Month: March 2020

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Earthquake Damage

Bow Tie o’ the Day had gone missing over the holidays. It took literally yesterday’s earthquake to find it. The only earthquake damage I could locate in the house was this rubble o’ books that fell from a bookshelf in the loft. And what was at the bottom of the rubble when I tidied up? My Christmas plaid slimline Bow Tie, which I’ve been looking for since the holiday season ended. I must have taken it off in the loft and set it down atop the stack of books, which finally crumbled yesterday in the quake. Finding Bow Tie was like getting the Crackerjack prize. And I mean the good Crackerjack prizes of yesteryear, not the “safe” paper things they give us now. Excuse my opinion, but you know darn well a Crackerjack or cereal prize is good only if you can choke on it, get it stuck up your nose, or cut yourself with it. A “safe” prize is just boring.😉

Anyhoo… We survived yesterday’s earthquake, with all but these bookshelf contents in tact. When the quake happened, I had been pondering the idea of getting out of bed. Suddenly, my grogginess was interrupted by what sounded and felt like the garbage truck was plowing right through the house. That was a very long 8-10 seconds, which felt like 8-10 minutes. I was now wide awake. Suzanne was fine. I was fine.

I wanted to head straight downstairs to survey any possible damage to the house, but first I had to release Skitter from her sleep crate at the foot of the bed. I was hoping the earthquake hadn’t already scared the morning pee out of the skittish Skitter, cuz I was not in the mood to wash her bedding and scrub her crate. So I opened her little crate door, and…. no Skitter ran out. Huh? Her crate doesn’t have multiple rooms. She can’t be hiding in its basement or attic or secret passageway. Where is the Skit? I knelt down to peer inside.

Skitter was in a crate corner. She had wound herself into a ball o’ fear so tight that she looked like a rolled-up hedgehog. I could have served her tightly curled body like a volleyball. Gradually, through the day, Skitter loosened herself. She would start to stretch out and look more like herself, then an aftershock would come along and undo some of her progress. By the end of the day Skitter had gotten a bit used to the earth’s tremors, and she was almost back to her abnormal normal. This morning, she seems to have forgotten all about the quake clamor. I admire the critter.

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An Annual TIE O’ THE DAY St. Patrick’s Day Tradition

Here’s the photo (from 2017) you wait all year to see! Here’s TIE O’ THE DAY’s ultimate leprechaun—Mom. She’s Helen, Sr. She’s everybody’s grandma. She’s the maker of to-die-for potato salad. She’s a tough old dame who, at 89, is still quick to share her tales, feisty opinions, and humor with you. Don’t mess with her, or you will face the wrath of her shillelagh. 🍀

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Sorry For The Labor I Caused, Mom

I think this photograph of me and Mom conked out in Dad’s chair ranks as my favorite Helen & Helen snapshot ever. Dad must have liked the scene too, to go to the trouble to photograph it—back in the day when you couldn’t simply snap a photo with a nearby cell phone. TIE O’ THE DAY likes to post it for y’all to see at least once or twice a year. Posting it today is my birthday present to myself. I post the Bow Tie o’ the Day near-naked toddler-me photo as proof that I prefer to dwell in absolute joy whenever possible, whether I’ve got teeth in my mouth or don’t.

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Well, That Was A Quick Year

My bladder woke me up in mid-sleep, at 4:00 AM, for my early morning exercise routine of walking to and from the little girls’ room without stubbing a toe or bumping an elbow. When I crawled back into bed, I watched the clock until 4:10—the exact moment my birth certificate says I was born on this day in 1964. I told myself “Merry Birthday”, closed my eyes, then fell back into a pleasant sleep.

Bow Tie o’ the Day is here to give proof of the power of bow ties—even on photo faces. I “swear” 🤞this is the exact same baby photo. It was taken when I was around 6 months old. Notice how unhappy I look in the photo without Bow Tie. I simply draped Bow Tie on the photo itself, and the mood on my picture face lifted. 😉 It’s sort of my version of THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY.

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I Missed My Chance

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I simply could not believe what we saw on a shelf at DICK’S MARKET while we were there shopping over the weekend. (FYI I was not shopping for toilet paper, or water, or hand sanitizer.) When we saw this product, we were stunned to realize that we coulda been bazillionaires when we had the house in Delta. We coulda turned the tumbleweed ranch which was our yard and surrounding property into this wisp of a product. We could have marketed little poof balls of our own organically grown tumbleweeds! Instead, we just burned the poor things year-round for a couple of decades. Those weeds multiplied and replenished the earth of Millard County, including my own corner property, as if somebody was being paid a bounty for each new tumbleweed that sprouted forth out of the ground. All that money never came to pass, and all those tumbleweeds went up in smoke—making me a cold-blooded tumbleweed killer, and leaving me with no bigly fortune for all of my effort. Ah, the lost possibilities. Ah, the coins which coulda been a’jinglin’ in my pocket.

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Oops! Spoke Too Soon

Okay. I think these really are the last photos from our Nashville vacay. It was our last day in N-ville and wood guitar Bow Tie o’ the Day was happy to be out and about in such a city. We had to work to find the Carl Van Vechten Gallery, at Fisk University. GPS let us down the first time we tried to find it. We followed it faithfully to the point when it told us we were 50 feet from the museum—which we clearly were not. We fiddled around with the GPS entry and discovered that in reality, the museum was 2.5 miles away.

We had been wanting to visit this museum before we even left for Nashville, cuz they reportedly have a phenomenal collection of Alfred Stieglitz’s (Georgia O’ Keefe’s hubby) photographs. And they do have such a collection. But I guess it had been on loan to another museum; and although it was now back, it was still crated up downstairs. We were bigly disappointed, but we went through the Terry Adkins exhibit which currently inhabited the Stieglitz photos’ space. Our verdict on the art we saw was “meh.”

You see me here playing around the art offerings. I don’t know what the “antlers” installation was all about, but I come from a huntin’ family, so if they look like antlers, they’re antlers and I’ll take a pic of me “wearing” them. As far as the record label piece of art, the label closest to my right ear is for a song named “Peg Leg Woman.” Sounds like a song which would amuse me to no end.

The timing for our Nashville vacation might have been off for our visit to see the Stieglitz art at the Carl Van Vechten Gallery, but our timing was spot-on for missing the Nashville tornadoes last week. My oldest sister, Mercedes/BT, worries that Suzanne and I somehow violently affect the weather of the places we choose to travel. We went to Nashville—BOOM!—deadly tornadoes right after we left. We went to Dauphin Island, Alabama almost two years ago—BOOM!—Tropical Storm Gordon came ashore a day before we arrived. Remember the rarely-happens, days-long, bigly dump snowstorm in Tucson last year? Yup, I guess that was our doing too, cuz we had a trip planned there for just days later.

I’d like to think I had enough power to alter the planet that much. But I wouldn’t waste such power on weather. Nah, I’d use my power to change things more along the lines of eliminating poverty, illiteracy, hunger, addiction, animal cruelty, and general hate.

Oh, and I’d plop down the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Yankees on their own private island with no technology or chance for rescue—where they would be never be heard from again. Ah, a perfect world. 😇

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Random Pix, A True Tall Tale

TIE O’ THE DAY is putting away the Nashville file, so these are the last photos from the trip I wanted to post.

First is a snapshot of me and one of the gryphon statues inside The Parthenon. We gave each other a high-5 of sorts.

Next, I present photos of more bottles of wine I didn’t buy. I find the wines’ outlaw-y names an interesting theme for marketing wine. It’s puzzling too, cuz I see this jail theme for hawking spirits mostly in the south, although not exclusively.

Next, I alert you to a restaurant called MERCHANTS for a meal and a shoeshine. I ate the most incredible sandwich there: a salmon BLT. If Suzanne were telling this, she would write about the waitress who was enamored with me and my bow tie and my backpack and my jacket and my being a writer… Well, you get the drift. And then Suzanne would tell you about how the waitress kept finding reasons to come to our table during our meal, and about how once it became clear to said waitress that Suzanne and I would be leaving the restaurant and Nashville together—no if’s, and’s, or but’s—the waitress who had fawned all over me from the minute we came in— well, she practically threw the receipt at me. And I had even given her a bigly tip. Suzanne would tell you all of that happened. But you won’t hear a word about all of that juicy news from me. I don’t write gossip! To me, it was smashing food, with just the teensiest hint o’ drama. I can’t promise you that your experience at MERCHANTS would be the same as mine if you went there, but if you want your ego boosted or somebody you’re eating with to get semi-jealous, it’s worth a shot. We did eat there a second time (different wait staff), and it was all yummy food; compliments on the Bow Tie o’ the Day; and zero drama. When the waiter at MERCHANTS leaves your check, they also leave a MERCHANTS postcard for you. My postcard came with a bow tie picture, of course.

And finally, I ran into a Jim Reeves record poster. (And if you don’t know Jim Reeves’ music, don’t you dare say you are a country music fan. He’s long dead, but he’s still relevant.) Jim Reeves’ song, “He’ll Have To Go” is Mom’s fave of his songs. All through my kidhood, she sang it when she was happy, and she sang it when she was sad. Even as kid, I could tell just by how she sang it what mood she was in. She’d be ironing or cooking or mopping, and she’d sing the first line—”Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone”—and I immediately knew by her voice’s tension whether I should hide underneath the built-in bunkbeds for an hour or two, or whether it was a perfect time to ask for a new toy. If Mom were a poker player, how she sang that line would be her “tell.”

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Airport Guy

When Suzanne and I were waiting to get on our plane home from the Nashville airport, Bow Tie o’ the Day asked, “Did we bring Gary on our vacation?” I was pretty sure we hadn’t brought him, even though I knew Gary and my Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless would have enjoyed Nashville to no end.

I looked around our boarding gate area to see what Bow Tie was talking about, and I saw this flannel shirt guy apparently stretching his legs before boarding his next plane. He circled the terminal for about an hour, and every time he strolled close to us, he caught my eye. He dressed like Gary. Beard, glasses, hat—same. He even walked like Gary walks. Golly, he was Gary’s doppelgänger!

Whether airport guy was the good twin or the evil twin, I don’t know. Perhaps I should have asked him which twin he was. Gary’s always been a decent man to me and my family. Heck, he’s been a happy-to-fix-it hubby to me and Suzanne. I’m betting he’s the good twin. But now that I know for sure Gary has a doppelgänger, I’m keeping a sharper eye on him and his deeds—just in case he’s the bad seed.

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Our Little Criminal

Alert!!!!! Voter fraud was discovered yesterday in Davis County!!!!! Fake vote!!!!! Fake voter!!!!! Fortunately, TIE O’ THE DAY has made a citizen’s arrest, and Skitter is now on house arrest until the 2020 elections are over.

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Everybody Wants To Be A Pirate Sometimes

After I gifted away this morning’s flag-filled Tie o’ the Day, I was only temporarily without neckwear. Of course, y’all know by now that I have plenty o’ patriotic ties and bow ties to choose from, so it wasn’t a problem to find this Tie o’ the Rest o’ the Day. I wore the “I VOTED” sticker on my forehead until I took this selfie. I made my voting sticker into an eyepatch, so I could be a pirate. Here’s a secret: If I made the rules of life, we’d all have to wear an eyepatch and play pirate at least once a week.

While my “I VOTED” sticker was still on my forehead, this second Tie o’ the Day and I had to scurry to Bountiful for my hearing appointment. I’ve worn a hearing aid in my right ear for almost two years now, and it does its job adequately. But now, I have tinnitus in my left ear which never shuts off its droning. It always sounds like water is running or the AM radio is static-ing in my left ear. If I experience the sound of silence at all, it is when I’m asleep. But that doesn’t count, cuz I’m asleep and don’t know what I am or am not hearing.

Anyhoo… Today at my hearing appointment, Dr. Earlobe—which is what I’ll call him—tested my hearing thoroughly. The good news is that my right ear hasn’t gotten worse since I got my hearing aid. The verdict on the tinnitus is what I knew it would be: I’m stuck with that. Ain’t no cure for the tinnitus, but we can likely manage it a bit. The bad news is that my left ear’s hearing ability is now where my right ear’s hearing was two years ago—way back when I first needed the hearing aid. Yup, I am soon going to be nicknamed Four Ears. In two weeks, I will be wearing hearing aids in both ears.

Look, I’m not griping when I talk about my medical woes o’ aging. I am simply sharing stories with y’all about whatever decrepitude is crepitating on/in my body at any given time. It’s just life. You know as well as I do—if you’re old enough—you will wake up with some new bone creak or varicose vein tomorrow. And tomorrow, and tomorrow,/ Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,/ To the last syllable of recorded time;/ And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!/ Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more. It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ signifying nothing./

Sorry ’bout that. I guess I went all Macbeth, thinking about how our bodies fall apart on us and how we might as well be zombies with crumbling bodies in our old age. 🤡

BTW See how I managed to write some highfalutin’ Shakespeare into a story about the ringing in my left ear? That felt good. ✍️ 💻 🤓