Category: Bow Ties

Posted on

However, I Am Not Older Than Dirt

Last night, we went to the Eccles Theater in SLC to watch a performance of the play, To Kill A Mockingbird. I went black-tie with my jumbo black flip-flops Bow Tie o’ the Evening. (You’ll note that I posted a photo of my white-background flip-flop bow tie earlier this week.) The production was fine. The play was fine. The acting was fine. The narrative was fine. The issues the play dealt with—racism and bias being the bigly general issues—were certainly still relevant to what is going on in the USA in 2022—unfortunately. I had a pleasant enough time at the Eccles. I would even say I enjoyed myself at the play. But I’m not sure the play needed to be written and produced in the first place. It didn’t shed any new light on what’s contained in the novel. The book had already dealt with its topics brilliantly. The movie version, with Gregory Peck as Atticus, was somehow able to bring out added nuances to the ideas the book laid out so skillfully. But the play? It was not a profound piece of theater in itself, in any way. It was a nice night out, and if you liked the book, I think you’d enjoy the play. But don’t expect any new revelations about prejudice and reconciliation to come flying into your mind from what occurs on the stage. I suppose the play could serve as a nice introduction to the book, for anyone who hasn’t yet read it. The book wins!

Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, is a model piece of literature. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, it is brilliantly structured, especially from a writerly point of view. If you want to read a couple of books of fiction that can teach you how to construct (or deconstruct) the bones of a novel’s plot, narrative, voice, and characters, these are two of the most helpful pieces of fiction to read closely and learn from. The novel is also full of ideas to chew on: ideas about race, peace, injustice, community, and the individual. Degrees of freedom is a key subject, too. I could go on about it, but I won’t. I will say that To Kill A Mockingbird is a book I have read more times than I can count. I probably first read it when I was 8 or 9. I have taught the book to middle-school classes, to university-level classes, to incarcerated male and female felons, and to the locals in book groups all throughout the state of Utah. It is a book I know well, inside and out. The stage version of the book did not dwell much on the book’s rich plethora of eccentric side characters, except for the character of Dill, who was true to his character in the book by being both annoying and hilarious at the same time. As in the book, Dill provided comic relief and some spot-on wisdom. The character of Mrs. Henry Dubose showed up, but for only one scene. For those who know the book well, let me just say—SPOILER ALERT—there was no penultimate event from Chapter 10 in the play. In my opinion, it’s a sin to kill Chapter 10.An interesting note about this stage production is that Atticus is played by John-Boy Walton, of “Goodnight, John-Boy” fame—aka Richard Thomas. Nearly 50 years after The Walton’s, he was as recognizable by his voice as by his face. He was more than adequate in the role, but his performance was nowhere in the vicinity of Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch. Suzanne and I were astonished to discover that two of the younger members of our five-member, theater-going group didn’t have the slightest cultural clue who John-Boy Walton is. I know The Walton’s television series aired way back in the Dark Ages of the 1970’s, but it’s been shown in re-runs almost continuously since then. Culturally, “Goodnight, John-Boy” is still referenced often on television and in movies. Did it make Suzanne and I feel super ancient that these younger whippersnappers were clueless about the character of John-Boy? Heck Tate yes, it did. 🤠 🤓

Posted on

This Place Does Not Resemble Me

My ice cream bar Bow Tie o’ the Day was an appropriate selection for when we went to Sunday brunch at Plated Dreams—a new restaurant that opened a month or so ago in Woods Cross. It was our first foray into the place. My pal, Darci, had posted about eating there with her lovey-dovey hubby, Dan. When I saw her photos of their visit, I knew from the decor that it was a Suzanne place we had to try: it is very pink and flowery. There is even a rose-covered retro phone booth, which makes for a nice spot to take a photo. I purposely did not snap a picture of it, so that I can have a really good excuse to go back soon.

The place did not disappoint. I had the Smoked Rainbow Trout Roses, which dish is described on the menu as follows: “Sourdough Bread, Feta Cheese Mousse, Pickled Mustard Seeds, Caramelized Shallots, Puff Baby Capers & Pink Peppercorns, Dehydrated Lemon & Fresh Dill.” I had them add a poached egg on top. Suzanne had the Chef’s Benedict, which came with corn & cheese bread instead of the traditional English muffins. She said it was delicious, but she will order it with English muffins next time. She didn’t like the texture of the corn & cheese bread.

We were too full to eat dessert at Plated Dreams, so we took home four of their decadent-looking dessert offerings to try at our leisure. I’d like to say some of the four confections lasted a full 24 hours, but I cannot say that truthfully. They survived in our house for just under 10 hours. I only got a picture of two of the creations to show y’all because we were dessert piglets and ate the first two treats before I even thought of my TIE O’ THE DAY responsibilities. I am pleased to report they were all yummerrific to the palate. I included a photo here of the kids’ menu because I liked the clever-yet-somehow-perfectly-accurate names of their various kid meals.

BTW Whenever I make reservations at Plated Dreams in the future, I will ask them to seat us in the “Feed me cake and tell me I’m pretty” booth you see behind me. If that booth isn’t available at that time, I will make our reservation for a time when it is.

Posted on

I Take Full Responsibility, And I’d Do It Again

Flip-flops Bow Tie o’ the Day has convinced me to come clean about something I have done for decades. I admit it. I did it. A lot. I confess: I have hit my mother almost every summer, more times than I can count. I have hit her with The Chronicle, The Salt Lake Tribune, and my notebook. I have hit her with a flip-flop, a dish towel, and a fly swatter. In fact, I have hit her mainly with fly swatters. To be fair, I have only hit her at her own request—whenever she’s said something along these lines: “Sis, there’s a fly on me and I can’t reach it. Hit it! Hurry!”Mom cannot abide a fly anywhere, especially on her.

At first, I couldn’t swat the fly on Mom hard enough to kill it because I worried I’d hurt her. It is antithetical to everything I am to raise a hand—or fly swatter—to Mom for any reason whatsoever, but when the gentleness of my swatting merely urged the fly to go somewhere else, Mom fussed at me bigly for being tentative and not annihilating the offending fly dead, dead, dead when I had the chance. She gave an order: “If there’s a fly on me, hit me as hard as you need to, but kill that fly!”

I must tell you I have never seen anyone enjoy seeing a dead fly as much as Mom. She relishes it. Seeing a squashed fly with its guts dangling from the head of the fly swatter has always reduced Mom to a primal glee I can barely describe, no matter who killed it. More than once, I have observed Mom so elated about killing an annoying stalker fly in the house that I thought she was going to drive up to Curley’s and dance on the bar in celebration. If I could have, I would have had the head of every fly she ever so happily obliterated mounted and hung on the wall in the family room right by where Dad’s moose, elk, antelope, and deer heads hung in all their taxidermy glory.

And so, over the years of purposely hitting my mother with any available swatting devices, I became a pro at swatting any fly who dared light on Mom—all the way to their flattened deaths, while doing as little damage to Mom as possible. It’s all in the wrist, as they say. I hit Mom for so many summers that I believe it qualifies as a full-fledged family tradition. I hate flies landing on me, too, so I plan to hand down this semi-violent-but-necessary summer tradition. Thus, I will pass down my cherished quiver o’ fly swatters to the next generation—along with the order to kill dead, dead, dead any fly dumb enough to land on me. Mom will be so proud to know the family tradition will live on past us both.

FYI You can never have enough fly swatters. When you see one, buy one. They are like reading glasses. You use both of these items for a few minutes at a time, then you lay them down when you’re done, and then you forget where you last had them. I say, cut to the chase: make sure you have a fly swatter and a pair of reading glasses in every room of the house. It’ll be incredibly useful for weeks or months. Eventually, you won’t be able to find any of the reading glasses or fly swatters in any room, yet again. You’ll lose them all. When it gets to that point, it is a sign it’s time once again for you to clean and organize your house. Some people do “spring cleaning.” I do “reading glasses and fly swatter” cleaning.

Posted on

TIE O’ THE DAY Wishes Y’all A Merry Labor Day

When I was a wee sprite, Mom rarely commandeered the living room television. Before cable, satellite, streaming, and even VCR’s, we had a grand total of 5 channels in Utah from which to chose what to watch: ABC, NBC, CBS, KBYU, and KUER. That was it. Televisions were pricey back then, so most families I knew only owned one, and we were no different. Eventually, Mom and Dad got a color TV (with remote!) in their bedroom, and I got a clunky and tiny black-and-white TV set (remote-less) in my bedroom.

In the evenings of my single-TV childhood, Dad was kind of the unofficial boss of what the family watched, although he generally let whoever had a strong preference for a certain show watch whatever they wanted. I guess you could say Dad let anybody who was at home figure out what we were going to watch between ourselves, and he went along with it. He did exercise ultimate veto power whenever he felt it necessary to our benefit or for his own viewing sanity. When it was down to just me, Mom, and Dad left in the house, I fully admit I pretty much chose our nightly living room TV schedule. Dad and Mom both seemed fine with my choices, mostly. However, I give Dad props for enduring hours of TV shows he would rather have missed. When faced with a program like The Smothers’ Brothers Comedy Hour, Laugh-in, Chico And The Man, or The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, Dad sat in his chair, silently gritting his dentures, and reading The Salt Lake Tribune, his hunting magazines, the encyclopedia, and volumes of Popular Science. He read harder when I chose to watch shows like Mod Squad, One Day At A Time, All In the Family, Charlie’s Angels, Hill Street Blues, Police Woman, Facts of Life, and Columbo. He read extra hard when I wanted to watch artistic PBS offerings on KBYU or KUER—like Masterpiece Theater, classical music concerts from Carnegie Hall, and ballet and plays from Lincoln Center. Eventually, I took pity on Dad and decided arts programming was too problematic for him to watch, so I regularly retreated to the tiny, remote-less, black-and-white TV in my bedroom for the majority of my bigly art-viewing choices.

It was universally understood in our house—like the Law of Gravity—that the unalterable living room television default for Sunday day viewing was NFL football or NBA basketball, depending on the season. LDS General Conference weekends were the exception to the NFL/NBA rule. Likewise, the living room TV was always tuned to the national news (usually Walter Cronkite) at 5 PM, and the local news at 6 and 10 PM, every day. No exceptions. Other than that, what we watched was a mostly civil whoever-calls-it-first matter.

Mom liked to watch Hawaii Five-O, Barnaby Jones, and a show called Petrocelli, which was a remarkable TV show on NBC that didn’t make it past its first season. Mom rarely had a programming preference—except when it came to a handful of occasionally shown movies. When any one of these movies was going to be broadcast (usually on KUER), Mom was adamant about watching it on the bigly living room TV, no matter what else anybody might have wanted to watch. The list is small, but clearly I remember it well: A Summer Place, An Affair to Remember, any Doris Day/Rock Hudson film, The Days of Wine and Roses, I Want to Live, The Student Prince, and Picnic. I loved watching Mom sit down to completely immerse herself in watching these movies. I loved seeing how much she loved letting the cooking go, letting the dishes go, letting preparing her Sunday School lesson for the Sunbeams go. For these films, Mom stopped flitting around the house from one duty needing to be done to another duty needing to be done, if only for a brief while. For my part, I would secretly take the phone off the hook, so there could be no outside interruption to Mom’s state of movie grace. Throughout my life, I rarely saw Mom light somewhere and let it all go for a couple of hours. But for the duration of these only-occasionally-shown movies, Mom was enthralled and perfectly still.

It’s Picnic that prompted me to write this post. The events in Picnic take place on a Labor Day weekend. I have long had the Picnic DVD, and I have watched the movie on almost every Labor Day since I managed to find it. Suzanne is not impressed with the film, so she’s watched it with me only once. So I am usually an audience of one when I throw it into the DVD player—unless you count whatever dog(s) we have at the time. I like the movie, separate from how I associate the movie with indelible memories of watching it with Mom. Yes, William Holden is too old to be the character he’s playing, And the scene with the-train-racing-through-the-tunnel symbolism is a bad cliche. But the writing is otherwise generally strong. William Holden and Kim Novak give fine performances. I would dance to the song “Moonglow” at a Labor Day picnic with either one of them. The air sizzles when they dance to it. Above all else with this film, what will stand the test of time is Rosalind Russell’s performance as an aging-and-looking-for-love school teacher. Her acting is beyond fantastic. I mean—Russell’s acting in this flick approaches Meryl Streep realms at times. She makes her character a dynamic blend of spot-on smarts, biting humor, and devastatingly desperate and perpetual disappointment. The movie is hilarious and sad and and hopeful. With a small side order of cheesy.

Oh, I know none of y’all are ever going to sit down and stream Picnic, and most of you have likely never even heard of it before. But I watched my mom watch it a couple of times when I was in my kidhood, and that alone has sealed it as one of my all-time fave films. If you had ever watched Picnic with Mom, I have no doubt you’d feel exactly the same way I do about putting it on a movie pedestal. Every Labor Day when I watch it again, I feel like Mom is sitting right here beside me—content and still and entirely unconcerned with any world beyond the movie. She is purposely—but temporarily—not doing something for somebody else. She is relaxed in her soul, and the wrinkles fall away from her face. The wrinkles fall from both our faces, really. Mom and I are exactly how I always see us.

Posted on

A Dip In The Deep End

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I are on our way over to take a dip in the swimming pool. I would snap photos of our swimming exploits, but I know better than to take my phone anywhere near a swimming pool. My age-related, intermittent hand shakiness would likely send the phone right into the pool if I attempted to shoot an aquatic selfie. You’ll have to make do with a photo of me in my old timey swimsuit, before I get to the pool. The swimming pool belongs to the HOA, but this week every year, it’s almost exclusively mine. The neighborhood kids are back in school, and their parents are so relieved the kids are out from underfoot that I think they are staying home to recuperate from their child-filled, hectic summer. I’m glad the kids are back in school, and I’m equally glad the parents seem to have no desire to visit the pool right now—because the pool is once again almost mine-all-mine. It closes for the season after Labor Day. But during this week—and before the Labor Day weekend—it is usually deserted during the day except for me and Bow Tie. The pool might as well be in our back yard, which I guess it already sort of is because there’s only one house between us and it. The only thing I’m sad about when I’m alone in the pool is that there is no one to witness my spot-on, dead Rasputin pose, which I feel compelled to re-create every single time I am playing in water. (I am convinced I was Rasputin in a former life.)

You have no idea how acutely I am tempted to let Skitter play in the pool with me. I fight the temptation every year, and so far, I’ve been able to resist its lure. But I know who I am, and if I were you, I would bet bigly money on it that one of these coming summers I will sneak Skitter into the swimming pool—infuriating the HOA and incurring a hefty fine for me to pay. It will be so worth it to me to do it. It will be a phenomenal tale to tell y’all when it finally happens. I’m just not up to the hassle it could stir up this year. There’s currently too much contention in the American air already. I don’t want to add to its pollution. Maybe next summer I’ll be bad. 🏊‍♀️ 🐶

Posted on

Stop That Rude ‘Tude, Dude

The next time I spout off about how we need to remember that the bigly commandment which encompasses the essence of all the others is to love our neighbor, poke me in the eye. Twice. Remind me of the poet, Robert Frost’s line about how “Good fences make good neighbors.” Tell me about how boundaries can be a blessing. Oh, who am I kidding? I understand Frost’s point about boundaries, but—schmuck that I am—I will always err on the side of looking out for my neighbors, especially if they are my literal neighbors. You see, I was raised in the vein of John Donne’s “No man is in island,/ Entire of itself,/ Every man is a piece of the continent,/ A part of the main.” See how I blather on about our connectedness and responsibility to each other? So—like I said initially in this post—when I get honking on about looking out for literal neighbors, poke me in the eye. Twice.

Tuesday is our weekly garbage day. Every Monday night before I go up to bed, I drag our garbage can out to the curb. Every other week, I put out our recycling can with it. The cans are usually emptied by 8 A.M. Tuesday morning. Yesterday, however, no bigly trucks came to empty either can. We live on a sort of obscure Centerville street, and about once a year, the garbage and recycling company misses our row of town homes. At noon, I called the company to let them know our street had been missed for collection. They were able to send out a garbage truck to do the missed garbage pick-up immediately, but the recycling would have to wait to be collected until the next day, which is today. I wanted to alert my neighbors to leave their recycling cans at the curb for one more night—despite what the HOA rules say—so they won’t have to hold onto their recycling until the next scheduled recycling day, which is in another two weeks. I didn’t want to interfere with my neighbors’ days by knocking on each of their doors to explain the situation, so I opted for the ever-useful Post-It Notes route. I wrote a note (as seen here) on a Post-It, which I stuck on the lid of each recycling can on the street—where they would see the note before rolling their still-full recycling can back into their garages. (Please note that I chose to use the newer “Extreme” Post-It Notes which stick through all manner of wind, rain, snow, temperature, and Mormon crickets, so there would be no possibility of unstuck and lost messages.)

So there I was—ambling down the street, placing a handwritten Post-It message on each neighbor’s recycling can. I stuck the last note on the last garbage can. No sooner had I placed it when some guy I vaguely recognize as one of my neighbors yells out the window of his approaching car, “Why are you touching my recycling? You have no right to touch my recycling.” So much for doing a silent good deed with the intention of not wanting to disturb my neighbors. I don’t know anything about this guy who’s yelling at me, and this guy clearly doesn’t know me—which is very odd since I am the only one in my neighborhood who wears a Bow Tie o’ the Day over to the Great Wall o’ the Housing Development Mailboxes 6 days per week. I tried to explain my mission to the man, but he wasn’t giving me an opening to say anything. His diatribe went on, and I finally turned around and walked back home, wondering when it started to be common for people to begin by assuming the worst of their neighbors. When did it become the fashion to begin every kind of human interaction by metaphorically balling up one’s fists and taking a fighting stance? Apparently, in this neck of the woods, it began sometime before yesterday afternoon.

But guess what. This morning, I noticed that the bantam doofus must have read my note, because he left his recycling at the curb overnight. I do not expect he will mosey over to my place to apologize to me or thank me for my Post-It Note efforts at following what I consider to be the bigliest of commandments. Nor do I need him to do so. 🥊 🤺 🤼‍♂️

Posted on

Socks, And Books, And Subterfuge

Socks Bow Ties o’ the Day and I were trying very hard to think of a way to wrap up my posts about my preoccupation with books. But we quickly realized I can never completely wrap up said book-y posts. I will never run out of book stories or my praise for books and reading, so think of this as the end of official book-related posts, but for only a limited time. Let’s consider this an intermission of sorts. Book posts and references will no doubt show up in posts from time to time—until I eventually declare it to be time for another series o’ posts about my printed and paged friends.

When I was in the 1st and 2nd grades at Delta Elementary School, there was a silly rule that girls had to wear dresses. This was a stoopid rule, and I don’t even think it was officially written down anywhere. It was just the way it was. I cannot begin to tell you how much the “rule” curtailed the girls’ playground actvities. Even if you wore shorts under your dress, hanging upside down on the monkey bars was only for the bravest of girls who were willing to risk getting in trouble for what gravity does to a dress when you hang upside down from the monkey bars. Heck, even hanging right-side-up on the monkey bars created a problem—especially if you were up high. Boys seemed to like looking up at what could be seen of girls simply playing on the monkey bars, but that was just a creepy things girls had to endure if they wanted to climb the monkey bars. The slide, the merry-go-round, and the swings had different, but very much the same, dress perils.

When wearing dresses during those early elementary years, I always wore white knee socks. Occasionally, I got a beige pair of knee-highs. What excitement! The best thing about wearing knee socks was—and still is—the stealth they can provide for carrying contraband. In my case, the contraband was usually a small book and mini notebook and pencil. And Chapstick! I always had Chapstick. Still do. I walked around with bulging socks most of the time when I wore dresses, because girl dresses tended to come with no pockets—yet another stoopid “rule” the clothing manufacturers followed as if it were a law. Who ever came up with the not-brilliant idea that girls didn’t carry stuff and didn’t need pockets? Had these clothing people never seen a real girl in the world, in her natural environment? I’ll make this simple for clothing manufacturers who still make pocketless clothes meant for girls: every being on the planet needs pockets—especially children. There is no exception to this.

My knee-high socks also bulged with raw sliced turnips whenever they were part of the school lunch in elementary school. I was one of the few kids who liked turnips. Sometimes, the lunch lady would get in a huff and wouldn’t excuse a table if every kid hadn’t taken at least one bite out of each food item on their plate. When turnip slices were on the menu, I let everyone at my table know that I would be more than happy to take their turnip slices off their hands ASAP so we could get excused for lunch recess. Kids at nearby lunch tables got in on my scheme too. I’d accept the turnips until my socks were packed. With socks chock-full, I had the lower legs of The Elephant Man. The lunch lady would excuse our table, with nary a turnip to be seen on a kid’s tray, but I had to time my getaway with utmost care—for when she was looking in an entirely different direction. If she had laid eyes on my temporarily deformed legs, she would have made the coming years of my elementary lunchroom life more Hell than it already was. I never got caught.

Of course, even though I didn’t get caught with the turnips, it doesn’t mean I didn’t do that thing every kid has to try: I stole something. I stole a book from the Rexall, a Delta drugstore which used to be on the corner where Curley’s is now located. The movie, The Godfather had just come out in movie theaters, and I wanted to read the book. I was a sad case that day because the city library didn’t have it, nor did the elementary library (duh!). It was checked out of the Bookmobile, and there was a waiting list. The high school secretary told me I couldn’t use DHS’ library due to my excessive youth, so I don’t even know if DHS had it. And then, on my way home from my ever-disappointing search for the un-findable book—The Godfather, somewhere, anywhere in the environs of my hometown—I saw the book, my day’s Holy Grail, on the rotating kiosk of paperbacks at the Rexall: The Godfather, by Mario Puzo. My family didn’t have a charge account the Rexall at the time, and I did not have the 4 bucks to purchase the book. I had to have this book. Must. Have. Book! I casually stuffed it in my sock when no one was looking my way. It wasn’t easy to get it in the sock because The Godfather was one of those bigly thick books I don’t cotton to. I sort of slid-walked sideways to the door closest to me. I made it out of the Rexall with my horrible crime undetected. I amscrayed. I skedaddled. I booked it (pun intended). I fled like the scared petty criminal I knew I was. Who knew I could run home so fast in a dress and with a fat book deep in one of my knee-high socks?!

At first, I didn’t feel guilty at all about being a book thief. It was right after I finished reading The Godfather that I began to feel contrite. I had been wrong to steal it, and I felt the abject guilt in every cell of my body. I worried myself sleepless. I couldn’t secretly return the book because it was evident someone had read it. I knew I should tell my parents and the Rexall owner what I had done. But I took the chicken-y way out to try to absolve me of my guilt: when I had saved up the $4, I surreptitiously left it on one of the two Rexall counters by the cash register. No note of apology, no nothing—just the $4. I didn’t feel like I was ever quite even with the Rexall, but I did feel considerably better. And, most importantly, I knew I did not want to feel the way stealing made me feel, ever again.

Posted on

Not A Bark Was Heard

I had a chatty day in Utah County yesterday. Skitter and I drove my jalopy truck down to visit my college pal, Jane. It was a roaring talkfest for hours, as per usual. When we get together, our opinions on the state of the world flow endlessly. For some reason, Skitter didn’t utter a word during our visit. She preferred napping at my side. The rigors of intense conversation sometimes overwhelm Skitter, so she retreats into whatever doggie dreamland her walnut brain takes her. She probably has more sense than any human I know. 🤠

Check out this past post from August 2018:

HAVING A THOUGHT, I AM NOT

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I can’t think of anything to write about this morning. We haven’t done anything yet, and we have no plans to do anything later. Our schedule is wide open. There are no errands needing to be done. The house is clean. Laundry’s done. (That laundry thing was a lie, but we don’t want to do it.) And for some reason, we aren’t even having opinions about anything. And there are no stories in our heads. What do we say here? How do we write this post, with nary a topic to write about?

I have no doubt you’re thinking we should just skip a post or two and give y’all a break. Nope. It ain’t our style. You know the “not post” thing is not gonna happen. Right now, in fact, as I’m typing away, I’m thinking maybe I should just see how long a “there’s-nothing-here” post I can write. I’m a writer, so I should be able to b.s. about nothing whatsoever for a while. I can treat it like a writing exercise—you know. Just treat it like a challenge for my abilities: jabber about nothing. And that would be all well and good, except that no matter how much “nothing” anyone writes about, the sentences are always about something. I mean—sentences have nouns and verbs and all types of other words, and you can’t have a noun without the rest of the sentence saying something about it. It’s the same with a sentence’s verbs and its other words. Every word is about something. So nobody can ever write about nothing, really. In fact, you’ve just read a string of words that are pretty much about nothing—except they are also about me trying to write b.s. There. You’ve now read over 300 words. About nothing and something at the same time. 🙃

Posted on

The Answer, My Friend, Is Blowin’ In The Wind

This FB memory from August 2018 is the follow-up to the one I re-posted yesterday, but check back later this afternoon for a fresh TIE O’ THE DAY post. It will be the first in a series I’ll be posting about me and my lifelong relationship with books. That topic might not sound exciting enough to be worthy of even one post—let alone a series of posts—but I think you’ll be sufficiently entertained when you read about my myriad o’ book ramblings.

But for now, check out the following re-post, written a few weeks after my very first Cranky Hanky Panky surgery:

AND THEN THE SCHOOL YEAR STARTED

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I got approved and educated in Farmington today. At my doc appointment, I got the okey-dokey to take my torso with me on vacation in a couple of weeks. It’s allowed to fly with me on an airplane. The little piece of my pancreas that’s left in me was so excited about being able to go that it clapped. Really, it did. I heard it and felt it. And I know what my Hanky Panky’s capable of, better than anyone else does. (I’ve gotta change Panky’s name since what’s left of it seems to be working sufficiently. Hmmm.)

I learned a new word while the doc was pushing and poking at my belly with his hands: “crepitus.” Doc said he was checking to see if he could feel or hear any of this crepitus thing. And then I said, “That word sounds captivating. What is it?” I so much wanted him to tell me I have crepitus, so I could tell everybody I have crepitus, so I could have an excuse to say crepitus over and over. Crepitus, crepitus, crepitus. And even after the doc defined “crepitus” and told me it isn’t something anyone wants to have, I still wished I had some of it.

Doc told me the short version. Crepitus is air bubbles under your skin or in subcutaneous tissues. It’s a sign of air leaking from/to somewhere it shouldn’t. (After surgery, it can occur on rare occasions.) What he said next is what made me want it. Apparently, the crepitus bubbles feel like Rice Krispies when you’re feeling around, and they sound like Rice Crispies doing their snap, crackle, pop. Sometimes the sound can be heard with the naked ear– or in my case, the naked hearing aid. No stethoscope necessary. Who in their daring, right mind wouldn’t want to be full of crepitation? Alas, I have no Rice Krispies traveling in my innards. Looking at and listening to a bowl of the cereal can’t be the same as having the things move around under your skin. Dang.

After being educated about this new word, I felt compelled to honor public education. To do it, I drove past Farmington High School on my way home. It is FHS’s inaugural year. Brand spanking new. Bow Tie and I stopped to snap a photo of the place, and I’m sure you can guess the reason. A pop-out, grab-ya color. Yellow-orange. Now that’s a building that says HERE I AM! COME IN AND LEARN!

I also drove past Canyon Creek Elementary, which is about a mile from FHS. Its colors are not pop-y in the least. The earthy colors are fine, but match-y. I almost didn’t include this second photo on the post because it didn’t look very interesting. But then I saw IT. And I knew you had to see IT too: my hair in the wind. I’m wearing Trump hair!

HERE’S A P.S. FROM THE PREVIOUS RE- POST: The “allergy bee” —the bee whose sting indicated I had developed an allergy to bee stings—stung me in my hand. My entire hand and forearm swelled up like Popeye’s. To ease the throbbing pain of the swelling, I had to hold my hand up and my fingers pointed to the ceiling. The allergy incident occurred on a Saturday, and I was scheduled to give a talk in Sacrament Meeting the next day. It was too painful to let my arm hang down naturally for even the few minutes of my talk. So there I stood on the Sabbath, pontificating from the podium— my engorged Popeye forearm pointed straight up. It appeared as if I was sustaining myself for the entire ten minutes of my talk. Ward members didn’t act like anything weird was going on. I’m sure they thought I was just expressing another one of my eccentricities.

Posted on

Untitled

Folks, I forgot to wake up this morning. Technically, I got out of bed and went downstairs to the recliner, but I immediately fell asleep and slept for 3 more hours. I never do this sort of thing. And even when I finally did wake up, I can’t say that I felt like I was fully awake. A few minutes before 3 this afternoon, I suddenly felt like my eyes finally opened wide enough to qualify me as actually being awake. That was my good luck, because Judge Judy begins at 3 and I do not miss it. Perfect timing.

Check out this repeat from August 2018.

BEES GOTTA BE WHO THEY BE

Before Bow Tie o’ the Day and I can wreak havoc on Davis County today, we’re jumping in the car to go visit my regular doctor. You see—I am in dire need of re-upping my EpiPen supply. In all the hub-bub of selling the Delta house last year, I didn’t take time to get my yearly EpiPen prescription. My current injectors expired months ago.

The irony of my needing to carry EpiPens is that I am allergic to bee stings, which is not the best allergy to have when your father is a beekeeper and the bee warehouse is in your backyard. Bees around your house can make for some tense times. Oddly, my allergy didn’t kick in until I was 16. Getting stung was a somewhat regular occurrence in my childhood. I considered the bees my siblings, and sometimes we fought. It was really no big deal. I even worked in the warehouse sometimes and hung around with Dad in bee yards.

But the summer I was 16, I was wrangling some hollyhocks growing up against our house, and I got stung by a bee who was enjoying the ‘hocks. A couple of minutes later, I couldn’t stop sneezing. I decided to settle my sneezing by lying down on the couch with a cold rag on my forehead. I had a hard time catching my breath, and when Mom saw me she asked why I was turning blue. That’s when I connected how I was feeling to the bee sting. I hadn’t even considered a sting being the cause of how I felt because I’d been stung a thousand times before without any problems.

So off we went to the old Delta Hospital. I was not breathing well at all. My appendages were swelling up. My eyelids swelled up to the point I couldn’t open them. But I did get four shoes—sort of—out of my bee sting hospital visit. Apparently, when I got into the ER, the nurses needed to take off my shoes. When they couldn’t get my Nike’s off my swollen feet, they cut them off me. Thus, two shoes became four partial shoes. I’ve been armed with EpiPens, all of the time from that point onward.

I was officially excused from helping Dad in the warehouse or in bee yards ever again. And that was kinda sad.