Category: Bow Ties

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Siblings? What Siblings?

I was born an only child, with four siblings. My oldest sibling (Mercedes/BT) is 15 years older than me. My Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless is 13 years older. I have no recollection of them even living at home when I was a child. By the time I was beyond my toddlerhood and into a full-blown childhood, Ron and Rob, who are 10 and 6 years older than yours truly, were teenagers—which means they were never home. And then they were out building their own adult lives. I was home alone, sibling-wise, for most of my growing up. My nature is that of a lone wolf, so having the run of the house to myself suited me just fine. It was as if my parents had their family, and then I sort of wandered in from the Pre-existence and made myself at home.

Bow Tie o’ the Day in these pictures is the bow tied on my hoodie. Note my cork gun is present in one pic, so there’s no question of my paternity. The pup you see there is the family dog, whose name was actually Dumb Dumb—which is weird because the word “dumb” was kind of a swear word in our house. You could not call anyone “dumb.” No matter how dumb they were.😉

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Yes, That Kind Of Day

You know the sort of day I’m writing about. Your bib apron is fastened to you with a Bow Tie o’ the Day on your back. You’ve worked too hard. You’ve played too hard. You’re so exhausted you collapse into a sudden sleep on the rug between the living room and the kitchen—still clutching your melting ice cream cone. Yup. That kind of day. 😂

FYI This is one of my sisters. TIE O’ THE DAY is pretty sure the star of this slide is my firstborn sibling, Mercedes/BT. It was taken in the early 50’s.

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Still Wanna Hug My Mother. Right Now!

Giving Mom a hug has been on my mind all day, so slides of her are what y’all get here. I know that if you’ve met Mom, you adore her, so that works out well for all of us.

In the first picture, my brother Ron shows up in his Bow Tie o’ the Day again. It’s a dapper outfit. I think the baby Mom’s holding in one of the photos is my brother, Rob. The picture of Mom eating on the porch in her slippers is a gem, but my personal fave photo here is of Mom fishing in her curlers. That’s one thing I’ve never done in my life. I must put it on my Bucket List. Note to self: Buy curlers and fishing pole.

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Bling And Bands

Suzanne offered to model Bow Tie o’ the Day and Face Mask o’ the Day, along with my new “business cards.” I thought adding jewelry to the staging of the pic would add an extra dollop of visual interest for y’all. You’re now looking for the business cards, I’m sure.

Believe it or not, when I’m out and about, strangers often ask me what’s up with my neckwear—especially the bow ties. The sillier the neckwear, the better. I’m happy to listen to their comments and answer their questions. I tell ’em about this tblog, and sometimes they scribble a note to themselves about the tblog name. So I thought, “Hey! I need business cards to hand out.” But doing things the usual way is not very stand out-y, so I cogitated about what kind of business card isn’t really a normal business card. Ta-da! The tie-o-the-day.com wrist bands. That’s more me-y. I have to wear a few at a time so I have ’em handy to give inquisitive folks I meet along the way in my day.

FYI Suzanne loves every one of her rings, whether they’re valuable or plastic. She has eclectic taste in jewelry, but sticks close to vintage pieces. She regularly wears a particular vintage ring set which is beyond meaningful to me for a host of reasons: she wears Mom’s wedding ring. How cool is that?!

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I’m The One In The Bow Tie

I’m sharing this washed-out slide before it completely fades away. It’s a swell photo, but I had to make a DIY Bow Tie o’ the Day before it qualified to be in a post. My Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless (SWWTRN) probably also wishes to Remain Faceless, but too bad for her. The crowds demand to see my SWWTRN occasionally, especially when she shows up in a slide taken in 1967. We were both such flower children at the time! She is thirteen years older than I am, but we have always been tight. We “get” each other’s wit. And I have always been in awe of my SWWTRN’s resilience, relentlessness, and quiet generosity. Those are three of her best qualities, and striving to emulate her example of those characteristics is often what keeps me going.

FYI Yup, my SWWTRN is wearing a wiglet. Wiglets used to be the thing, back in the time of hippies. I guess. I dunno.

BTW We always snapped our photos across the alley in my grandparents’ yard—with their luscious foliage as background. No matter how hard Mom worked to bring forth a beautiful garden for us, our yard grew only a smattering of pitiful flowers and towering weeds.

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Don’t Need Much To Be Happy

The title of this post is the title and first line of a Mary Chapin Carpenter song which I often sing in my head when I’m in a certain kind of funk. This slide is one of my all-time fave pix of myself, for one simple reason: there is no trace of my bipolarity to be found on my mug. I was five. In so many photos of me as a kid, the bipolar darkness and worry that has always inhabited me had already begun to show itself on my face. This was clearly a day when I was blissfully unaware of the suffering ahead. This was a day when I didn’t even need all my teeth or a Bow Tie o’ the Day to be happy.

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But Not Like Queen Elizabeth

I apologize that this slide is of such poor quality. It is over 65 years old, so I’m lucky to even have it. The dapper little lad is my oldest brother, Ron. Look hard and you’ll see he’s sporting Bow Tie o’ the Day. It’s a family thing.

I owe Ron bigly for giving me some of my cool. Ron taught me how to play basketball. He taught me how to golf. Ron dressed with flair, fedoras and all. I learned some of my snarkiness from him too. Ron even baptized me.

And he gave me a name. Not a church blessing name. But a name that has stuck for more than five decades—at least, between us. He nicknamed me “Queenie.” I don’t know why he chose that name for me, but I suspect it was likely because—as the baby of the family—I was spoiled by my parents, my siblings, my grandparents, and so on. My wish was their command, I’m sure.

I was called Queenie so frequently while Ron still lived at home, that one day I came home from elementary school and found that Mom had renovated my bedroom door. This is a photo of the actual door, which still hangs in its original place at Mom’s old house in Delta. One day, the “Queenie’s Castle” door will live with me, where it belongs. It will perhaps become the door to The Tie Room, here in my current castle. That would be groovy, eh?

No matter where the castle door is, I will always be Ron’s Queenie. He’s my big brother. And he’s my friend.

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A Skitter Update, And Suzanne’s Sweet & Salty Birthday

Excuse TIE O’ THE DAY’s absence yesterday. We had a playdate with the plumber for most of the day at our house. (You’ll get that story at a later time.) Peace Bow Tie o’ the Day and I will begin this post with an update on Skitter’s ear problems. The vet discovered Skitter’s left ear has BLACK MOLD! Well, not exactly. She has a fungal infection deep in her ear, for which I’m giving her ear drops daily. But it’s much funnier to say she has black mold. Suzanne even believed me when I told her that’s what it was. Her eyebrows got really high! And I could see her having visions of spending bigly bucks to tear up the house and rid it of whatever black mold might be lurking in its walls, which had surely—somehow—given Skitter an ear infection. I had to say, “Whoa!” to Suzanne. I had to explain I was making a joke by labeling Skitter’s fungal infection “black mold.” I NEVER have to explain my hokey-jokey names for things to Suzanne. She always gets my humor. But it was her birthday, so I understood she had her mind on the festivities. Skitter will be fine in a couple of weeks.

For Suzanne’s birthday, we stayed home this year. It’s a bit pandemic-y out there right now, so I designed her birthday celebration with that in mind. Suzanne is good about no longer eating certain favorite “foods,” so her blood pressure is happy. But I decided to give her the gift of freely eating junk food for one evening. One by one, at various time intervals, I paraded out many courses of sweet, salty, and non-nutritional eats. The menu was as follows: Hostess Birthday Cake-flavor Cupcakes; Starburst jelly beans; a Birthday Cake-flavor Kit-Kat; popcorn; peanut M&M’s; Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie OREO’s; Fat Boy Birthday Cake Ice Cream; and—drum roll—my famous Potato Chip Birthday Cake. Suzanne was so full of bad-for-everybody food that she had to wait until the next day to eat my specialty, which is microwaved (no more than 10 seconds) Skittles.

BTW I purposely wore my salad tie to the grocery store when I bought all the junk food. I forgot to take a selfie at the store. Sorry.

Another BTW The party hats are mermaid tails. They were supposed to be for Gracie’s first birthday, but they weren’t delivered to me in time for that. Skitter’s mermaid tail is a little under the weather here, surely reflecting the discomfort of her black mold situation. Mermaid tails sure look dandy on us though, eh?

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Merry Birthday To Suzanne!

Today, Suzanne is officially as many years old as I am. We are now both fifty-damn-six. This photo was taken at least 50 years ago, but she looks just the same to me. As a gift to her, I gave her photo a matching Bow Tie o’ the Day. We share the same year of birth, but we do not share fashion choices. Suzanne likes her ensembles to match. I like my outfits to have strains of head-bangin’ loud clash. Suzanne puts up with my fashion style by not looking directly at me. I guess I’m kinda like the sun. My outlandish costumes—and my effusive personality—have no doubt caused her many a headache. She used to get migraines regularly, but since she started forcing her eyes to look away from my duds, she has been relatively migraine-free.

Merry Migraine-free, Pandemic Birthday, Suzanne! I love you more than my bow ties. But let’s not tell them that.

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Nuts, And Bolts, And Screws—Oh My!

I’ve got a wood-lookin’ fabric, nuts-and-bolts-and-screws Bow Tie o’ the Day to offer y’all. Purple butterfly Face Mask o’ the Day had me covered when I erranded at the bank and the grocery store. Beyond that, I’ve been unable to concoct a story or sermon for you. Even as I type this post, Skitter has her muzzle on my laptop, which makes typing tough. She has a very bad infection or something going on in her left ear, and she thinks she has to have my complete attention. You know how kids are when they don’t feel good. They neeeeeeeed you to be right there suffering along with them. Skitter’s been like a clingy dryer sheet to me all day. Thank the heavens her vet is squeezing us in, first thing in the morning.