Skitter is sleeping in, while being fashionable in her kiwi Tie o’ the Day. I am off to the University of Utah Hospital this morning to get my 3rd ERCP in the last couple of months. A scope and a minuscule claw gadget will be sent down my throat in a few hours, yet again—one last try to extricate my pancreatic boulder. If this works, my September surgery can be canceled. Honestly, though, I don’t know why the ERCP would work this time, when it didn’t work the first two times. Nevertheless, I will have hope. Hope is a good thing.
When it comes to neckwear, you know I can’t get enough. More is more. And I often get an itch to wear both Ties o’ the Day and Bow Ties o’ the Day simultaneously. Fortunately, I have enough “bow tie ties” and “tie bow ties” in my collection to be able to indulge myself in whims such as this.
TIE O’ THE DAY has been up and running for nearly 5 years (plus another two years before the website was established), and in that time very few ties/bow ties have shown up in a post more than once. That excludes holiday pieces, which I think of nostalgically as I repeat them during each passing holiday season. It is true, though, that as I have naturally slowed down my acquisition of new neckwear, I now occasionally repeat a tie or bow tie. I suspect I’m choosing my favorites. Don’t get me wrong—I love all the critters upstairs in The Tie Room, but I freely admit that I do prefer the company of some of them more than others. And all the ties/bow ties probably feel a similar way about me. I know dang well I am not everybody’s cup o’ tea. I doubt there’s anything wrong with that. I know that as I get older, I find I have less and less patience for spending my ever-diminishing amount of life left dealing with folks who are not in my tribe. To belong to my tribe, nobody has to believe or act like me. That would be uninteresting and unenlightening. However, to be in my tribe, a person does have to value thinking and live in empathy—and have a good time while doing so. I’m not making a judgment of anybody’s worth: there’s a tribe for everybody. It’s just that I, personally, don’t want to waste any more of my fleeting time not feeling at home and content with the people I encounter. I’m done with contention and egos and pettiness. I just wanna be.
Hump Day—or any day of the week, for that matter—can always be made better by the wearin’ o’ the sequins. Yellow sequin Bow Tie o’ the Day proves it. A cowboy hat improves one’s fashion panache, as well. No day of the week should be dreary. Express your gratitude for the fact that you’re alive by choosing accessories that show your joy at being here on the planet. To wear sequins is to give a memorable wink to all the folks you encounter in your day. Stand out. There’s nothing wrong with letting people notice you exist. Let them see you are not afraid to show up as the star in your own life. You aren’t trying to hog all the attention. You’re simply saying, “I am here—and I’m grateful for the chance to be a part of it all.” 🤠
Magnetic, wood “shattered” Bow Tie o’ the Day and I are in agreement. The scariest aspect of Halloween is that it’s July 27th, and the Brach’s candy corn and candy pumpkins are already in the stores. Boo! Of course, I had to buy some.
The ocean relaxes me. So do lakes and rivers and creeks and lawn sprinklers. If it’s moving water which I can sit and look at, it’ll do. Sailboats-and-lighthouses Bow Tie o’ the Day symbolizes what I miss most about living on the east coast: the easy access I had to the Atlantic Ocean. (No, this is not another post about the nudist beach in Delaware where I spent some time.) The skies and sunsets of Millard County are my spirit’s home, but the beaches of DelMarVa (Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia) somehow haunt my thoughts — in a deeply cosmic way I am still unable to articulate. I’m working on understanding and explaining it more accurately, so I’ll get back to you on that.
And speaking of relaxation — On our little foray to R. C. Willey a few days ago, I found the absolute perfect chair for Suzanne. She works long days in the salt mines of Education, and that translates into a number of aches and pains in her body. And, unlike me, she’s getting older. 🤡 Our bodies were born programmed to die, you know. The massage chair pictured here works you over from head to literal toes. When I showed it to her, she jumped right in and tried out every one of its functions. I couldn’t get her to get out of it. At some point, I had flashbacks to when my wee ones wanted to stay on the electric horse ride on the sidewalk in front of the grocery store, and they would cry and cling to the reins until you could wrangle the reins out of their sticky kid hands. I was sure Suzanne was going to have a similar tantrum if I had to drag her out of the chair. I was getting myself ready to promise her a candy bar if she’d go quietly with me to the car. I was getting ready to promise Suzanne a new toy, if she would leave the chair without me having to peel her out of it.
I so wanted to buy the massage chair for her. I checked my wallet and my pockets. I told her I left my change at home, so I didn’t happen to have the $6,499.99 on me right then. In the end, Suzanne exited the chair with her recently chair-massaged dignity, trying to act like the adult she is. I told her I’m saving for the chair in the Bee-Pig Piggy Bank. I’m sure I’ll have the necessary amount of spare change to buy it sometime around the middle of Eternity.
Disco ball Tie o’ the Day was my choice for an outing we took Saturday to R. C. Willey. For Suzanne’s birthday a few week’s ago, I told her to pick out a rug — any rug she wants — for the living room and that would be my birthday gift to her. She knows I am not a rug person, and I know she is very much a rug person. In fact, rugs might be the bigliest topic on which we are divided. I think I can coexist with rugs more easily than Suzanne can live without them, so I will bend on this matter.
Anyhoo… So, knowing that she would want to haul off to the new R. C. Willey in Layton, I went to their website. I scrolled through their whole selection: 304 different rugs (not including shag rugs). I put three rug possibilities in my virtual “shopping cart” for later reference. I thought each of them would “work” with our flooring. One of them was red and had Suzanne written all over it. If I had gone to pick out a rug for her myself, it’s the one I would have brought home. But, hey, it’s her gift, so it’s hers to choose.
At R. C. Willey, we were each going through every hung rug they had. I finished going through them before Suzanne was done, so I was getting ready to wander off while she made her choice. I went to her to tell her I was off to check out other sections of the store, and she said, “I found this rug I want to show you. It’s red.” “Show me,” I said. Oh, you know where this is heading. I looked at the rug, pulled out my phone with its virtual shopping cart, and said, “See. It’s the first one I picked out for you.” Yes, we know each other that well. It’s true that I could have saved a lot of time by ordering the rug and having it delivered when I first saw it, but saving time is not always the point. Spending time is sometimes the point. That’s how you get to know someone so well in the first place.
BTW I will post a pic of the red rug after it’s delivered in a couple of weeks.
Mudflap girl Tie o’ the Day was a have-to-buy for me when I found it, for no real reason other than it was a tie I didn’t already have and it made me chuckle. I never aspired to be anything like a mudflap girl, nor have I ever felt the need to decorate any of the mudflaps in my transportation life with metallic mudflap girls. But it makes me happy that the mudflap girl symbol graces one of my ties. We humans are so easily amused by trendy cultural icons. 🚚 At least, I am.
I usually tool around northern Utah in my red jalopy truck, on which Mom’s old HELEN W license plates now live. My excursion for today, however, called for me to motor in my Vibe, which wears my BOWETRY (bow tie + poetry) license plates. My destination? Bow Tie Creamery in South Ogden. Ice cream run! If you’re a long-time reader of these posts, you know all about me and my somewhat obsessive relationship with fine ice cream.
I had first heard about Bow Tie Creamery right before everything closed down for the pandemic. I had never made a pilgrimage there before it shut down, and I hoped it would survive the pandemic in tact. Well, it survived and it’s open, and I had to sample its ice cream offerings. And you should, too, if you are a fan of ice cream and find yourself in its vicinity. In fact, if your’e trying to get someone who even sort of enjoys ice cream to fall in love with you, take ’em there for a scoop or two. It’ll work better than any love potion.
Bow Tie Creamery uses superior ingredients and makes only small batches of ice cream and gelato. They have some swell flavors, like Strawberry & Waffles, Double Butter, Lemon Blueberry Cake, S’mores, and Salted Butter Caramel. The folks at Bow Tie Creamery told me the customers’ favorite flavor is Raspberry Sour Cream, so I said, “Pack up a pint of that for me.” They were out of pint tubs, so I made an executive decision to buy a quart tub. I’m so glad I did, because I ate the equivalent of a pint of it long before I got back home to Centerville. I also got a quart of Vanilla Custard flavor, too. I should have bought more flavors. Oh, dear, I guess I’ll just have to drive up there again—with a bigly fat smile on my ice cream dribble face.
Tie o’ the Day based on Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” painting seems to capture my feelings today. I feel like I’m experiencing my own personal time warp—of the Groundhog Day variety. I keep having the same day, again and again. For example, my pancreas surgeon and my ERCP doc got together to look at my latest scans. After their chat, they each called me separately to say they’d like me to do one more ERCP (that makes it the third one in the last two months) before surgery. So guess what I’m doing next week. My ERCP doc wants to try one more time to claw out my Hanky Panky stone by sticking a scope and a tool down my throat. I am sick of this. It has taken since February to get this stone dealt with, and I have finally hit my top nerve. I don’t even care what finally solves this. I just want it over with. Surgery is scheduled for Sept. 2. If they haven’t captured my stone and thrown it into the biological waste by Sept. 3, I’m opening my biggest pocket knife, and I’ll dig it out myself. Y’all will be welcome to assist me.
Here’s what I do in my current same-day-over-and-over-again Groundhog Day: wake bipolar self up, curse tinnitus, nurse panky boulder, potty Skitter, send Suzanne to the office, nurse panky boulder, write dark existential poetry, nurse panky boulder, write morning TIE O’ THE DAY post, curse tinnitus, feed Skitter, nurse panky boulder, nurse panky boulder, participate in pancreas/ear/bipolar-related medical procedure/test/appointment at some hospital or clinic, curse tinnitus, curse tinnitus, write afternoon TIE O’ THE DAY post, nurse panky boulder, curse tinnitus, nurse panky boulder, curse tinnitus, have a brush with bipolarity, curse tinnitus, nurse panky boulder, potty Skitter, feed Skitter, feed Suzanne, curse tinnitus, curse tinnitus, nurse panky boulder, and finally—curse tinnitus while nursing panky boulder to sleep.
That’s my day right now. Every day. Believe me, I am more interesting than my current schedule. This rut R not me!
Finally! You can see it here atop my Spock ear: I have a new left hearing aid, as of this morning. Bow Tie o’ the Day and I spent a couple of hours at my hearing doc’s, getting both of my hearing aids synchronized and apped up with my phone. My hearing doc also gave me a new phone app for managing my tinnitus. Since there is no cure for it, I need to work on coping with it. I’m willing to give it a try.
I just had a thought—or, I mean, a question. Am I the only one who gets tired of having to cope with things? I’m certain I am not, but I bet it feels like a lonely endeavor to most of us when we’re doing it. Sometimes I think, “Hey, I’ve coped, and bent, and adjusted, and been understanding enough for one lifetime. I’m done coping with everyone and every situation. It’s time for all humanity to learn to cope with me.” And then I think how ridiculous it is for me to appoint myself the center of the universe, and to demand that the universe should serve me, me, me. Still, it would be nice to exist in a perfect state of well being for ten minutes, occasionally. But I’m not into pity parties, for me or anyone else. So onward, we go—into The Land of Coping With Whatever Comes Along.
