Gracie’s both. It simply depends on whether you’re counting by months or years. Either way, it was Grace Anne’s birthday yesterday. Her sparkly butt bow on her birthday outfit is our Bow Tie o’ the Day. Alas! For reasons of schedule and then pandemic, I have not been able to see Gracie or her parents—Bishop Travis and Bishopette Collette—in person since just before Christmas. I do not like that one dang bit.
Anyhoo… Gracie is the perfect blend of blessing and scamp. I hear she started walking a few days ago. I also hear she is already a speedy pro. Based on the library of videos starring Grace I’ve watched over the last few months, I can tell you she lives up to her initials: GAB. She gabs away, often at the top of her lungs. As for her pink bear, which has been a way to chart her growth in monthly pix, she now towers over it. Month 1, she was so tiny she was almost lost in the bear’s fur. Now, she owns that fluffy, pink beast!
Have you ever wanted to eat an entire bottle of maraschino cherries, but you knew it was just plain wrong? Exotic bird feather Bow Tie o’ the Day and I did some thinking, and we decided we might just be able to make this pandemic-thing work to our advantage. I mean—what better excuse to eat whatever you want than a pandemic? We bought a spectrum of somewhat unnecessary food items we don’t ordinarily buy: maraschino cherries (both red and green), cocktail onions, gourmet pickles, and peeled white asparagus spears.
I ate the entire bottle of red maraschino cherries while watching LIVE PD one Friday night, then I started on the bottle of green ones just to see what the difference is. (The only difference between the red and green maraschino cherries is—you guessed it—the color.) No worries! It’s ok, cuz there’s a pandemic out there! The next night, during Saturday’s LIVE PD, I ate most of the cocktail onions. I followed that up on the Sabbath with eating white asparagus and pickles. I was spoiling myself with food-ish food, which is what everyone deserves to do in the midst of a pandemic. In a pandemic, everything makes sense to put on your shopping list, including every different flavor of Oreo you can try. What’s a pandemic for? Best. Excuse. To. Eat. Weirdly. Ever.
I can’t decide what this get-up is, let alone whether or not I like it. Bling is always a fine thing, don’t get me wrong. But when all you’re wearing is bling, I don’t know if that qualifies as attire. When I see clothing such as this, my first thoughts are these: What kind of person would buy this for themselves, and where would they wear it? I honestly have no answers to those questions. A “dress” like this does not compute with me in any way. I do not know how to be a person who would think this outfit is a good idea. I have attended some swanky events in my day, but I have never graced a shindig at which this item would be deemed right-on. On the other hand, wear whatever blows your dress up!
It’s amazing what a gal can find when she throws on a wood Bow Tie o’ the Day to clean out a drawer of miscellany. Yup, this is my Senior Key necklace, and I present it here during Pandemic High School Graduation season. The “key” is now 40 years ancient, although it’s still in presentable shape. I didn’t consciously try to save it all this time. It just hasn’t gotten itself lost during my many moves. Here’s a brief history of where it has lived with me, in order: Delta, Ogden (3 different compartments), SLC (5 different apartments), Arlington, VA, Takoma Park, MD (1 apartment, 1 house), Delta again, Ogden again, Centerville. I know people who have moved plenty more miles than I have, but my moves still add up to a significant number of miles—across which this necklace has traveled in one piece. It has had only one owner. It has never been in a lost-and-found box.
If you’re anything like me, you have lots more stuff than you have room for, or need of. It would save time and space to not have to look after the props of our lives, yet we find it hard to let stuff go. Why do we keep things? They’re just things. They have no spirit in them. Are we afraid we’ll forget what’s happened in our lives if we get rid of them?
The memories in our brains are where the time lives. When we tell our stories, our experiences are alive again for ourselves and for whoever we’re sharing them with. We aren’t going to forget snippets of our lives if we don’t keep the props picked up along the way. But still, it so difficult to let material things go. And when we decide what stays and what goes, we each use a logic of our own—which would make no sense to someone who hasn’t lived your life, although it makes perfect sense to you. C’mon. You know you own some items whose significance you can’t begin to explain to people who don’t know you really, really, really well.
Some folks keep everything. They’re the ones who relate better to objects than to people. And sometimes we take better care of our trinkets than we do of the people we love. It shouldn’t be that way.
[Yesterday, after I posted about our pandemic Mother’s Day dinner, I was asked to re-post this gem from last year’s Mother’s Day din-din. If you recall, last year at this time, I was having weekday TMS treatments to my noggin, hoping to get my bipolar brain into its right mind.]
What I did yesterday does not resemble how I am, in the least. When I started writing TIE O’ THE DAY a couple of years ago, I said I would always be as honest as possible about my circus life—good and bad. And I’m here to tell you I embarrassed even my neckwear yesterday. Only Suzanne and I know first-hand I was a jerk, but still… I was wrong.
So….. yesterday afternoon Suzanne and I had a minuscule non-Mother’s-Day-related tiff about when to binge-watch IN PLAIN SIGHT and when to do serious napping before going to dinner. Yes, the set-to was that stoopid! But you know how it goes: One of you says a kinda not nice thing; and then the other person says a kinda not nice thing; and pretty soon you’re both swept up in a huge tornado of immaturity. (Do not pretend you haven’t done it too.) I blame the TMS, cuz I don’t want to blame myself.
Before I knew it, I was in my car alone, driving to SLC to the restaurant where I had earlier in the week made Mother’s Day dinner reservations for us.I sat and ate dinner on the patio at CURRENT all by myself, crying in my halibut. (The halibut was excellent, BTW.) The whole time I was there I kept looking at the Find Friends app on my phone to see if Suzanne’s phone had left the house to come eat with me. Nope. She and her phone stayed home. I understood. Heck, even I didn’t want to be around me.
Thus, today I chose my world map Bow Tie o’ the Day as a way to express my current title of Official Ass Of The World. And I felt my offense yesterday was so childish and egregious that I also deserve to be awarded 1/2 of a trophy—to memorialize my Official Ass Of The World title.
This fine trophy is actually my 1980 Miss Liberty 1st Attendant trophy, whose top statue has long since broken off. I don’t know why this little treasure hasn’t been lost in my life’s moves. I have lost important documents and photos in almost every housing move I’ve made, but this broken trophy always finds its way to wherever I live, making itself at home. Perhaps it has stayed with me since 1980 just to fulfill its ultimate destiny as my Official Ass Of The World trophy, which I’m sure will stick around until the minute I die. I might as well get it re-engraved with my current title.
Going out to dinner for Mother’s Day during the pandemic looked like this for me and Suzanne this year. I pre-ordered PAGO’s Mother’s Day Dinner feast last week, then Saturday we drove in to SLC to pick it up at the curb—where the masked woman in the background brought our fixin’s to the car. Suzanne drove us directly home to finish the final food prep, and then we ate until our bellies were full of braised chicken, salmon corn cakes, asparagus, potatoes au gratin, and carrot cake muffins. Magnetic wood Bow Tie o’ the Day presided.
For this post, I planned to take a selfie while showing off a few pieces of Haribo Gummi Peaches. I recently discovered each piece looks like a double bow tie of sorts—with one yellow bow tie and one orange bow tie, crisscrossing. However, by the time I had dolled up in my neckwear and found the right place to selfie, I had eaten all the Bow Tie o’ the Day gummi candies. I drew what the candies look like rather than get masked-and-gloved-up for an outing to the store to buy another package. (Not that I wouldn’t go to any length for a good ol’ TIE O’ THE DAY post.) My drawings vaguely resemble the peach gummies, it’s true. But it’s also true that my drawings resemble the sign for radiation waste. I’m sure that says more than I could ever hope to about my drawing abilities. ☢️
Look at my new, penguins-in-bow ties tube sox! See wood Bow Tie o’ the Day. See my white legs—the whitest white legs of all white legs! My feet are speechless! I’m too busy dancing in my new socks in The Tie Room to write more right now. #dancingthroughthepandemic
As I’m continuing my reorganization of The Tie Room—including completing an extensive neckwear Census 2020—it occurs to me to introduce you to my “emergency” Tie/Bow Tie o’ the Day. I refer to them as my “in case” neckwear. I made them by simply covering two brave volunteers in reflective tape. These two live together in their own speshul briefcase, separated from any other neckwear hooligans. They are my frontline Tie/Bow Tie , for when I am going to be in dangerous situations and must be visible. So far, dangerous situations have amounted to the few times when I’ve been walking or biking in the dark. Neither of those things ordinarily happen. But just in case, these two stand ever-ready in their briefcase. Get it? 😜
FYI I feel like James Bond when I carry the tiny, ready-for-perilous-emergency briefcase.
It was a slight mistake to wear my painted-wood, bone-shaped Bow Tie o’ the Day to DICK’S MARKET on my masked-and-gloved grocery run this afternoon. You see, often when I wear a shiny piece of neckwear somewhere—especially if it’s a bow tie—some people turn into chimpanzees, and they feel compelled to reach out and touch said shiny neckwear. Even though it’s kinda weird when a stranger occasionally feels free to touch my bow tie, it’s not normally a potential health hazard. However, in our lovely Deseret, in our lovely COVID-19 spring, I’m both askeered and miffed that one shopper in the grocery store allowed themselves to be so overcome with bow tie love that he completely forgot we’re in the middle of a pandemic—and this other shopper automatically touched Bow Tie. Honestly, you’d think only I would fall into such mindless infatuation with a bow tie. I think it is in my best interest to wear a dull bow tie on my next grocery run—if I have a dull bow tie. I kinda doubt I own a dull anything.
