I survived my “crazy head” doctor appointment intact. It was a productive appointment, which means I probably won’t be jumping off a bridge or a tall building in the near future. By now, I’m sure you know: I joke about my bipolar brain. Poking fun at it helps me live with it. I have another appointment with the same doctor next week. I better hurry and make up some problems to bring up during our therapy session, since my life is all perfection and more perfection. (You do know I’m being sarcastic, right?)I took this selfie in the grocery store this afternoon. I am organic myself. I was raised free-range. I was raised cage-free. I am meat! But I am also a genetically modified organism (GMO) at the same time, because I have eaten all kinds of things that aren’t organic—like tasty, edible foods. And I’m not apologizing. 🍿🍪🥓🍟🌮
Tie-dyed Tie o’ the Day and I are having a Zoom doctor appointment right now. Yes, it is time once again for me to check in with my “crazy head” doctor—to see if I still have a crazy head. Hint to y’all: I know I’ll have my bipolar head always. These sorts of brain tilts don’t go away. In short, I have to learn to get along with my own mind. I can only work at getting better at managing my bipolar noggin. Collecting neckties and bow ties is one of the many tactics I use to cope with my brain situation. So far, so good. 🐝
Sometimes I am not in the mood to decide between two equally swell neckwear choices. Sometimes I am compelled to find a way to wear both. Fortunately for me, when I wake up in a necktie-plus-bolo-tie mood, I have the perfect Tie o’ the Day to satisfy my yearning. I have this wonder.
You’d be surprised how often I wake up in some type of double mood. I think it has something to do with my being bipolar, and not so much about any indecisiveness on my part, or any refusal to compromise my present vibes. Whatever the case, a tie like this is a perfect example of what makes my neckwear collection distinctively “me.” It is also what will make selling my collection more problematic when I decide it’s time to let the neckwear go. The right buyer will have to be remarkably like me, and what’s the likelihood I’ll ever find someone like that—besides me, of course?
Bigly mustache wood Bow Tie o’ the Day and I sat at our kitchen island this morning, in the virtual “waiting room” of my crazy-head doctor, and then I had my virtual appointment. I was a very patient bipolar patient.
Don’t think that just because I was adrift in Bipolar-land and/or Cranky Hanky Panky-ville on the actual dates that I didn’t dress loudly and over-the-top appropriately for Valentine’s Day and Mardi Gras. I certainly did. (I’m doing a combined fashion reenactment in this photo.) If I put on a Bow Tie o’ the Day in the Bipolar Forest, and nobody’s there to write a TIE O’ THE DAY post about it, it does—in fact—still happen. Yes, it does still make a sound, which you are hearing right now. 👂🏻✍️ And for Lent, it appears I decided to give up my hair.
FYI Skitter liked wearing her bell-bedazzled Mardi Gras collar, but she decided to pull a face for this photo anyway. She has moods of her own, that’s for darn sure.
I’m here to confess that my occasional self-inflicted baldness feels amazing. I would describe the sensation of having all your hairs shaved off as similar to how it feels when you take off ye olde brassiere after getting get home from work. And, ladies, you know darn well how good that feels. I’m not exaggerating. Bald is a free feeling.
A naked head in winter is a tad cold, though. For whatever reason, the handful of times in my life I’ve felt the urge to go mostly fur-less on my noggin, I’ve felt it in winter. I’m not complaining about the frigid air. I do have a bigly hat collection from which my head can draw any warmth it might need, as you well have probably already noticed. It’s weird, though: My baldy head doesn’t usually get cold, but the tops of my ears freeze tremendously. I need Suzanne to crochet me teensy beanies for the tops of my ears. One ear beanie would have to be considerably larger than the the other, however, in order to completely cover the tip of my left ear, which is my Spock ear.
My pop-top drink cans Tie o’ the Day, and my Jack Daniels Cufflinks o’ the Day are an homage to the fact that while I wasn’t up to posting about it last week, I hit a sober milestone of much import to me. I managed to make it 5,000 days (5,008 as of today) without drinking so much as a Munchkin-sized drop of alcohol. That translates into almost 14 years of not-drinking God’s special fermentations. I especially miss beer, which I will always fondly think of as “liquid bread.” Likewise, I content myself with forever thinking of the bread that I eat as nothing less than “solid beer.” I have no regrets. Not about the drinking. And not about the hair.🍺💈
Everyone needs a cow-covered Face Mask o’ the Day and a crossword puzzle Bow Tie o’ the Day—as well as a pair of Bernie-Sanders-at-the-Inauguration socks. Okay, maybe not absolutely everyone needs these things, but I do. They keep me somewhat grounded in my authentic style during my times of roller coaster brain chemistry. The spirit o’ Bernie has warmed my feet on some of these days. Yes, the spirit o’ Bernie’s mittens has been punching right along with me through my most recent boxing match with my own complicated, manic-depressive head.
As my head finally started to find its balance a week or so ago, I was finally able to jot down some tblog ideas for updating y’all about my shenanigans you missed out on while I was not up to the demands of writing TIE-O-THE- DAY content. I went to bed that night, fully intending to get up at the crack of dawn and write a bigly original post the next morning, when—WHAM!—the ghost of my bum pancreas (my Hanky Panky) woke me up at 3AM with lightning strikes o’ pain. Two-and-a half years ago, I had successful Hanky Panky surgery, which left me with only one-third of my pancreas. Despite my Panky’s smaller size, I have been in relative Pancreas Heaven ever since the operation—until that night last week. Just my luck: I was thrown out of the bipolar frying pan, and into the pancreatic fire!
The sudden, old Panky pain felt entirely too familiar to me. Since then, I’ve been trying to ignore the discomfort, which has ebbed and flowed but hasn’t completely gone away. I luckily managed to wrangle an in-person appointment with my Hanky Panky surgeon at the Huntsman Cancer Institute tomorrow. I have bigly confidence that my doc can figure out what the Hell-en is going on with my Cranky Hanky Panky innard. A battery of tests and scans will follow over the next few weeks, I have no doubt. I am not askeered. Suzanne is askeered for me, but she shouldn’t be. She made me promise a long time ago that I won’t die before she does, and I consider it my main job to always keep my promises to Suzanne.
After much contemplation, I have decided I will gladly take painful flak from my teeny Hanky Panky any day of the week, over being lost in the dangerous labyrinth of my bipolar brain. Physical pain only hurts. Bipolar anguish, on the other hand, can trick you into thinking you can instantly make the world a better place by simply jumping off the nearest craggy cliff into your own annihilation. Hey, folks, how ’bout let’s none of us buy into that slick trick o’ the mind.
Anyhoo… I’m crossing my Cranky Hanky Panky that TIE-O-THE-DAY is back for a while, whether you’re ready for it, or not.🤠👔
[A love-themed re-post that finishes this story I began this morning.]
Caught in the crosshairs o’ love, Bow Tie o’ the Day waited patiently to read Part 2 of our little tale. When we left our saga o’ love in the previous post, this is where we were: Suzanne and I had decided to quit being we/us. And, as I have admitted, it was all because I was a dope. My bad.
Fast forward to the year 2000, when I moved back to Delta from the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area. Between my freshly diagnosed bipolarity and my freshly flaming Hanky Panky (pancreas), I was not well. I seriously expected to die soon. I was drained of health and hope. I needed to choose a power of attorney (POA) to handle my finances and medical decisions if I couldn’t deal with them myself. I pondered about who knew me best in the world. I pondered about who I trusted most in the world. And even though I hadn’t seen her or talked to her in over a decade, Suzanne was the answer.
I had no idea where Suzanne even was. I searched. Was she still in Utah? Did she move to England? It was almost Christmas so I decided to try to contact her by sending her a Christmas card, in care of her parents— hoping they still lived where last I knew them. A couple of days later, Suzanne replied to my card by telephoning me from her house in Ogden. I was glad her parents still lived at their same address and that they actually gave her the card. And I was gladder that she still lived in Utah. And I was gladdest of all that our phone conversation wasn’t one bit awkward.
I drove my 1970 Ford Falcon from Delta to Ogden a few days after that phone conversation, to meet Suzanne for dinner and a chat about my need for a Power of Attorney. We went to her fave Italian place on 25th Street, where I ate halibut and explained exactly what I needed her to do and why. That dinner changed the course of our lives. Everything since that dinner has been nothing less than a wondrous second chance. From the moment we sat down in the restaurant, we talked easily, laughed far too loudly, and couldn’t quit smiling at each other. It was as if the years we lived through without each other had never happened at all—like we had never been apart. Love at second sight. The decade-long homesickness for something I could never quite pin down made its exit. We were where we belonged. We were home at last.
[I think my noggin is on the mend. Nevertheless, I’m not back in writing shape yet. Enjoy another Valentine season re-post.]
The wall-hanging in this photo has shown up in the background of a lot of my post pix. It dominates our living room, on purpose. Mom chose a similar saying for the back of her and Dad’s headstone. The gist of its message is the over-arching truth with which I was raised. And it still frames the way I try to live my life.
To love and to be loved are not two separate things. Happiness comes from making and keeping them one thing together. (I’m not just talking about romantic love.) We love who we love. And we want their love in return, but we often don’t allow ourselves to accept it. Too often we don’t feel worthy of it, or we push it away because we don’t want to risk the chance we might get hurt. Loving and being loved is definitely going to have its pains, but think of them as growing pains. That’s what most of the hurts are. They are signs a relationship needs some overhauling in order to grow. So work on it. The payoff will happen if both parties are willing to give and take the love the work requires.
You can find love all over the place. For example, I’m wearing dog bones Bow Tie o’ the Day in Valentine’s Day honor of all the mutts in my life who have loved me. And in honor of my skittish Skitter who is snoring beside me as I type this post. She loves me even in her sleep. Our dogs simply love us. And they so clearly assume that we will love them back. They trust us. They expect us to befriend them and care for them. They make us better people because we cannot help but melt in their presence, like we give ourselves over to any baby that is near us. We coo at dogs. We talk to dogs in our baby-talk voices. We want to feed dogs and touch them and protect them. We want to cover them in warm blankies. Dogs pull the best parts of our hearts out into the open.
With my bipolar head, sometimes I feel lost and foreign even to myself. Having a dog around when I’m on one of my mental extremes can make me feel like I’m at home in myself, even if the feeling comes and goes. Even Skitter, who was severely abused before she rescued us, makes me feel at home in my bipolar self—just by following me around, or doing her chew dance, or prancing to the mailbox with me. Skitter’s abuser could not destroy Skitter’s capacity for love. That’s how strong love is. I can’t help but exude love for her. She brings out the baby-talk in me. “Skitter, are you ready to go walkie?” The love goes both ways. That’s happiness. Her giving and receiving love is healing The Skit. And it changes me. It strengthens an attitude that stays with me in my dealings with my fellow beings.
Perform love, wherever you go. Let your love rain down like glitter from the heavens.
That’s my sermon for this morning, and I’m sticking to it.
I am wearing my footballs-and-helmets Bow Tie o’ the Day. While it is true that I am still in my bigly bipolar funk, a response to the Super Bowl came to me immediately after the conclusion of the game. I didn’t watch the game, but I wanted Kansas City to win, so I was not a happy camper about the final score.
My response to the game is this: On behalf of the Chiefs, I will not concede the Super Bowl. It’s irresponsible to congratulate Tampa Bay this soon after the game. If you count only the legal points scored, Kansas City won. By a lot. The Buccaneers rigged the game from the start. I will exhaust every legal avenue to challenge the final score, and I’ll make the Bucs pay for it. Tom Brady and his team stole the game. KC fans are mad. KC fans don’t trust the system. Besides, the whole game was a “deep fake” and never even really happened.
And now I’m going back to my unresolved bipolarity.
