Month: April 2020

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This Is The Way We Go To The Vet During The Pandemic

It’s time for one of Skitter’s booster shots and her Centerville city license expires on May 5th, so she needs a new one. She also needs what they call an “older dog” physical. Plus, I decided that since we live in the bigly city, she really ought to be chipped.

I called Dr. Doolittle’s office yesterday to make Skitter’s appointment for this morning. When I made the appointment, I was told to not enter the building when I arrived, but to stay in the car, then give ’em a call to say “My mutt and I are here,” and then someone would come out to fetch the patient.Bow Tie o’ the Day and I drove The Skit to her appointment, and a masked vet tech came out before I could even call to announce our arrival. She told me one animal was ahead of Skitter, then she grabbed a dog patient from the car across the parking lot from us. So Skitter and I sat for a few minutes in the waiting room which is also known as my car. About ten minutes later, the vet tech came for Skitter the Skittish.

Before she picked up Skitter from the passenger seat, the masked vet tech and I discussed the exact purposes of our being there. I’m glad we did that because it seems their ID chip shelves were as bare as toilet paper shelves were at COSTCO two weeks ago. The vet clinic’s scheduled chip shipment hadn’t arrived. The vet tech said she would take Skitter in to take care of the other stuff today, then I could make a future appointment to get Skitter’s chip. I said “Oh no, we will not!” We’ll schedule one appointment for some time in the next few days.

I refuse to make Skitter go through the fear and anxiety of even one more vet visit than she absolutely has to. Skitter will see the vet for these needs once, when they can all be taken care of at one time. She can barely handle a vet appointment without shaking her bones into dislocation.

In her photo here, notice The Skit’s praying paws and the forlorn look in her eyes as she waited with me in the car/waiting room for her turn. She and I are glad she escaped the vet visit for at least another day. As we pulled out of the vet’s parking lot, I swear I could hear Skitter actually say, “WHEW! That was a close one.”

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Bling Is A Glittery-Good Thing

Remember when you were a kid and you got a cool new clothing item you’d been bugging your parents to buy you—like a swimming suit or moon boots or a holster for your cap gun? Remember when you finally got it, how hard you then worked trying to convince your parents you just positively had to sleep in whatever new thing it was? You pleaded. You begged. You played out all of your best kid-brain parent manipulations right up until bedtime, when your parents finally got so worn down and sick of your tricks that they gave you their ok to wear whatever you wanted to sleep in, if you would just get in bed and go the heck to sleep. “But don’t put any caps in your cap gun,” they said. Which, of course, you loaded up with a full roll immediately—even as you were swearing to your parents you would never be so stoopid as to sleep with caps in your cap gun. And remember when you just had to shoot a cap off every so often under the sheets so you could see the spark and smell the smoke? And then one spark got on your new swimming suit and melted a hole in it, while burning you at the same time. And remember how you tried to get out of bed to save yourself from what you thought was an impending house fire, but your bigly moon boots got tangled in your sheets mostly because you were wearing a pair of your dad’s old spurs on them? And then remember how you frantically rolled out of bed and onto the hard floor, because when you were a kid, carpet hadn’t been invented yet? And remember when your dad woke up because of the commotion you were making, and when he walked into your bedroom to check on you he didn’t say a word? He saw you weren’t injured and nothing was on fire, and he put all his effort into trying not to laugh at you in your predicament. He simply turned to go back to bed, holding the back of his garments shut as he chuckled in the kitchen. And remember how you deduced your dad had shared your little fiasco with your mother almost immediately, because five minutes after you were re-situated in your bed, you could hear both your mom and dad laughing. Remember when that happened? Or maybe it only happened to me. Probably more than once.

Anyhoo… I admit right here and now that I have used and abused amazon prime far too much since our lovely pandemic has kept us homebounder-than-usual. But guess what got delivered to me yesterday? My new pair of Hello Kitty sunglasses, which I soooo had to sleep in. Check out the bling on Hello Kitty’s Bow Tie o’ the Night. Best. $4. With. Free. Shipping. Spent. Ever.

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I Sneak, Therefore I Am

Leather Bow Ties o’ the Day have been counted in The Tie Room Census, and here they are—all 2 leather critters. I got the blue one in Monterey, CA when we vacationed there two years ago. I found the brown one on Etsy.

Since Suzanne has been working from home, I have had to adjust some of my daily routines just a tad. Fortunately, the biggest adjustment I have had to make has been in the area of my usual eating habits, which is kinda more like grazing.

About the time Rowan ventured out on his own to be a fine adult, Suzanne did a switch in her diet which requires she eat nothing tasty. (Yes, that’s really what her diet requires.) Well, what was the point of me cooking anymore? I was free from cooking! That freedom unleashed my inner grazer, which has allowed me to live off a handful of cereal, a half-dozen times a day—with a Junior Mint here, and a potato chip there, and a bowl of ice cream everywhere. And usually a steak for dinner. And so on. Oh, happy snackin’ me!

However, eating in such a manner throughout the day while Suzanne’s home seems just plain rude of me. I mean, she is ALWAYS right here in the same realm. Our house is bigly, but not bigly enough that we can avoid each other all day. How do I get my munch on? Let’s just say that if I could tally how many times I have spent time in the garage over the 7 years we have lived here, it wouldn’t amount to the number of times I’ve “had to” visit our garage in a single day, each day, for the past 6 weeks. That’s how many times I’ve been sneaking in there to “eat” from my carefully placed stash o’ not-so-nutritional food—just so Suzanne won’t see me. I don’t want to get her jealous of my too-much-salt-and-sugar foods, causing her to be swayed from her healthier diet. That would crush me.

It’s been really quite simple to keep Suzanne out of the garage for the last 6 weeks. I keep all the COVID-19 stuff in there: Used rubber gloves; re-usable shopping bag; masks which need washing; shoes I wore in the grocery store; etc. I disinfect the groceries in there. I out-and-out forbade her from going into the garage, for her own good. For once, she has done (not done, in this case) what I told her.

I don’t like being sneaky and secretive about anything. And I don’t delude myself about my current skulking around: I know Suzanne knows exactly what I’m up to. But she also knows I am, in my own way, trying to be kind. In fact, eating yummy stuff in front of Suzanne is probably more my issue than hers. She says it doesn’t bother her if I eat goodies when she’s around. I beg to differ. To me, it’s rude to eat pie when Suzanne’s eating a piece of Keto toast. Maybe, in the end, I really go through all of this surreptitious, spy-like behavior for myself—to prove to myself I can be nice on occasion. If that’s true, I’m actually being selfish by being kind. But my selfishness also says I care about Suzanne’s feelings. So am I selfish, or selfless? Both, or neither? Or am I simply writing a post which has somehow meandered from leather bow ties and The Tie Room Census, through my pandemic garage, across sugary and salty non-nutritional foods, over a theory of politeness, to this very last question mark?

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3 Found Bow Tie Sheep

The Tie Room has a few bow tie residents whose bow materials are somewhat irregular, relative to “normal” fabric bow ties. Each one of these three particular Bow Ties o’ Today is singular unto itself. Each is an orphan in my collection, in the sense that each is only one of its “kind.” In the Census, these lone-wolf specimen will be recorded thus: 1 button-attach, purple, 3D-printed bow tie. 1 hand-painted, camouflage-pattern, porcelain bow tie. 1 bike tire inner tube (complete with air stem and puncture patch) bow tie. What they lack in numbers, they make up for in panache.

BTW Every time I write or say the fabulicious word “panache,” it makes me think of pinoche made by Mom. And then I think of playing pinochle. And I mean EVERY time, for the last 50 years! Yup, that’s how my head works.

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The Neckwear Census Is In Full-Swing

My Census abacus is smokin’! I haven’t even begun to tally up the bow ties yet, but the actual necktie count is complete. Excluding holiday neckties, the total necktie count as of today stands at 904. Even screaming Tie o’ the Day is aghast at the bigly number! With guesstimates from y’all as low as 765 and as high as 1589, our prizewinner is my former Delta neighbor, Katie Poulsen, who offered an incredible, unbelievable, shockingly close guess of 901. I would think Katie must have snuck into my house and counted my ties herself, except we don’t reside in the same zip code anymore. Message me your address, Katie, and in a couple of days the Pooping Dogs Puzzle will show up on your doorstep.

As always, speshul thanks go to Suzanne, who bravely tolerated said puzzle enough to assemble it with me. However, she is glad it’s leaving our abode to live with other people who like odd things. I, on the other hand, will miss the puzzle’s ewwy silliness. Rest assured, Katie, the puzzle is not a scratch-n-sniff.

Thanks to y’all for playing.

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Ascots Are Speshul

This is a quick post to say I’m still here, as is the Dogs Pooping Puzzle. TIE O’ THE DAY took the weekend off, so I have not, in fact, finished counting the hung and racked neckties you saw in the photo last week. The truth is I have way too many ties, and my abacus is slower than it used to be. I promise I will have a true necktie critter count by this afternoon’s post. That means I will also be announcing the winning Guesstimator o’ the Necktie Population—who will receive the rare and valuable Puzzle o’ Pooping Dogs. Until then, the neckwear Census can verify The Tie Room has a population of 10 ascots, all shown here. Ascots are mostly worn to project an aura of snootiness. I, like most other human beings, like to pretend I’m snooty on occasion.

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Sharpen Your Guesstimator

I’ve been working in The Tie Room today, and I realized I haven’t counted the necktie population for a couple of years. It’s Census time in the U.S. of A., and I believe my neckwear should be counted too. I’m starting with the neckties. I pulled the clothing rack out of The Tie Room and I have filled it with every necktie I can find, excluding the Christmas ties. (The 200 or so Christmas ties, as I’ve probably told you before, live among their own kind in a separate room. They’ll get counted another time.)

Anyhoo… While I busy myself with counting these non-holiday Ties o’ the Day, let’s have a contest. Whoever’s guesstimate comes closest to the correct necktie total will win a prize. The prize will most likely be the Pooping Dogs Puzzle which nobody wanted the first time I offered to give it away to the first person to dibs it. Please, someone win the puzzle, so I can make Suzanne happy by getting it out of the house.

Guesstimate Hint: The last time I counted the neckties, two years ago, they numbered over 700. There are exactly 31 hangers on the rack, but there is no set number of ties per hanger. Good luck on your guesses, boys and girls!

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VOGUE To The Rescue

This month’s issue of VOGUE magazine braved its way through the pandemic and all the way into my mailbox, and it was just in time. I’ve been fretting all week about updating my summer wardrobe. I’ve been in dire need of a breezy, light summer dress. And BOOM! Here it is. Bow Tie o’ the Day and I can now quit worrying about our ability to keep up with the summer fashion Jones’s.

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I Hate This Photo

Poor mini Bow Tie o’ the Day has to pose with my Sophomore yearbook photo, which just happens to highlight two of my worst features: bad hair and bad teeth. This is the most curl my hair ever held. My hair just wants to be straight. (Insert your own jokes here.) I’ve since handled my hair mostly by going with short cuts, in which the cut itself is the star.

The true culprit I hate in the picture is the sorry state of my teeth. I come from a long line of genetically bad teeth, so there was really not much I could do to keep my teeth white and shiny for the world to see. They were also prone to chipping. I chipped a tooth on a Rice Krispies square once. Oh, and by the way, my teeth hurt like you wouldn’t believe—all of them, all at once, down into the roots.

Like any teenager, I was self-conscious about every part of my body. Thanks to my teeth, I regularly got to hear not-so-nice comments about my hideous choppers. I didn’t really belong to a particular group in high school. I flitted and floated from one crew to another. I got along with just about everybody, which meant the cutting comments I heard about my teeth were coming from people I considered to be my friends.

Never smiling was not an option for me. Have you met me? I’m a smiler. Since those few who hassled me had their own imperfections, I could’ve thrown stinging comments back at them with the added jab of using vocabulary the dastardly hasslers would have to find a dictionary to look up. But I knew them and their families, and it wasn’t my style to handle things that way. I just kept on doing my own cheery thing. Besides, they were my friends. They were rude and stoopid friends, but still… I knew—or at least hoped—they’d grow out of it. Some did. Some didn’t. If you were ever a teenager, I’m sure you know what I mean, because every teenager gets teased about something. The sting goes deep, but it can make you a better person if you let it.

I knew I’d grow out of my teeth because soon my mouth would be mature enough for me to get caps, which I did just a few months after this pic was taken. Caps would be only a temporary and cosmetic solution, though, because they wouldn’t solve the tooth pain. Nope, I knew I was inevitably headed down the happy trail to dentures at a very early age, after my mouth matured for good.

While most teenagers can’t wait to be old enough to move out of their parents’ house, or go away to college, or get a real job, or go on a mission, I was twiddling my thumbs and killing time waiting for my mouth to be old enough to get all my teeth yanked out to make room for a set of white-toothed, painless dentures. I got my wish when I was in college and almost 19.

BTW Even though it’s been nearly 40 years since I heard the last of those hurtful comments, you’ve probably noticed I don’t show my teeth when I take selfies. Without even thinking about it, I still carry the stoopid past comments about my stoopid teeth despite having perfectly formed dentures. Closed-mouth smiles are just a habit of mine from way back.