Witty & Wise Ties, Trivia & Lies
This Bow Tie o’ the Day is pre-printed right onto my pre-printed ugly sweater t-shirt. Suzanne recently crocheted my new red beanie. And my Red-nosed Rudolph Face Mask o’ the Day is one of my very fave masks in our Christmas collection. 😷🎄
It’s a good thing I still have access to this photo from last Christmas season. I had come up with a swell idea for a new TIE O’ THE DAY selfie for today, in which I once again wore the Rudolph body thong some anonymous reader sent me in the mail a couple of years back. This morning I eagerly headed directly to the Tie Room to retrieve the attire, accessories, and various props I would need for the bigly reindeer thong photo I had promised I’d show you. But for the life of me, I could not find my Rudolph thong. It was not where I usually keep it. The tuxedo thong was there. The tuxedo boxers were there. But the Rudolph thong was nowhere to be found.
I suspected foul play immediately. I suspected a devilish, war-on-Christmas interloper had somehow breached the sanctity of the Tie Room for the sole purpose of stealing my fabulously awkward Rudolph thong. I even got thinking that Suzanne might have accidentally-on-purpose snuck into the Tie Room and gotten rid of my jingly garment, in order to prevent me from ever wearing it on TIE O’ THE DAY for y’all ever again.
Normally, Suzanne’s cool with my over-the-top fashion shenanigans, but I have always suspected this particular festive fashion gift of reindeeer-thong-from-a-stranger crossed the line for her by about eight country miles. I can understand how she might feel like that. However, whatever mystery has befallen my dear deer thong, I resolve to find it—no matter who is ultimately to blame for stealing it from me in the first place. I will indeed show off a new photo of me in my Rudolph thong for y’all before the end of this Christmas season. Mark my words! 🦌
Ye olde red-and-green, starry starry Bow Tie o’ the Day. Santa face. And critical thinking on top.
With a jumbo Bow Tie o’ the Day covered in wrapped and be-ribboned presents, I present my munchkin-est Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It stands at just under a mini-majestic 10 inches tall. Its singular ornament is a milkweed pod creation by my grandma, Zola Walker Wright. She made it in the early 70’s, and it is indeed the beauteous Zola whose photograph adorns this particular ornament. She made similar photo-personalized milkweed pod ornaments adorned with pictures of each member of the the family. When she and my grandpa, Walter, decorated their X-mas tree with all the milkweed pod faces, it both figuratively and literally became a family tree. I still have my precious Zola-made, milkweed pod face-ornament. It is securely stored away somewhere so secret and safe in our garage that even I can’t find it. 🤓🎁
If you’re a long-time dedicated reader of TIE O’ THE DAY, you have probably been suspicious that something is bigly and seriously wrong with me. Normally, at this point on my tblog calendar, I would have been wearing holiday neckties and bow ties for weeks now—in my seasonal attempt to wear every piece of holiday neckwear in my collection. For example, last year on this date the TIE O’ THE DAY Holiday Tie Tally shows that I had already worn 92 Christmas-themed neckties AND 22 said-themed bow ties. The complete 2020 Holiday Tie Tally total of what pieces I wore ended up at a whopping 209 seasonal neckties and 93 jolly bow ties. All the holiday neckwear filled 6 storage bins in the Tie Room and garage. The annual endeavor is always fun and challenging for me, but I’m taking a break from it this year. There will be no wearing of a dozen ties at one time. But worry not! I will still be sporting festive neckwear from now until January 1st. I have no doubt I’ll come up with plenty o’ other gimmicks to keep y’all entertained for the holiday season as best I can. I will be super-selective in my 2021 Christmas season neckwear choices. My first Bow Tie o’ the Day choice of 2021? Santa-hatted yellow lab puppies. Enjoy the merry tie offerings for the coming weeks. And a heartfelt HO, HO, HO to y’all!
I channeled Dad in order to make a final decision about purchasing the new truck I’ve been eyeing. Dad knew his trucks. Also, Dad always had a red or blue hanky dangling from his back pocket, so I wore a hanky-esque Face Mask o’ the Day to the car dealership yesterday. I doubled-down with the black in my Bow Tie o’ the Day and the yellow in my shirt—the two colors signifying the bees Dad expertly cared for in his life-long work.
I picked up Suzanne from her office and took her on a test-drive in my potential auto acquisition. Suzanne’s tummy gets hyper-queasy when riding in bouncy vehicles like my old jalopy truck, so I wanted to make sure she could stomach the ride in this new vehicle. If she couldn’t relax and enjoy the truck’s ride, I would not even entertain the idea of acquiring this truck candidate. At some point during the test-drive—as I drove, and as Suzanne played with all the gadgets and controls in the cab—Suzanne seemed to be remarkably pleased with the level of smoothe-icity of the truck’s ride. Suzanne’s perfectly settled stomach was saying, “Yes!” to the truck. Consequently, I made my bigly decision to buy the 2022 Ford Maverick—and in my kind of flashy color, called Velocity Blue. When we finally returned the demo truck to the dealership, I was grinning through my face mask as I signed my “Helen Hancock” on the necessary paperwork. Oh, happy, wallet-emptying day! 💸💸
The bad news is this: My brand new travel toy is a special order, and it will not be built and delivered to me for 2 or 3—or maybe 4 or more—months. The good news about the bad news is this: If I don’t explode to smithereens with anticipation before my truck gets here, I will have grown my patience to superpower-strength. That kind of patience comes in handy on this planet full of imperfect human beings. Patience, I fervently believe, is the next best quality to kindness.
But it could be. Now that Mom no longer cooks her Christmas confections, I have been on a quest to find acceptably tasty holiday goodies. Bow Tie o’ the Day and I made a winterland-worthy discovery today: Reese’s Peanut Brittle peanut butter cups. If you like peanut butter, I promise that you will want to snag some of these before they’re gone from the Christmas candy shelves. Now, I have to quickly end this post and go finish eating the whole bag. But I wanted you to know about my new, sinful find.
I really did intend to write a post yesterday. I threw on a polka dot Bow Tie o’ the Day and drove Suzanne to her office because her foot is still under the weather from her surgery. It’s healing well, but it is literally a big pain in her hoof. After I got her settled in her office, I headed home to write something for TIE O’ THE DAY. Somehow, I found myself pulling into a car dealership to test-drive a new truck. And then I fell into material love with the vee-hicle I drove—a 2022 Ford Maverick. I was indeed sidetracked all day with the entire process. I haven’t decided for sure if I’m going to buy the pretty thing, but I’m leaning towards it. My 23-year-old jalopy truck cannot last forever, although I mostly wish it would—if only for its passenger window which still has my long-departed Araby’s doggie snot-and-slobber smudges all across the in-side of it. When the two of us were in our Millard County environment, Araby was a happy, barking fixture in the bed of my truck. When we were in our bigly city world, Araby was my eager shotgun-rider. She’s been in mutt heaven for over 8 years now, and I will never wash her beloved smudges off “her” truck window. The smeared mess is worth more than the truck itself, at least to me.
Gustav Klimt-inspired Bow Tie o’ the Day and I drove Suzanne to yet another doctor appointment. This time, Suzanne was having a procedure done on some nerves to alleviate pain in her back and neck. Let me be clear: It’s not that we like going to doctors and have tried to make a hobby of it. And it’s not that our ancient bodies are falling apart right before your eyes. Nah, we are relatively healthy, “seasoned” gals who have good insurance, and—thanks to my mountain o’ medical bills this year—we have met our yearly out-of-pocket insurance deductibles. Therefore, it now behooves us to take care of all the bigly and little medical issues we need to address—at no extra cost to us—before the end of the year. Come January 1st, the medical insurance deductibles start over. The first day of the new insurance year is always a wistful day when your medically mortal body is almost as old as pyramid-entombed mummies, like ours are.💀☠️