Category: Bolos

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Right Out Of The Blocks

I rolled out of bed at 4:30 AM this bee-you-tee-full Sabbath morn to finish the prep for our impending flight to Tucson. Skitter rolled out of her bed already pouty cuz she saw suitcases getting filled last night– and not one of them was hers.

Right before we boarded the plane for AZ this morning, CacTie Bolo o’ the Day was an awe-struck witness to an amazing development at the SLC airport. I stopped in an airport gift shop to buy a $6, 20-ounce bottle of Diet Coke, and something cataclysmic happened that has never happened to me before in all of my lengthy adult life. And it’s so unheard-of it can’t possibly happen to me again.

But occur this once, it did. I spied an object in the aforementioned airport gift shop, out of the corner of one of my blue eyes: a PURSE. Not simply a purse, but the only purse I have ever actually wanted to own for myself. I want it. I wanted it immediately. I want this “saddle” purse, if only for the mini saddle bag towards the back and the stirrup on the side. Oh, and the horn looks groovetastic too! Must. Have. Purse!

I don’t know what flash came over me when I gazed in the purse’s direction. It was such an odd feeling– I couldn’t bring myself to buy the artsy creation. But for the hours since that moment, I haven’t been able to stop daydreaming about it. And I have a feeling I’ll end up with that flashy leather bag o’ my dreams.

What is wrong with me, people? I’m too old and set and happy in my neckwear ways to start collecting other things. I don’t have the space or the bucks or the energy for another kind of collection anyway. But a purse? A purse! A purse, I ask you again? Of all things! A purse is so unlike me. I wear pants with bigly pockets, just so I don’t have to drag a bag with me wherever I go. Anyway, I’m more of a backpack/briefcase/messenger bag sort of girl. Golly gee, I don’t hang a purse strap over my shoulder. That doesn’t translate.

But when we return to SLC International, when our vacay is done, I’ll most likely be walking out of the airport to our car with the freshly purchased turquoise saddle purse. And Suzanne will likely walk out with the red one. (I should have known not to show her a picture of me with a snazzy purse. Of course, she’ll have to have a purse too.) Suzanne with a purse makes sense. A purse and I makes me a stranger in the land of my own clash fashion. Would Skitter even recognize me while I’m disguised by a purse? Would I recognize myself? The pigs will be flying again over me and my new purse, that’s for damn sure.

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Bad Hairs And Good Condiments

Whew! I’m glad Valentine’s season is over. I’m sick of the mushy, smoochy, lovey-dovey attitude we’ve all had to have. Now we can finally go back to arguing with friends and family, and not loving our neighbors. We can resume being rude and ill-tempered to strangers. The pressure is off to pretend we’re nice people. I feel better already.🤡

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I took condiment Cufflinks o’ the Day to sit with Suzanne for lunch at her office– just in case she needed ketchup and/or mustard on her yogurt. She did not. But it’s good to be prepared even if you’re not an official Boy Scout.

While I was at her office watching Suzanne eat, I informed her it’s time for her to help with my stoopid hairs. Some days, I’m just gonna put her in charge of my head fur. Lower your expectations though, because I haven’t had even a trim since May, as per your votes. Suzanne will only be able to do what she can do with the mop I’ve got. She is not a miracle worker with hairs, although she is a miracle worker regarding everything else.

I’m sure the hairdos will mostly end up silly, and maybe even mystifying. What’s new? I had to make Suzanne a deal though, to get her to be my hairstylist. She made me promise to NEVER let y’all vote on anything to do with my head hairs again.

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Memories R U

I’ve been thinking about how much I enjoyed my balloon ride in Albuquerque a couple of weeks ago. Tie o’ the Day is here to tell you I had a whale of a good time.🤡 Honestly, I did. There are things you don’t even know you want to do, but after you do them, you can’t imagine what kept you from doing it for so long. My balloon flight is a perfect example of that. Why did I finally do it? Because I was there and the balloon was there. Simple as that. That single hot air balloon ride added a nifty story to the essence that is “me.”.

We should do more things like that, and for that reason: WE ARE HERE. We might be surprised sometimes about how important some things can become to us, when we didn’t even know we’d ever do them. Some of those because-it-was-there experiences might turn out to be boring, or we might even regret doing them. Or they could transform our perspective in a positive way. They could alter the course of our lives for the better. But how do we know how it’s going to turn out if we don’t get out of our comfort zone and try a thing or two we never seriously considered. I guess I’m saying to get into your “discomfort zone” and explore.

Jump off that intimidating too-high diving board. Decide where to go on vacation by closing your eyes and sticking a pin on a map. Go to a concert by a band you’ve never heard of before. Take a college course in a subject you think you don’t care about. Take up a sport you hate to watch. Strike up a real conversation with someone you don’t know very well. Ask an “enemy” to lunch. Volunteer to do good deeds you know you’re not very good at.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Face a fear. Experience something that isn’t something the “you” you think you are would normally do. It can be a bigly feat. It can be a teeny-tiny step. Whatever it is, it will enlarge your soul. You will be changed forever, if only in the sense that you’ll know yourself and the world better than you did before.

Memory is what you carry with you wherever you go, but you have to make memories in order to have them to carry. Get a very big backpack to haul them around. And don’t be selfish: unzip that backpack and share your memories with others. 🤠

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Doing Some Travelogue Catch-up

So….. A week ago today, we were in L.A., attending a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds concert at The Forum. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s an obscure band, so don’t feel un-cool if you’ve never heard of it. But Suzanne’s life would simply not be complete if she had never seen them in concert at least once, so it was important we make Suzanne’s life complete. And by “complete” I mean complete until the next thing she needs to do to make her life feel complete.

For the duration of the event, I actually wore only the wood guitar Bow Tie o’ the Day, but I did wear my guitar bolo with it for a minute, just for this picture. I wanted to show it off.

Although I try to not match in terms of fabric designs and colors, I sometimes choose to be thematically matchy.  It’s almost etiquette to wear a guitar to a rock concert– especially if it’s a bow tie. Wearing a real guitar might create logistical problems. 🤡