If part of your list o’ holiday traditions includes doing some version of the Twelve Days O’ Christmas for others, you are now in the home-stretch of your giving project. I have just the Tie o’ the Day for that! As always! The four festive Bow Ties o’ the Day I’ve used to frame this diagram are here to herald news of our bigly Christmas gift to ourselves: built-in bookshelves. From the moment we moved into this house a decade ago, we envisioned covering at least one entire living room wall with custom, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves—for the purpose of housing our runaway book habit. Well, you know how unexpected things come up and life gets in the way of your time and your money. Plans get set aside for other plans. Now—finally—it is the right time to see our custom, book high-rise dream come to fruition. We also got realistic and decided we need more than one dedicated wall of shelves for our books, and Suzanne needs prime space for a hutch and cabinets in which to store her crafty tools and treasures, and to display various tchotchkes she treasures. Recently, the plans have been drawn up, and we have put down a deposit. It’s a bigly addition, so we are being practical. We have decided the built-in will be a combo of Christmas/Birthdays/Anniversary presents for us, from us, for this year and the next, and a few more. I think it also means we are almost certain to live here in our current house for the duration of our lives. Built-in bookshelves, designed by us, are not something we are likely to leave—literally, except over our dead bodies. Unfortunately, like with my new truck, we’ll have to be patient for a few months. So far, we are on the builders’ schedule for some time in September. It is certainly beginning to feel real, though.
I wasn’t available to post yesterday. We made an early Xmas visit to Mom’s kingdom, for my true Christmas morning. I knew I would wear the leg lamp Tie o’ the Day for our visit, because Mom loves it so. But she also likes the tie on which Richie wears—and abhors—the bunny pajamas. I decided a two-fer festive Tie o’ the Day was necessary for our get-together. (She made a bigly deal about how much she liked my “ugly sweater”-ish green holiday jacket.) Skitter was a constant at Mom’s side, in all her elf-collar glory. When I pulled the phone out for pix, Mom playfully showed off one of the soft peppermints we brought her. I showed Mom a couple of Christmas “stockings” she had made me over my kidhood, and she remembered them, mostly. As you can see in the first photo, Suzanne and I found Mom the perfect Santa hat for her gift: it matches her purple housecoat AND it sports a tiara—befitting Mom’s eternal Queen Bee status. As Mom drank from a convenience store Coke with lots of ice—which she said her friend, Dot, had brought her earlier that morning—she said to me and Suzanne, “I’ll drink FOR you, and TO you, and WITH you kids—for ANY reason, ANY time.” She was having such a good time. She sounded like she had been drinking eggnog with extra whisky in it. I’ll have to quiz Dot about what she really put in that drink she brought Mom.
I still have much to do before X-mas. I’ve got to remember where I hid the gifts I got for Suzanne so she wouldn’t find them. I secreted them away so brilliantly I can’t find ’em yet. I have to wrap our gifts for Mom, including the many candies she likes. We try to stick with sugar-free goodies for Big Helen, but we seem to “accidentally on purpose” make a habit of not being able to find sugar-free versions of what Mom likes. She’s my mother, so she will always get what she wants from me—which is real sugar. The list o’ my remaining Christmas tasks is long, so breaks are necessary to my sanity. So on this break, I’m just sittin’ around the house in my Bah Humbug Santa hat—while wearing soft antlers decorated with a ribbon Bow Tie o’ the Day on top. And I’m also showing off one of my CHRISTMAS VACATION Tie’s o’ the Day. Even as I rest, I am multi-tasking. No, wait—I’m multi-tieing!
Tie o’ the Day is a brand new acquisition to my holiday tie collection this year. It offers up, not gingerbread cookies, but NINJAbread cookies. A clever twist, I must say. Please note that Face Mask o’ the Day is covered with bow-tied deer. And my pants are Christmas-lighted. I’m a happy girl in my attire today.
Instead of regaling you with some anecdote or another, I have a question for my fellow Delta Rabbits. I woke up this morning thinking I should wash my truck later this afternoon, and that made me think of the old car wash in Delta. It was sort of on the north side of Main Street, across from where Quality is now located. I say it was sort of on Main Street because it was behind a house that was on that corner. I believe the older couple who lived in the house owned the car wash. They also owned and ran the little trailer park on Main Street beside the house. I can’t remember exactly what the little set-up was called. To the best of my recollection the sign said something like “The B Kitten Klean Car Wash and Trailer Park.” Somebody help me fill in the blanks of my memory. I can see the old couple as clear as day in my mind, but I can’t think of their names. Was it Larsen? Also, did I make up that there was a little RV-type trailer park there? I look forward to any answers y’all can provide.
Candy cane Bow Tie o’ the Day reminds me that I refer to all things peppermint as being “Christmas breath.” My pal, Kathleen Hansen, and I came up with that term when we were students at DHS and happened to be eating a bag of hard peppermint candies. I have no idea if she remembers we did that. I haven’t seen Kathleen in person—or even talked to her—since her first child was born in the early 80’s. It blows me away to write that sentence, because Kathleen was the closest I came to having a best friend in high school. To this day, peppermint candy of any sort reminds me of her and our various exploits—including the night we broke into DHS and left anonymous notes on the desks of the teachers and administrators. (I’ll have to write about that naughty and hilarious night—and the ensuing fall-out—in a future post.)
I have been going through some of my early writing this past week, and today I ran onto a story of mine in a copy of the SIGNPOST, the Weber State newspaper. It’s from Dec. 4, 1984—my last quarter in college. My story won 1st Place in that year’s Weber State Christmas story contest. It is the first published story for which I was “paid.” I won a $100 gift certificate to any store of my choosing in the Ogden City Mall. I still remember going to Nordstrom and buying my first pair of leather penny loafers. (I was ever so briefly a Preppie. Excuse me for that.) After re-reading the story today, I decided to do y’all a favor and not inflict it on you. After writing it 38 years ago, and not reading it since then, I find that I’m positive I can live without it. It is so bad, especially when compared to stories I wrote just a year later when I was in graduate school at the University of Utah. You’re lucky you didn’t get the opportunity to read it. I think it’s time to safely shred it and put it in the recycling.
But I want to point out some points of cosmic coincidence. First, there’s the candy cane bow tie which reminded me of “Christmas breath,” and then the term shows up in my story I haven’t read since the day it was published. I didn’t plan for that to happen. And then there’s the Dad stuff. Trust me when I tell you that the story reflected a lot about me and Dad, at a time when we were having problems communicating in our relationship. Note the date of the story’s publication: December 4, 1984. My dad passed away on December 4, 2007—23 years later. And don’t even get me started on the number 23’s significance throughout my life.
The Bow Tie o’ the Day I’m wearing is almost in hiding. I am doing a rare thing by being blendy, and it has turned out to be a highly successful attempt—especially from a distance. Fortunately, Bow Tie has green highlights on its red background and blue paisley fabric, so it distinguishes itself from my shirt the closer you get to it.
This faux tree sits atop Skitter’s living room crate. And this is what happens when Suzanne puts up a X-mas tree and leaves me alone at home with the un-ornamented thing. The ornament-free Christmas tree looked so lonely as it stood across the room from me. The tree’s loneliness vibes caused me to start reading all kinds of bereft Robert Frost poems—one of which is actually called “Bereft.” So I felt I must dress the faux tree with a few jolly ornaments. The Christmas-colors bow tie at the top was a no-brainer, as was the mostly-green elf-ish necktie with all its crafty bling and sparkle. The Rosie the Riveter ornament is close to the top, displaying the saying that often accompanies images of her: “We can do it!” Down, and to the side of the tie, the red sewing machine ornament is in honor of Suzanne’s cape-making skills. Under the necktie, the ornament is a bag o’ potato chips—also for Suzanne. And finally, the last ornament I hung was in the guise of a box o’ crayons. I am convinced world peace could finally cover the entire planet, if every person on earth had a crayon in their hands at the very same moment. Drawing with crayons has a universal calming effect. As for the overall look of the tree, I have a suspicion the tree will look very different, soon after Suzanne gets home from work and gazes at it in all its faux magnificence. 🎄
Skitter is as tortured by her elf bandana as Ralphie is by his pink bunny pajamas. Check out how Skitter’s tail is clinging as tightly as is possible to her tummy in mortified embarrassment. I, on the other hand, am jolly and completely smitten by my Santa-going-down-the-chimney hat. 🎩 🎅 (This A CHRISTMAS STORY holiday Tie o’ the Day is a longtime fave for me.)
Allow me to share with you a few more of Skitter’s eccentric behaviors. First, you must know Skitter sleeps shut in her crate at night, at the foot of the bed. If she hears me stirring in the bedroom in the morning, but I don’t immediately open her crate door, she does this odd thing: she daintily fake-coughs. The message she sends me is clear: “Helen, I don’t want to be a bother, but have you forgotten me? [yet more fake coughing] I’m still in my crate. [some even more dramatic fake coughing] Would you kindly open my crate door, so I can go potty and begin my day?” I’m telling you, she can really act: her “coughs” gradually escalate to ever-increasing levels of dramatic intensity. They are pity-worthy fake coughs of the highest quality. I have been known sometimes to stir around doing nothing for a long time when I crawl out of bed, just to provoke many rounds of Skitter’s fake coughing. It is so cute and polite. And pathetic.
Next, on Skitter’s non-fake coughing days, which is most days, she follows her own set schedule. Here’s Skitter’s usual morning routine: She wakes up promptly at 6:00 AM each morning, at which time I let her out of her crate and then out back, where she goes potty at 6:01. She wants back in the house by 6:02. By 6:03, she has curled up in her bed on the couch—right beside me—and she snoozes, while I write. At 10:00 AM, Skitter wakes and leaps out of her bed to visit her food bowl. She’s not hungry. Nope. She is inspecting her the contents of the bowl to make sure her always-full-of-dry-food bowl is topped off with a few dollops of fresh wet food. Does she have a bite to eat while she’s conducting her inspection? No. She rarely eats any of her food before late afternoon or evening. She simply likes seeing the wet food is there where it’s supposed to be. The wet food sits in the bowl, just drying out all day long. Yes, she wakes up at 10:00 AM for the sole purpose of making sure her wet food has been put in its proper place. She wakes up in order to inspect my work. If I have not put the wet food where it should be in her bowl, she panics. She prances back and forth in front of me, until she gets my attention, then she turns her face in the direction of her bowls. I occasionally—and purposely—don’t put wet food in her bowl, so I can watch her freak out when she sees it’s not where it should be. After I successfully pass Skitter’s rigorous inspection of my doggie cafeteria duty, she hops back up in her bed for her post-inspection nap.
Skitter also strolls over to check out her water dish a number of times each day. She usually just keeps an eye on it, and rarely drinks anything until late in the day. She alerts me when her water is “gone.” Skitter panics, and paces, and sometimes performs a leap in order to get my attention. I know what her various leaps mean, and she has one which means she is distressed about her water bowl situation. I initially thought her Water Leap o’ Worry meant she is askeered her water bowl is empty, and she feared she would soon dehydrate into a furry dust-puddle. It sounds like her behavior makes sense. Who doesn’t want to have water in their water bowl? I know I do. But the weirdness of Skitter’s I’m-out-of-water frenzy lies in the fact that she gets antsy about it way before she is out of water. It took me a long time to figure it out, but I eventually caught on to why Skitter worries over a not-yet-empty bowl of water. You see, I discovered it has nothing to do with her panicking over the somewhat low water itself. Her panic is about how she dislikes it when her tongue touches the bottom of the bowl as she gets a drink when the water level is approaching low. She hates when that happens. She’s just finicky. So I make sure there is always a more than sufficient amount of water in her bowl to prevent her precious tongue from touching the bottom of the bowl when she laps it up. She’s just weird. After 9 years with us, Skitter is still a puzzle of idiosyncrasies. And you know how I like putting puzzles together. 🐶 🚰
Banned Book’s o’ the Day: I’m re-reading Jack London’s CALL OF THE WILD, and Jean Craighead George’s JULIE OF THE WOLVES. They are evil books. NOT.
On our patio table this afternoon, we had 3/4 of a Skitter of snow. For you non-canines, that snow total amounts to over 12 inches of powder which has fallen over the course of 2 days. For the official measuring o’ the snow, Skitter wore a Christmas Tie o’ the Day to show her reserved enthusiasm. After her snowy table affair, Skitter asked me if I would like a real snow gauge stick from Santa for X-mas, so she won’t have to sit in the freezing snow again to pose for TIE O’ THE DAY photos. I told her I understood her not-so-thrilled perspective about getting her paws and belly ice cold in the accumulated snow, but I also told her about how all the TO’TD readers like to see her do fun things for my nefarious purposes.
