Coffee bean Bow Tie o’ the Day and I mean no disrespect to any of y’all who might be coffee lovers. Nor do we mean any disrespect to those of y’all who might find coffee to be the work of the Devil. Nope. This is just me telling you about my own personal recent relationship with coffee.
I have never been a coffee drinker. I have ordered a cup o’ Joe at various times throughout my life—mainly to see if I can finally taste what the bigly hubbub is all about, and whether I’ve acquired a taste for it yet. It has never seemed tasty to me. People tell me to throw in some cream and sugar, but I think if you have to put a ton of cream and sugar in coffee in order to be able to stand drinking it, it ends up being something other than coffee—so why bother? Fresh peaches can be good with cream and sugar, but peaches are good on their own already. It’s not the same with coffee. So every once in a blue moon, I slurp some coffee, push it aside, and then forget about it for a decade or so—when I decide to give it another try and order myself a cup. My verdict, as always is a resounding, lower case “meh.”
Fast forward to some minor-but-picky issues I’ve been having with my gut since my surgery in October. I did some research and spoke with a couple of my doctors, and the consensus is that I should try drinking a minimal amount of coffee every day to see if that helps my system work out its kinks. So about six weeks ago, I made a morning cup o’ coffee part of my daily routine.
Let me describe to you how coffee smells and tastes to me. When I put a cup of coffee to my lips and take a sniff, I smell what I can only describe as a motel ashtray filled with layers of cigarette ashes and crumpled butts and the tail end of a cheap cigar. And when I take a sip of the coffee, it tastes like I drank the liquified contents of said full ashtray—and then licked the ashtray clean. 😱
Theoretically, it seems like an easy choice for me to simply quit drinking the bean brew—except I’m now “blessed” (stuck?) with a working solution. Yup, coffee seems to be working miracles for me. And I’m a bit miffed that it does. I want my gut problem solved, but I have discovered I really really really really don’t like coffee. Drinking coffee makes me metaphorically sick, but it cures my literal belly woes. Go figure. ☕️ 🚬
Just a tiny post today. Bow Tie o’ the Day has a purple-and-lavender-and-teal reptilian vibe to its look. Tonight’s dinner is likely to be this colorful bow tie pasta I found. Bow tie pasta is the only pasta we regularly stock in the pantry at our house. It’s our food mascot. 👒
Bigly Bow Tie o’ the Day has found a sure fashion home here with us recently. I knew it would look outstanding with this particular pair of golf pants and my dotty shirt. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that there’s no such thing as polka dot perfection, because you are looking at it right this very minute. That’s my dotted theme, and I’m stickin’ to it—for today, at least. And I ain’t clownin’ around about it one bit. 🤡
[Here’s another hairy repeat post from March of 2019. I hope it makes you laugh.]
As I considered what to make my hairdo do today, I started to think about how snazzy mustaches can be. I decided I’d try to create one on my forehead with my head hairs. Here’s my stab at a Fu Manchu. You can see my mustache-styling skills are quite limited. I can’t even do a Fu Manchu that looks right. The important thing is that I tried. Just for y’all, I tried.
My ‘stache makes as much sense as my Prince-Albert-in-a-Can Bow Tie o’ the Day. I mean, these young whippersnappers nowadays have no clue about the old routine of prank-calling a store that sold tobacco and asking: “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?” And when told YES, saying “Well, you better let him out.” I have to do a lot of explaining when I wear this piece. And the young wonderers still don’t find it amusing. And that gets me to thinking about how much more isolated Delta was when I was a kid. Oh, it was the same 140 miles from SLC, but without cell phones, texting, and the internet, your mind was near-completely soaked in the confines of Delta and its offshoots. A phone prank and toilet-papering a house was about the funniest crap you could pull without causing a town civil war.
Don’t think for a minute that Delta was boring back in the day. There was plenty to do: for example, sliding down the flumes easily morphed into cliff jumping; tubing down the Sevier River could end up planting you at the reservoir for a swim and a bonfire; throwing a couch in the back of a truck (Yes, we rode in the back of trucks.) often ended at an Oak City canyon party—complete with a campfire and s’mores.
Like most kids, I was allowed to ride my bike everywhere from the age of zero. (Slight exaggeration.) I was allowed to play on the railroad tracks. The tracks were pretty much my front yard, and we lived on the wrong side of them, too. I was taught the rules, and then set free to explore. Of course, being bored in Delta was your choice. Some people were, and I felt sorry for them.
Delta was also packed with characters who had made their individual lives a little iconic by their bigly, unique actions. For example, there were Bernell and Blanche Ferry (son and mother) whose accidental antics included the time Blanche fell out of their old truck’s passenger door as Bernell rounded the corner to turn onto Main Street. She rolled like a roly-poly into the gutter, stood up, and waited for Bernell to go around the block and come back to pick her up again. That’s right: he did not stop for her immediately when she fell out and tumbled to the road. He went around the whole block, obeying traffic laws. When he finally got back around to where Blanche stood waiting and stopped, she hopped in the truck, and off they went on their merry way—as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The scene looked like they were following a script—like they had done this a million times before.Their timing was impeccable. I felt privileged to observe the entire event. I’m still in awe of that old woman’s flexibility and seriously unbreakable bones.
[This is a repeat of a post I had a nightmare about last night. It’s from 2019.]
An argyle design on a wood bow tie is never out of fashion. Bow Tie o’ the Day is solid evidence of its infinite appeal.
I can’t decide if my solitary hairs spike is supposed to be a “1,” or an “I,” or a dart point. Maybe it’s my interpretation of a toothpick. Or perhaps it’s an antenna or an ice pick. Is it a fur middle finger, and I’m flipping off the galaxy just by walking around? Is this hairy “point” trying to make a point? I dunno. What I do know is that I have the Three Dog Night song, “One”, running repeatedly through my brain. Sing with me: “One is the loneliest experience you’ll ever do./ Two can be as bad as one./ It’s the loneliest number since the number one…/” And for some reason, I’m bigly concerned my ‘do-point might poke my own eyes out if this skinny, tall tower accidentally collapses. It’s sharp.
Jumbo red Bow Tie o’ the Day and candy hearts Lapel Pin o’ the Day were a fitting combo for our February 13th brunch reservation. The bigly Scrabble board behind me is a sure sign we’re at Hotel Manaco for a meal at Bambara. We ate a tasty Valentine’s Eve brunch there at the absolute best time to have an up-scale restaurant to ourselves: Super Bowl Sunday. While everyone else was home or at an all-day Super Bowl party stuffing themselves with Buffalo wings and pizza and every variety of chip and dip known to humankind, we had a hoity-toity restaurant almost completely to ourselves. We didn’t plan it that way, but we had such a fine time I can guarantee fancy dining out on the day of the NFL Championship is going to be an annual tradition. 🏈 💘
Personally, I am not a fan of being matchy with my attire, as y’all well know by now. However, I can whip up an entire outfit in accordance with a set theme, if I so desire. With creating a singular, comprehensive theme in mind, one might ask the following question: “Exactly what is the appropriate fashion move to make when one’s newest golf pants are peacock-y?” TIE O’ THE DAY is pleased to impart a spectacle-worthy answer: one must go with the bigly peacock theme at least once in one’s life. One must surely create one day’s worth of all-out peacock-y attire to be gawked at. To do this, one must don one’s peacock-y Bow Tie o’ the Day, one’s peacock-y Face Mask o’ the Day, and one’s peacock-y Suspenders o’ the Day—in addition to one’s peacock-y Golf Pants o’ the Day. If one follows my advice, one will be both peacock-y and forever unforgettable. Indeed, one will become a legend—if only in one’s own mind. 🤣
Heart-covered Bow Tie o’ the Day is here to remind you you’re running out of time to make your Valentine’s Day plans. It’s a hokey holiday, created to sell cards and flowers and chocolates, but it’s a day that can hold profound meaning—if only symbolically. Decide to make the day matter. That’s how meaning is created. Just decide it matters, and act accordingly. 😍
Bow Tie o’ the Day and I spent some time at Farmington Health Center this morning. My dermatologist wrote me prescription to get a set of lung x-rays. In trying to diagnose my mysterious skin rash, my doc’s thinking it could be related to a weird thing in one of my lungs that showed up in all the CT scans I had leading up to my pancreas surgery. Based on what I understand from reading the radiologist’s findings about my x-rays today, my lungs appear to be healthy and probably not involved with the rash on my torso. Of course, the dermatologist will have the last word about the whole thing at my next appointment.
In my whole life, I have never had any trouble breathing, that’s for sure. I’ve never had pneumonia, or bronchitis, or asthma, or a collapsed lung. I can huff and puff with the meanest of bigly bad wolves. But based on my half dozen CT scans over the last year, one of my lungs has what looks to be a little patch of scar tissue where the lung is stuck to itself. I’m pretty sure I know where it came from, and I blame Bob Lyman—my kidhood neighbor from across the street. I don’t remember how it all came to pass, but when I was almost 8—and about to be baptized—Bob (who was 10) and I were playing in his backyard. Somehow I had lifted a pack of smokes from a carton in a family member’s fridge, and Bob was determined to assist me in smoking my first cigarette. I wanted to have the experience of smoking at least one cigarette in my life, so I could know what it was like. Moreover, it was very important to me that I smoke it before I was baptized, so the sin of smoking (and stealing) could be cleansed from my soul immediately upon completion of my baptism. I had thought out the whole thing, and I had decided it was a perfectly efficient and reasonable way to proceed with committing this sin.
Anyhoo… Bob found some matches in his garage, and he lit up first—carefully explaining and demonstrating exactly what I should do in order to smoke correctly. I practiced various ways to hold the cigarette in my fingers, and how to pose to look cool while sinning in this manner. Finally, I lit the match, then lit my cigarette—sucking in as hard as I could. I did it, step by step, exactly how Bob instructed me. Except. Except he didn’t tell me to not swallow all the smoke I sucked in. I think I figured you took the smoke in and it effortlessly just kind of made its way out of your mouth and nose while you talked. That’s how it had always looked to me when I observed smokers. Clearly, my powers of observation were not very developed when I was 7.
Well, I started coughing and choking and writhing around on the grass in Bob Lyman’s back yard, while Bob rushed around the corner of the house to get the hose. He turned the water on full-blast. He heroically stuck the hose in my mouth—hellbent on saving my life. I don’t know which felt worse: the smoke or the water. I am convinced this is how I likely scarred up a wee spot on my lung. Heck, it might have been the tip of the hose itself that did the damage to my lung, because I swear Bob stuck that green hose down my throat all the way into my stomach. I remember rolling on the ground for what felt like forever. The coughing and choking gradually lessened as I slowly made my way to the edge of Bob’s front lawn. I told him he didn’t need to follow me home because I had no idea what punishment awaited me, and I didn’t want him pulled into the brouhaha I was certain was going to be coming in my direction. I wanted to be baptized right then and there, but that was not to be. When I felt like I had pulled myself out of the state of discombobulation I had gotten myself into, I slinked across the road to the sidewalk in front of my house. I was trying not to throw up, and I was hoping I didn’t smell as stinky as I knew I did. I was also sopping wet from the hose, which I hoped no one would notice.
I tried to act casual when I opened the front door and nonchalantly strolled in. Dad was in his chair reading The Salt Lake Tribune, and Mom was cooking in the kitchen. I said my howdies to them, then I sprawled out on the living room carpet in front of the television. My head was throbbing and I soon fell asleep, coughing intermittently as I slept, I’m sure. When I woke up a few hours later, I was still oh-so miserable and I told Mom and Dad I was going to bed early. I remember it was still light outside.
Mom and Dad just let me go to my room. No questions, no punishment. Between my ashtray odor, and my coughing, and the grim expression on my face from the moment I came in the house, I have no doubt they pieced together the gist of what I had put myself through. I imagine they figured my transgression had rightly turned against me, and it was punishment enough to make a lasting point. They never said a word to me about that day. My parents knew that in my case, most of the time “less is more” was the best method to effectively parent me. I was a fast learner. My baptism couldn’t come soon enough for me and the soggy cigarette smoke polluting my spritely spirit. 🚬
The chill of recent February days—especially in the mornings—has got me resorting to bigly desperate measures. Oddly, even though I have barely a skiff of head fur, my noggin has stayed relatively warm this winter. My ears, however, have felt frosty as all get-out—especially my Spock ear. To protect my ears from what feels like frost-bite, I have resorted to wearing a pair of oversized earmuffs, both outdoors and indoors. It works. A side effect of wearing this ear-y fashion accessory is that I am deafer than usual. No one seems to mind I can hear nary a thing as I move through the community. I think it’s because Bow Tie o’ the Day casts a pleasant aura around me even though I have no idea what’s going on wherever I go. Being purposefully oblivious to what’s happening around me has been a nice temporary treat. I highly recommend knowing nothing—except what’s going on inside your own brain—as an every-once-in-a-while way to be. Wearing earbuds underneath your earmuffs while your playlist tunes blare in your ears for you only is a blissful bonus. You can always pay attention to everybody else and their problems tomorrow.
