Day: November 5, 2019

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Should I Say YES To The Holiday Neckwear?

Or maybe I just need to figure out how much holiday neckwear am I going to say YES to, and when should I begin to say YES to it. Headlamp Bow Tie o’ the Day is assisting me in planning out our 2019 holiday neckwear game plan.

For those of you who have not been TIE O’ THE DAY readers through a Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa season, I need to clue you in. In past years, I have taken on the task of wearing EVERY SINGLE festive piece of neckwear I own, during the course of the season. Last year, I had to begin donning my ho-ho-ho neck apparel sometime before Thanksgiving, and I still had to wear more than one piece at a time, in order to be sure to show them all before January 2. There were some days I had to wear dozens at a time for post photos. Last year, the tie tally ended up at 107 holiday bow ties, and 217 seasonal neckties. Folks, it’s tough to wear that much neckwear over the holiday season. I’m thinking I might wanna slow it down this year— maybe select and wear fewer pieces, and then I won’t have to begin displaying the highlights of my collection until December. If I’m gonna wear ’em all, I gotta start immediately.

But TIE O’ THE DAY is not all about me: I don’t want to hurt any ties’ feelings by not showing off the gamut of ’em. I don’t want the pieces I choose not to wear to feel like they aren’t up to snuff. I hate it when my tie critters feel bad. And I don’t want y’all to not see the ridiculous amount of holiday neckwear I have collected.

So I’m cogitating about what I can do to keep everyone jolly. Let me know what you want me to do. I’m giddy to show off every bit of the ho-ho-ho neckwear if that’s what y’all want. And I’m giddy to wear fewer, but select, ties o’ Christmas. What’s your preference to see, if you have one?

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Lost In The Tie Room

When last I posted, on Halloween, I showed you Skitter in her french fry costume. I fully intended to post later on Trick or Treat day, showing you my costume. But I made the mistake of saying to myself, “Self, while I’m waiting for the short ghouls and superheroes to knock on my front door in search of goodies, I’m going to fetch the Christmas neckwear out of storage, cuz I need to start wearing it ASAP if I’m going to wear every piece.”

There isn’t room in the Tie Room for the ghastly amount of Christmas neckwear to have year-round residence in there, so it all lives in a storage bin apartment complex in the garage— in the space where my car should park, but can’t. Oh, I made it into the garage to retrieve the bins containing X-mas neckties and bow ties, but after I moved all those bins into the Tie Room, I somehow got overwhelmed and confused. I lost my way out of the Tie Room. Yup, I have spent the last few days mountaineering my way through the maze o’ neckwear which is my decades-long collection.

Aside from being very dehydrated from my lostness, I emerged from the Tie Room relatively unscathed. I drank a mini-keg of water, and promptly sat down to write this. So here are some photos of me in my costume for Halloween. Bow Tie o’ the Day displays a dandy cast o’ sugar skulls, which complements my Suzanne-made Day of the Dead cape. But what am I?

I love the frightening and fantastical costumes Halloween gives us, but when it comes to dressing up myself, I gravitate toward the obscure, clever, or punny things to be. For example, in the fall of 1994, when Major League Baseball went on strike, I donned a white sheet and an Orioles baseball cap and became the Ghost of the Baseball Season. And when “the war in Iraq” was the most repeated phrase on the news, I stuffed my bra to overflowing with plastic toy soldiers and went to Halloween events as “The War in My Rack.” It’s who I be.

Anyhoo… When Miss Tiffany was last cuttin’ my hairs, I saw the idea in the mirror: my hair took the shape of a comma! How cool is that, since I’m a writer? Punctuation is part of everything I create, and the comma is my fave-rave punctuation mark! With my cape, I just had to be a superhero called Comma Woman. In fact, I am more than just plain old Comma Woman— I am Oxford Comma Woman!