvement in my mood-leveling. I am still stuck in a tar pit of depression, unable to swim out. Suzanne and I think we are seeing some small changes, but so far they are so tiny that we might just be seeing through our wishful thinking-colored glasses. I talked with my TMS doctor yesterday about my discouragement. He thinks I’m probably about where I should be, mid-TMS, but we decided to lengthen each treatment from 20 minutes of electromagnetic head-pecking to 25 minutes, for the duration of the remaining treatments.

I still have hope.