Category: Capes

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Pandemic Election Day

If ever a day requires a cape, Election Day is surely such a day. As Americans, we have the amazing gift of being able to vote for what we want our future to look like. In my opinion, too many eligible voters don’t utilize this mighty little superpower. Voting is a right, and every right carries with it a bigly thing called responsibility. It is my personal pet peeve that people are so quick to yap about others encroaching on their rights, but then conveniently ignore their own responsibilities for being knowledgeable and civil.

If you’ve already voted, you have my thanks. If you haven’t already voted, please do. It’s your right as an American citizen. It is also your responsibility as an American citizen. If you feel like your vote doesn’t count, you’re only right about that if you don’t vote. See how that works? If you vote, your vote is counted; therefore, you count. You’re a part of shaping this country’s future. Sounds cheesy, I know, but I’m not wrong. Don’t stand on your country’s sidelines. You aren’t being asked to die for your country today. You’re simply being asked to use a dark pen to fill-in some bubbles on a sheet of paper.

Finally, in the midst of this election’s overly contentious, uncivil, hullabaloo, please remember to be kind to those who don’t cast their votes for your candidates. Please don’t belittle, bully, or injure another citizen in an attempt to make them vote differently than their own conscience demands. And don’t try to keep others from casting their votes. If you see any of those things happening, it is your duty as an American citizen to step in and stop it. All of that behavior is childish, unnecessary, and just plain bad manners. And I cannot believe that in 2020, some of my beloved country’s grownups still have to be reminded to be nice and play fair with their citizen-neighbors.

End of sermon. Thanks for reading.

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Everybody Needs A Superhero

I know y’all depend on me for fashion tips, and I take your trust in me very seriously. 😉 My fashion lecture today has to do with superheroes. More often than not, you must be your own superhero. You have the ability to save yourself far better than any other human being. It’s just how it is. You are in charge of you, and you’re usually the bigliest reason you got into whatever pickle you find yourself in, in the first place. Thus, you must become your own superhero.

To be a superhero to yourself, you don’t necessarily need a special name. But you do need a snappy costume. You need to create a style for the superhero you truly are, and it’s not that difficult.

First, no matter what costume you assemble, it must include some reference to at least one already existing comic book superhero. Here, you see my costume includes a Batman wood Bow Tie o’ the Day and my Batman socks.

Second, you must wear a tie of some ilk. Of course, of course, of course you must.

Third, to be an official superhero even to yourself, you must wear a cape. And in these photos, I’m wearing three capes at once. My Batman socks have their own capes. Look closely, and you will see the sock capes hang out over the back of my cowboy boots. The socks’ flowing capes make a superhero fashion statement even when I’ve still got my boots on.

And finally, choose a mask designed to scream out to onlookers KAPOW! ZAP! or BOOM!, or whatever powerful comic book word suits you. Have you got that? Your costume must include: a reference to an existing superhero; neckwear; a cape; and a mask. Add whatever else you think you might need. It’s a breeze.

There is no denying that today I have created an original superhero costume that will forever be identified with only me—at least until I drum up a different original one. Now, you must create your own stylish alter-ego, with whom you can rescue yourself from all harm. Go forth, my secretly superhero friends! You’ve got this.

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Rearing A Purse Is Nothing But Drama

As you likely know, I have owned one—and only one—purse in my long, long, long, really long life. I am not a purse chick. However, when I saw The Saddle Purse in a shop at the airport, I had to adopt it. The chief selling points of the purse were its teensy stirrups and its teensy saddle bag. I have had The Saddle Purse just over a year at this point. Because of the magnificent item, I have become a tad bit purse-y, I must admit.

With the pandemic call to stay at home when possible these last few months, me and mine have done just that. Staying home has been hardest for The Saddle Purse and some of the drinking Ties o’ the Day. They have sat idly by, in a kind of hibernation their party selves aren’t really suited to. I am always aware of my stewardships: I tend to my fashion items with great diligence. I know they’ve been feeling wonky lately. I had planned to spend some quality time with The Saddle Purse and the drinking ties this morning after Suzanne drove off to Ogden to her Champagne Garden Club, but when she was finally gone, I couldn’t find hide nor hair of The Saddle Purse or the drinking ties.

I searched the neckwear crowds of The Tie Room. I searched under the dust in my car and truck. I was just about to call the Centerville police to report The Saddle Purse and party drink ties as having been burgled, when I decided to check the bedroom deck. Lo, and behold! A drunken bash was going on, the likes of which we haven’t seen in this house since ever. Even the wine bottle label had a bow tie on it!

Oh, the fun debauchery The Saddle Purse had created. I have no doubt whatsoever that The Saddle Purse was in charge of this inebriation insurrection. The ties were mesmerized and manipulated by the purse, like we all are. Seriously, if The Saddle Purse asked you to steal some hooch from the fridge and meet up at the bedroom deck without telling the boss of the house, you’d do it. And I wouldn’t blame you for doing it, cuz I completely understand the hold The Saddle Purse has on people. I hope The Saddle Purse doesn’t find where I stored the capes.

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Here’s Another Fine Mask I’ve Gotten Myself Into

While we’re on the subject of wearing masks to help protect ourselves and others from COVID-19…

Suzanne makes me fantastic capes, and I’m discovering that they are not just beautastical to gaze at. My glitter-fied Wintry Cape—and all my other Suzanne-made capes—can perform a public service, by acting as a protective mask for my face and most of my body. Wood Bow Tie o’ the Day’s magnetized hardware sufficiently hangs on for the ride. I’m all set. Until my next post.

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There’s Always Next Year

Seattle Seahawks Bow Tie o’ the Day was not enough to move my team past the Green Bay Packers yesterday. Their season is done. I was sure my new Seahawks bow tie earrings would be magic enough to guarantee a win, but I guess I was wrong. Clearly, my wintry cape’s snowflakes didn’t help either.

The only thing weirder than sports fans thinking what they wear will help their team win is why we like our chosen teams in the first place. When I was 12, I chose the Seahawks to be my team when they came into the league in 1976. Why? Because they were there. On Sundays after church, everybody else in the family cheered for their chosen teams, so I figured I needed one. I wanted to back a team nobody else had their mitts on yet.

I’m a fan of the underdog, and as the new NFL team in 1976, Seattle was the underdog of all underdogs. The Seahawks seemed like my kind of team. They were doomed to be losers. I knew my team would lose, and lose, and lose. I prepared for it. I prepared for all the razzing I knew I would endure with my team for years. Every NFL Sunday I got full to the gills with cheers and wins for the Denver Broncos, the Dallas Cowboys, and the stoopid Green Bay Packers, while my Seahawks sucked. But me and my Seahawks won a Super Bowl in 2013, and although that ain’t gonna happen this year, it very well could come to pass next year. Hope springs annually with the coming of the NFL season.

FYI. I’ve visited lots o’ places, but I have never even been to Seattle.

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Even The Saddle Purse Had A Thankful Time

I get a kick out of my 3-D turkey tie. It is bulky, however, which makes it tough to eat safely and cleanly while wearing it, so I chose a pumpkin Bow Tie o’ the Day to wear for our Thanksfeasting. Last year, we tried BAMBARA’s T-giving buffet feast and it was a hit with our palates and tummies, so we made reservations for this year. It might become a tradition.

Suzanne’s parents’ plans to go out of town for Thanksgiving eats got doomed by weather at the last minute, so I called BAMBARA to see if they could fit two more people into our reservation. Fortunately, they were able to juggle things around and found the space for two more feasters. We picked up Suzanne’s parents and drove through the snow to BAMBARA, in SLC, to eat as much as our little bellies desired. As far as I’m concerned, the highlight of the entire spread was the Bacon & Blue Cheese Potato Squash Gratin. Fanciest. Scalloped. Potatoes. Ever.

BTW The cape I’m wearing in some of these post photos is the latest cape creation by Suzanne. Ain’t it cool beyond groovy?!

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One Of Those “Best. Day. Ever.” Days

Yesterday, I had an incredible, yet incredibly simple, day. I had the kind of adventure that cost me nothing more than a tank o’ gas and the effort it took to get dressed. In return, I got back a boatload of all the abstract specifics that I would call my core values. In what profound, exotic activity did I participate? I had a regular ol’ conversation with my oldest— but truly young-at-heart— sister, Mercedes. Some of you readers know her as Betty, or Betty Rae, or BT. But to me, she’s Mercedes. She is my own, personal Mercedes.

Mercedes has lived in Pleasant View since the late 60’s when she hitched up with the jolly Nuk. PV is only thirty-five minutes away from my place, yet somehow, we don’t see each other as often as I’d like. We mean to see each other. I mean— it’s not like each of us is boycotting the other. We get along famously. She was literally the first TIE O’ THE DAY reader. Mercedes was my first tbloglodyte, way back when TO’TD was simply a text and a pic of a shirt and tie. That was also back when TIE O’ THE DAY showed only one tie per one day.

Yesterday, I showed up at Mercedes’ basement door with a bag o’ books to share. A bag of books is like a hostess gift between us. We trade books back and forth. Some guests might show up to a get-together, lugging a plate of cookies or a bottle of wine as a “thank you” to the host. We do books. We don’t mind trading underlined, highlighted, margin-noted books if need be. The markings give us further insights into each other. “Why did she highlight that paragraph? Why did she underline that word twice? I’ve gotta ask her about that.”

Anyhoo… We sat in Mercedes’ pleasantly dark basement where she has been working this week. She met The Saddle Purse and my Frida Kahlo cape in person for the first time. We talked family, religion, politics, you name it. And we are always able to respectfully discuss these dicey topics, without bullying and/or closed ears. I come away from our conversations feeling nourished and more knowledgeable than I was when we started.

Do you know what I didn’t do while I was talking to Mercedes? I didn’t worry about snapping pix for a TIE O’ THE DAY post. A post picture wasn’t the most important thing. I was totally focused on having a funny and meaty conversation with my bigliest sister. Enjoy my stick-figure-on-a-sticky-note re-creation of my happy day.

I did wear my wood, glasses Bow Tie o’ the Day for my visit with Mercedes— just in case you wondered.

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Lost In The Tie Room

When last I posted, on Halloween, I showed you Skitter in her french fry costume. I fully intended to post later on Trick or Treat day, showing you my costume. But I made the mistake of saying to myself, “Self, while I’m waiting for the short ghouls and superheroes to knock on my front door in search of goodies, I’m going to fetch the Christmas neckwear out of storage, cuz I need to start wearing it ASAP if I’m going to wear every piece.”

There isn’t room in the Tie Room for the ghastly amount of Christmas neckwear to have year-round residence in there, so it all lives in a storage bin apartment complex in the garage— in the space where my car should park, but can’t. Oh, I made it into the garage to retrieve the bins containing X-mas neckties and bow ties, but after I moved all those bins into the Tie Room, I somehow got overwhelmed and confused. I lost my way out of the Tie Room. Yup, I have spent the last few days mountaineering my way through the maze o’ neckwear which is my decades-long collection.

Aside from being very dehydrated from my lostness, I emerged from the Tie Room relatively unscathed. I drank a mini-keg of water, and promptly sat down to write this. So here are some photos of me in my costume for Halloween. Bow Tie o’ the Day displays a dandy cast o’ sugar skulls, which complements my Suzanne-made Day of the Dead cape. But what am I?

I love the frightening and fantastical costumes Halloween gives us, but when it comes to dressing up myself, I gravitate toward the obscure, clever, or punny things to be. For example, in the fall of 1994, when Major League Baseball went on strike, I donned a white sheet and an Orioles baseball cap and became the Ghost of the Baseball Season. And when “the war in Iraq” was the most repeated phrase on the news, I stuffed my bra to overflowing with plastic toy soldiers and went to Halloween events as “The War in My Rack.” It’s who I be.

Anyhoo… When Miss Tiffany was last cuttin’ my hairs, I saw the idea in the mirror: my hair took the shape of a comma! How cool is that, since I’m a writer? Punctuation is part of everything I create, and the comma is my fave-rave punctuation mark! With my cape, I just had to be a superhero called Comma Woman. In fact, I am more than just plain old Comma Woman— I am Oxford Comma Woman!

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Current Events Are Funny

Our weekend began less than one second after Suzanne walked got home from the sweatshop Friday. We had dinner reservations in SLC at TIN ANGEL, which is located in a corner of the main entry to the Eccles Theater. The restaurant is truly a splendid place to sit and people-watch. We had groovy views of the street and the main lobby. My Day of the Dead Bow Tie o’ the Day couldn’t stop talking about how people can be weird when they go out on a Friday night. And Bow Tie didn’t mean us. People-watching is never dull.

Suzanne and I each ended up ordering— and enjoying— the same dish: spicy saffron salmon. When we were ready for dessert, I clamored for the bread pudding. Suzanne went with the chocolate torte, which was the slenderest slice of any dessert we had ever seen. Candy Corn Bow Tie On A Shelf o’ the Day had to wriggle out of my Saddle Purse to take a gander at the barely-there confection. Suzanne reported that the teeny tiny torte was yummy and worth it.

After dinner we headed into the theater for a taping of NPR’s WAIT, WAIT…DON’T TELL ME!— a hilarious radio show about the news of the week. It is normally taped in Chicago, so we’ve been patiently waiting for the show to haul its cast out to SLC for a performance, as it has done a handful of times. Finally! Bobcat Goldthwait was one of the show’s rotating panelists whose job it is to skewer the ridiculousness of current events. Bill Curtis, journalist extraordinaire, is the show’s announcer. Oh, my golly! The quizzes and limericks about news stories were spot-on and comical. However, one Utah guy in the audience did get his knickers in a snit about some zucchini jokes the performers made. That, too, was funny.

DO NOT POKE FUN AT ZUCCHINIS WHILE IN UTAH, PEOPLE!

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Where, Oh, Where Have The Bow Ties Been? (PART ONE)

Even heart-target Bow Tie o’ the Day knows I post, post, post. And then I’m suddenly silent. I’ve done it before, but never in TIE O’ THE DAY history have I been post-less for nearly half a month. (Thanks for your patience.) With the exception of a short post on Mom’s birthday last week, that’s how long it’s been. And even more astounding is the fact that I purposely haven’t worn neckwear (this is an earlier photo) for that amount of time. Oh, the pigs are flying about that! I am simply not myself.

Usually when all’s quiet on the laptop it’s due to some bipolar thing, or connectivity issues while we’re vacationing. This time my silence has been part bipolar vortex and mostly existential crisis. I wore my spirit out, and I wanted to be un-me. I guess even I couldn’t handle my high-maintainance diva self. Thus, I haven’t worn neckwear, nor have I had the oomph to consider posting. I haven’t perked up to think of clashy fashion. I haven’t been clever or chatty. I haven’t restocked the fridge with Diet Coke. I have not had one story or sermon formulating in me to write. I have not offered to assist others. I have tried to be as un-me as I can be. What if the un-me is the best me? I don’t know if anyone has missed me and the neckwear that is so much a part of me, or not. I kinda haven’t missed myself, which tells you I’m not quite back to my normal. I’m the kind of person I and other people regularly need a vacation from. But trying to be a matchy, low-key me isn’t working all that effectively for me either. My “me” got pooped. What’s a me-gal to do?

Besides, we can’t really run from ourselves anyway, can we? I mean– really, escaping ourselves is one task we cannot possibly accomplish. But I’ve recently been trying to be un-me anyway, as I tried to do a couple of other times in my life. I’m sure you’ve tried to be un-you, too, at certain points in your existence. Yet here you are, right at this moment– you are most probably being inescapably you. Mr. Rogers and I are glad you are you. I’m trying to get back to being me, by creating this post. I’m pushing through it, but it’s tiring to be me.

Bottom line: I don’t think we need to change who we are, as much as we each need to continuously try to grow into a more glorious authentic self: a self that takes care of itself, in order to be strong enough to care for others without disappearing into exhaustion.

[Tune in tomorrow for PART TWO of this post, which will likely clarify what I’m trying to say.]