Witty & Wise Ties, Trivia & Lies
Peace sign Bow Tie o’ the Day and I are just sitting around being peaceful on this Friday afternoon in June, contemplating the infinite possibilities the upcoming weekend holds for us here in the House O’ Ties And Fabric. That’s all. That is absolutely all we are doing this afternoon.
This canine Bow Tie o’ the Day is somewhere in my Top 25 all-time fave bow ties in my collection. I like everything about it: its jumbo size, its plaid, its mutts, and its combo o’ colors. It’s perfectly snappy.
While I was in the waiting room at my hearing doctor this morning, something got me thinking about my life—in terms of my bigly little contributions to civilization. It’s a mentally healthy thing to do, to periodically navel-gaze—to critically assess where you are and what you are. It’s a way to sort of give yourself a grade. Am I getting an “A” at being true to who I am? Am I passing the course called Good Character? Does what I do, and how I behave, represent what I say I value and believe? Can I do more for others? Can I be more for others? What legacy—if any—would I leave behind if I were to die today? Has my life made a positive difference to anyone? Am I at peace with what I have done with my existence? You know those kinds of questions. There are a million of them.
We answer those existential questions about ourselves with varying levels of satisfaction at different times in our lives. If we’re honest with ourselves, sometimes the answers to those questions are painfully humbling. We fall short. It’s especially at those times that it is wise to re-chart our course. We have to take responsibility for letting ourselves down with our heretofore unproductive choices, and we must vow to do so much better at living our own true soul out loud. In short, we have to change. Again and again, ad infinitum. It begins with forgiving ourselves for being the imperfect human beings we all are.
Cut yourself some slack, y’all. Give yourself a bear hug and carry on.
It’s been two weeks since my left hearing aid disappeared. I’ve emptied the ShopVac and searched its contents twice. I have searched nooks and crannies I never even knew existed in this house before now, but to no avail. My left ear is still empty. I now hear lopsided.
Tomorrow, I have a previously scheduled appointment with my hearing doctor. I’ve been contemplating giving up the search and giving in to buy a new left hearing aid. I think it’s time. If I haven’t run across the device after two weeks of living my usual life, in all my usual places, I doubt I’m going to one day just happen upon it in one of my pockets or something.
When I first realized my hearing aid was probably truly lost, I thought I could probably just buck up and go without replacing it. To my amazement, I have found that when sitting two feet to the right of Suzanne on the love seat, I see her lips move but can’t hear a thing above a mumble of a mumble. If I’m not looking at her directly when she talks from my left side, I don’t detect she’s talking to me. I cannot imagine what juicy tidbits of information I’ve missed out on in the past two weeks, but I’m certain I’ve probably missed out on numerous to-do items she’s assigned me. Now that I think about it, I suppose that’s the bigly argument for why I shouldn’t replace my left hearing aid. 🙀
It was that time of year again—time for the Davis Education Foundation’s Gala, with its accompanying silent auction. This year we were treated to dinner and a screening of the movie, A Quiet Place II. This annual event is better known in our house as The Night We Spend Too Much Money On Acquiring Too Many Completely Unnecessary Things. My excuse for bidding with a vengeance is always the same: It’s for a good cause. I then spend the next year making a gallant effort to use at least some of the items I brought home from the event, so I can feel better about all the spending I’ll surely do at next year’s annual fundraiser.
And what did we walk away with from the 2021 auction after we emptied our purses? (Yes, I took the Saddle Purse to the shindig.) We ended up with a funky blue chair we don’t need, a portable grill we don’t need, a fluffy green chair I can’t wait to deliver to Gracie, and a 6 ft-long fuchsia metal cabinet which nobody on earth needs. I do love the color, but I have no idea what I’ll use it for beyond storage. It really is for a good cause, though. 💸
Skitter and I stayed in the house—and out of the heat—yesterday. An outside temperature of 102 in mid-June is not our kind of thing. We did talk about getting in the pool, but the HOA does not allow Skitter to do that—despite the fact that Skitter is a much friendlier resident than the wacko lady a few doors away, who seems to think she is the HOA Rule Monitor. I have no doubt the old bat always has a notebook handy, in which she constantly logs alleged rule infractions committed by neighborhood residents who have better things to do than keep tabs on everybody else’s garbage can placement. While the rest of us live our lives, the HOA rules seem to BE her life. To each, her own. God bless her.
Skitter took charge of snapping TIE O’ THE DAY photos this morning. Personally, I think she’s making great strides with her selfie photography skills. She’s wearing one of her new summer-y ties, which she sneakily ordered on my Amazon account without my knowledge or permission. (Note to self: change Amazon account password.) I chose to pair my houndstooth floppy Bow Tie o’ the Day with this flowery shirt to achieve some middling clash. This bow tie goes with anything. Or nothing. Either way, it’s a key piece of my collection.
My father would have been 91 yesterday. If you ever had a chance to chat with him, you likely consider yourself lucky. He was a bear of hugs, pranks, jokes, and stories. He was kind, and he had the flirt gene. He was smitten with Mom almost from the minute he met her, but he also managed to have a lifetime affair with his endless parade of bees. I had so many mythic experiences with him, but here’s one I’ve never written about before. I don’t think I’ve ever told Suzanne about it.
In the late 90’s when I was teaching in Baltimore and living in Takoma Park, Maryland, Dad flew out to visit me. I wanted him to see some of the Washington, D.C. and Civil War sights he had always read about. We visited Harper’s Ferry and Gettysburg, and we hit all the major D.C. memorials: Lincoln, Jefferson, Vietnam, etc. One memorial was relatively new: the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. It had opened only a few months before Dad’s visit, and even I had not yet seen it yet. The FDR Memorial is what I would describe as people-sized, as opposed to the towering Lincoln and Jefferson memorials. At the FDR, you are encouraged to stand eye-to-eye with the people-sized sculptures in its four outdoor “rooms.” You are encouraged to read the braille and touch relief sculptures on walls.
Anyhoo…As we were checking out the FDR Memorial for the first time, I kept my eye on Dad to make sure he was being sufficiently entertained. At some point, I sauntered off to read a historical marker and when I turned around again, he was gone. I could not see him anywhere. I was briefly frantic, then remembered he was a grown man and could take care of himself in the bigly city.
To find him, I stood still and scanned the other sightseers in the same way Dad had taught me to look for deer: You look for the thing by NOT looking for the thing. If you look for everything else, the thing you’re really looking for will stand out. (It’s a handy trick, and it works with relationships too. Just sayin’.) I stood and listened. From just ahead and to the side of me, I heard what I can only describe as a loud whisper—the sound of an astonished little boy trying to not to call attention to himself. It was almost a whispered cry. I heard, “Fala!” (pronounced like “fall-uh”) I turned to see who had uttered that word in such a strange way. Lo and behold—it was my dad, but it wasn’t Dad. He was stopped in his tracks, staring off at a cluster of sculptures, but he didn’t resemble himself. His face looked like the pictures I had seen of him when he was a kid. The expression on his face made him look about 10. “Fala,” he quietly squealed. Was he having a stroke? I said, “Dad? Are you okay?” He didn’t look away from the sculpture scene, and once again, he said, “Fala!”
As I stood with him, he began to look more like his older self. We started to walk to the sculpture that had so surprised him. Now it began to make sense to me. I hadn’t known this bit of trivia before, but I would never forget it now: Fala was the name of FDR’s dog, and here it was in a sculpture, triggering some long-ago childhood recognition in Dad. FDR was the U. S. President of Dad’s childhood and teens. Dad had heard about/seen Fala in newspapers, magazines, fireside chats, and newsreels during FDR’s presidency, and he had remembered the name of FDR’s dog after decades had passed by. Dad then told me all about Fala. So that’s how, on that day in Washington, D.C., I got to see and hear my dad turn into a little boy for a few seconds. It was so dang cool!
Ronald E. Wright. The man. The legend. The beekeeper.
I have stacks and files and reams of paper everywhere in my house. Paper finds me: It’s a law of nature, as sure as gravity. I’m currently—and always—trying to get rid of what papers I don’t really need, and today I was going through a file of papers from one of my Delta boxes. I came upon this specimen and initially wondered why I saved this messed up envelope. But then I remembered. I decided I had to post it for y’all, even though there’s no neckwear in sight.
I found this envelope sitting on Mom’s kitchen table one day about five years ago. It’s not an important document, in the traditional sense. It’s important to me because Mom wrote the message, while simultaneously talking to Kathi on the phone and mixing a batch of cookies. She wrote the note-to-self on the first paper thing she found handy, to remind her to pick up one of her great-grandkids the next day. It is so Mom-esque, with its hurried handwriting and the little blobs and smears of what is, no doubt, chocolate chip cookie dough from her busy-baking hands. This item is a scratch ‘n’ sniff treasure to me. It’s not going anywhere.
I’m wearing a diamond-point Bow Tie o’ the Day here as we erranded over the weekend. My Face Mask o’ the Day is the closest to my heart, with its own multitude o’ ties. Skitter is branching out with her own bold fashion statements by wearing her orange slices Tie o’ the Day curled and askew at the side of her neck. Skitter is so style-daring. It makes a neckwear mama proud.
I finally have a Cranky Hanky Panky medical procedure update. I have an appointment for a follow-up ERCP (scope-down-the-throat) on June 28 at University of Utah Hospital—to see if the lithotripsy I recently had successfully smashed my pancreatic boulder into bits and sent them on their way out of my body. I’m trying to be optimistic, but the fact that my Panky still stings makes me think the lithotripsy probably didn’t work. I won’t really know until they perform the ERCP.
I’m not complaining, but this current Hanky Panky round of appointments has taken waaaay too long. I’ve been trying to get this Panky problem solved since February. I know it’s because of the hospital backlog created by the pandemic, so I understand. But I can’t wait to get to the finish line on this particular Panky issue—even if that means having another surgery. I just want it finished. I know you’re probably sick of hearing about this seemingly never-ending saga. And I’m sick of writing about it. It just so happens to be what’s going on in my life, so we’re stuck with it as a tblog topic for a little while longer. Sorry.
Here’s an interesting thing to consider, though: My Panky appointment is on June 28. My PANCREATICODUODENECTOMY (I love writing that word) surgery was also on June 28, exactly three years ago, in 2018. You know I love a rich coincidence to think about. Is this date coincidence a sign telling me that I’ll find out at my ERCP appointment on this June 28th that I’m going to need another surgery? Or does it mean my ERCP will be the last procedure I will need this time around, because it will be as bigly a success as my PANCREATICODUODENECTOMY was? I could play this coincidence/meaning/connection game forever. In fact, I drive myself nuts with it. I can find meaning and connection, both literally and figuratively, in anything literal or figurative.
In this photo, my watermelon-y Bow Tie o’ the Day and I are waiting in line at the Dick’s Market pharmacy. Note that the ice cream aisle is directly behind me, which means I can shop for my most important food item while simultaneously waiting in line to pick up my meds.
This is the last photo which shows my left ear’s hearing device. What happened to it is a complete mystery to me, and I have been searching for it since I noticed it missing on Friday afternoon. Since discovering it was not in my ear, I have been unable to focus on anything but finding it. I have looked and looked and looked for it until my looker is sore. I’ve scoured my truck and my car. I have looked in all the potted plants in the house. I have checked the household garbage cans: under the kitchen sink, in the bathrooms, in the loft, in the bedrooms, and in the Tie Room. I even emptied the official bigly recycling and garbage cans, one stinky item at a time, searching for my hearing device. That was an experience I hope I never need to repeat. I had no luck finding my target.
I have swept the floors. Suzanne and I have lifted furniture to pull apart the dust bunnies beneath, in search of my little hearing gadget. I have sorted through our garden gravel near where I park my truck—although I did not rake the gravel like I had to do to find Dad’s lower dentures back in the day, as I wrote about a few weeks ago.
My next step is to check to see if someone might have found it at Dick’s and turned it in to customer service. It’s not just about the cost of replacing my hearing aid, it’s also about solving the mystery of how I lost it in the first place. I’m intrigued, and I will not give up the search. The hunt is personal, now.
As I was finishing up this post, it suddenly dawned on me that my left ear’s hearing aid is the same one the wind blew out of my ear in Farmington a few months ago. I wonder if, once it got a taste of freedom by flying around in that wind, its little gadget soul just could not face a life of captivity in my ear every day for the rest of its life. Somehow, it might have leapt to its escape. Now, that’s something I can understand.
I hadn’t planned to write a post this morning because I didn’t think I would have time. You see, I had a virtual therapy appointment scheduled with my “crazy head” doctor, so I planned nothing for an early TIE O’ THE DAY. I donned a nuts-and-bolts-and-screws Bow Tie o’ the Day to symbolically scream to my doc that I have many screws loose, for which I must be treated. But when it got close to my scheduled appointment time, I got a text from my doctor asking if we could switch my appointment to 3:00 PM this afternoon.
Now, you know what time 3:00 PM on weekdays really is to me, right? It’s Judge Judy o’ clock! My world stops at Judy o’ clock. Skitter knows not to need anything at that time of day. I won’t answer the door or the phone. From 3-4 PM, I exist only in theory—not in the flesh. Judge Judy is my daily respite from mundane household tasks, the pessimism of the world, and the conspiracy theories of those who believe in something only if it’s a conspiracy theory.
So, where was I at Judy o’ clock today? In a Zoom therapy session with my “crazy head” doctor. I didn’t say “yes” to switching the appointment time because I’m in any kind of dire bipolar pothole and must be seen ASAP. I agreed to switch times for one simple fact: My parents taught me to help make things easier on folks, even in small ways. If switching the time of my appointment helps my doctor’s day work better—and it doesn’t do me any damage—I have an obligation to do it, whether I’m gleeful about it or not. And, believe me, I was not gleeful about it. But I can adapt. I can make concessions. I can get along. Judge Judy would be so proud of me.