BBQ Bow Tie o’ the Day says “buh-bye” to Summer and “howdy” to what I will call Not-Summer. We make our abode in Utah; therefore, we know not what season will show up next.
Fashion-wise, Labor Day is the last day it’s “okay” to wear white. Here’s my opinion on that “rule” of fashion: That’s absolute billshut. (See how I didn’t technically write a swear word there?) If you wanna wear white, wear white– whatever the weather. I do, however, believe there is a loosey-goosey Cape Season, during which capes can most appropriately be worn. It has to do with lower temperatures, not the “laws” o’ fashion. The day after Labor Day seems about the right time to begin checking the weather daily, and asking one simple question: Will today be cool enough to wear a cape without roasting?
I will be asking that very cape/weather question tomorrow morning. I already know the forecast says the days will be too hot for a few weeks longer. But it will make me happy to just know we’re in the “right” season to ask the question without seeming foolish. I’ll check the weather daily, crossing what’s left of my Hanky Panky for luck. I will miss Summer, but I am eagerly awaiting the wearin’ o’ the first Cape o’ the Day since April.
Eat, drink, and be merry, my friends, for tomorrow we go back to the grind. And it’s possible it’ll be cool enough outside for me to comfortably wear a cape to said grind.
Bow Tie o’ the Day shines right along with my Hat o’ the Day, which I found in the AR store where I bought my cowboy boots. They were both good travel companions on that particular day trip.
The itineraries for my vacations have consistently morphed into shorter and shorter “must do” lists, no matter where I visit. Oddly, we travel more often now, but we find ourselves seeking out fewer of the “sights” the guide books tell us we must see.
To gander at a place’s churches is always on my travel “must do” list. I can say without a doubt that the Arkansas landscape is replete with churches– mostly Baptist, but it’s well-peppered with plenty of Methodist churches hither and yon too. The churches are in shopping malls, deserted convenience stores, empty farm machinery buildings, etc., as well as their own buildings. From the speeding car, I even saw a storage unit which was being used as a church. The motto on this Conway, AR church wall in the photo is both bigly and true. Ya gotta have good roots if you wanna yield a good crop. Simple as that.
I am a fan of church buildings. I make it a point to appreciate the skillful architecture of church buildings of all denominations. Because I was born into Mormondom, I especially have watched the development of modern LDS churches over time and places. I mean no disrespect, but LDS ward buildings are not breathtaking. They are functional. Their beauty lies almost solely in their functionality. If you have seen only a few LDS ward building designs, you have sort of seen them all. In central Arkansas, it wasn’t difficult for me to easily identify Mormon churches from the proverbial mile away. They are iconic sights, with a mostly singular artistic gist.
Seeing so many churches everywhere we went in AR got me thinking about my kidhood church. Permit me to say I miss my old, long-demolished, not-up-to-code Delta Second Ward church building, which had been built by the ward members’ themselves– not just with their money, but also with their very hands. It was an original, one-of-a-kind ward building, which reflected its people.
The chapel had an entire wall of tall windows, through which you could watch the beauty of the farming community– while you learned about the beauty of the spiritual world within it. Some basement classrooms had exposed pipes a kid could climb on and swing from until your teacher wrangled you down and got you in bigly trouble with your parents. There were nooks and crannies and dead ends for playing Primary hide-and-seek in winter. And the long, dark basement hall was perfect for a kid’s illegal running. Even a toddler-age Bishop Travis donned his Batman/Superman reversible cape and flew through the basement halls of the Delta Second Ward church to save the world from the bad guys.
Heck, I can remember when the Delta Second Ward building still had tiny spittoons and ash trays attached to the backs of a couple of pews. On those same pew backs, next to them and the hymn books, you could plug in your hearing aid to listen to the speakers give their edifying lessons. Somehow, of course, my kid-logic brain connected losing your hearing to the use of tobacco.
For the record, I’ve had to wear a hearing aid for just over a year now, but I have never been a user o’ the tobacky leaf. My kid-logic brain would be so confused.
SCAR UPDATE! Bow Ties o’ the Day present my scar, exactly one year after it was carved into my belly during my pancreaticoduodenectomy. 6 inches o’ scar! It is healing well. It’s gradually whitening up, especially on the left end so far. It will never be invisible, but it will fade. I don’t mind having a scar on my body. It’s like my wrinkles and gray hairs: I earned them all. Deal with them or look away. In a way, they are my body’s evidence of parts of my life’s story. This is my only physical scar. If it were my style to wear bikinis, I’d still wear one. I am not ashamed to show what my belly has been through, inside or out.
RECOVERY UPDATE! My handsome Hanky Panky scar is an adequate symbol for my year o’ post-operation recovery. I can report that every step in the healing process has been textbook, best-case scenario, near-perfection. I’m feeling substantially less Hanky Panky pain. I’ve done everything Dr. Mulvehill told me to do to heal. Suzanne made sure of that. She has taken good care of me and she did all the heavy lifting, as they say. She fussed at me to slow down when I got over-zealous about how much I could do. I learned Suzanne knows how to scold when she sees bad behavior. (It’s kinda funny though. She didn’t seem to know how to use that disciplinary skill when Rowan was a young’un. Alas! I was always the bad cop o’ his kidhood.)
I continue to feel weird tugs and pulls in my torso, but throughout the last year, they have lessened in terms of pain, oddity, and regularity of occurrence. I notice them most now when getting in and out of bed, and when using my bigly strength to push something down– like closing my car’s obnoxiously heavy hatch or pushing down the lid on my mini keg.
I’ve been extra cautious with my recovery. (Except for falling down the stairs while running. Twice. And a few other not cautious things we won’t talk about now.) I rested and rested and rested until my rester was sore. I didn’t lift anything but Popsicles and Diet Cokes for the first two months after the operation. I’ve gotten my stamina back almost completely, because I go for walks.
Also, I take what I call My Pancreas with every meal. My Pancreas is a bigly capsule containing a prescription pancreatic enzyme which helps what’s left of my pancreas do its job. I take My Pancreas very seriously. I am beyond diligent about taking it when I feast. I have, on only a couple of occasions, forgotten to carry it with me when we’ve gone out to eat. At one restaurant, I was so surprised and aghast I didn’t have My Pancreas that– upon discovering it wasn’t in my pocket– I said a little too loudly, “I forgot to bring My Pancreas!” That entire evening, I got the distinct impression nobody at the restaurant noticed my bow tie or my cape. Instead, they were straining to see if there was evidence of a nook, cranny, or cupboard somewhere on the side of my gut where a pancreas could be kept or let out.
Most TV commercials are lame, but I love my funny Flo commercials. She makes me snicker. I want a Flo bobblehead, so I hope somebody out there makes such an item. Maybe Suzanne can craft me one while sitting at her Ultimate SewingBox, which she does 23 and 1/2 hours per day.
In this magazine ad, Flo looks outstanding in her Cape o’ the Day, but she needed a Bow Tie o’ the Day to top off her style. I was glad to help her out. Now her attire astounds the eyes. Her cape and bow tie seal the deal: Flo’s an authentic superhero.
This morning, I gathered my Suzanne-made capes, and I put them away until Fall. I was sad about it, but capes and summer heat don’t make a pleasant pairing. Suzanne says she will make me a summer-y cape out of a very light, perhaps sheer, fabric if we find some material I approve of. I’m thinking she should make me a cape out of mosquito netting. Such a creation would be incredibly useful when I’m out on the patio or deck. And it would look snazzy. No one else would have a cape even remotely like it. But I’m sure it would start a seasonal trend.
Mustache Bow Tie o’ the Day presents another story of my overthinking.
Since my TMS treatments are weekdays at 7 AM, I make sure to be up by 5. When I was younger, rising at 5 AM was no problem. But now that I am near-ancient, it’s a tough task. It takes me over an hour to get enough Diet Coke in me to open my eyes wide enough to drive the car safely. (A shower would help me wake up, but I prefer to shower AFTER the TMS session.) I need to be up by 5 to make sure I’m ready to drive to SLC at 6:30. You might chuckle at that, but I swear it’s true.
Before I go to bed before a treatment morning, I grab the clothes I’m gonna wear the next day and throw them in a pile so I don’t have to do any thinking when I first get out of bed. I can find my pile o’ clothes in the dark, so I don’t have to wake Suzanne by turning on the light. Well, yesterday morning I got dressed and all the way downstairs to the kitchen before I realized my pants felt funny. Sure enough, I had pulled them on backwards. Maybe you’ll remember from a previous post that I have no butt. I don’t have to unzip/unbutton to get my pants on. I just slide them on– ready for a day of having to make sure my pants don’t fall down cuz I have no butt. That’s why it took me a few minutes to notice something was not right in the jeans department. I thought briefly of wearing them backwards as just another part of the day’s clash fashion statement. But they were actually quite uncomfortable so I shed them and then re-pulled them up the correct way.
Today is Saturday, so I have no TMS. Of course, I woke up promptly at 5AM, wide awake. It wasn’t difficult to get out of bed at all, since I had no reason to. I mark it down to a cruel joke from the sleep gods. In the dark, I pulled on a t-shirt. I knew from the first moment I put it on that it was backwards.
You know me. I am always on a quest for meaning. Just a few days ago, I posted about getting a sign from the heavens because the car next to mine in a parking lot at my TMS clinic was the same weird color as the shoes I was wearing. And now this! Putting at least one piece of clothing on backwards two days in a row is a bigly coincidence– especially when I haven’t accidentally put on something backwards since I was a wee leprechaun.
And so, of course, I got right to ponderin’ about what the possible meaning of the alignment of these two backward clothing stars could mean. Is the universe trying to tell me I need to start walking backwards cuz some sort of dangerous unicorn is following me and will do me harm if I don’t see it and slay it first? Is it trying to say my clothes are hideous and I should go shopping for a new wardrobe?Did the universe prank me by putting a silly coincidence in my face– knowing I’d waste hours searching for the meaning of life in a backwards pair of Levis and an equally backwards t-shirt. (The gods must have a good laugh on me constantly.)
Or is the universe trying to say a cosmic thing to me about how I need to reverse my life’s course? You know what I finally decided? The message is this: I must sleep in my next day’s clothes! Or just get dressed in another room, with lights a’blazing.
These Bow Tie o’ the Day photos have been waiting to have their debut for a couple of weeks now. I refuse to keep them from their public any longer.
The P!NK concert in SLC was incredible, as any P!NK show will be. In the photo of the stage, she’s wearing black, up in the chandelier. And look! My purse had its own seat, as well as its own Diet Coke for the performance– at least when Suzanne went off to the potty room. The purse boogied and sang with us all evening. You know what’s really sad about that? My purse can carry a tune better than I can.
I sported a sugar skulls Bow Tie o’ Last Night when we went to CORBIN’S GRILLE to feast. Sugar skull designs should be worn year-round, not just around the Halloween season. They are dandy. When I selfied this picture, Suzanne and I were stuck in traffic on I-15– where we traveled to Layton at zero mph much of the drive. Somehow we still got to dinner on time.
What you can’t see in this photo is my new horse saddle purse– the only purse I’ve ever owned. It’s on the floor. Next time I snap a pic of me in the car, I will make sure my purse is on the back seat, so you can gaze upon it in the photo.
I’m beginning to re-think this whole purse thing though. The saddle purse has made me say words to Suzanne I never thought I would hear coming out of my own mouth, and I don’t know if I feel good about saying such things. For example, if I have to run to the little cowgirls’ room to potty when we’re at a restaurant, I automatically say, “Please watch my purse.” And then when I return to the table, I find the following words leaving my mouth: “Thanks for watching my purse.” It makes me feel so weird to say anything about “my purse.” And it kills me that I don’t even have to think of saying it. It just naturally falls out of my mouth, as if I’ve been using bodyguards for my purses for decades. What has happened to me? What am I turning into? I made it through the world for 55 years, never owning– or wanting to own– a purse. And now, not only did I have to have this one, I constantly worry about its location and safety– like it’s a kid or a pet. How did I turn into a purse lady?
Last night when Suzanne and I left CORBIN’S, we walked out into a waterfall of rain we didn’t know was gonna show up. Gee, I didn’t even have my cape. I always wear a cape when we’re out on the town, but I had left it in the car because I wasn’t cold when we went in. As we leapt through the parking lot to the car through the raindrops, I suddenly became horrified and yelled, “It’s raining on my purse!!!!” I also said a swear word. (Not the really bad one. I don’t say that one.)
Hey, Helen Jr., it’s a purse, for gosh sakes! It’s not alive! 👛
Bigly gratitude for the birthday greetings y’all took the time to send my way yesterday. You make a girl o’ many ties and bow ties feel important. Y’all da bomb! I’m blessed to have big-hearted friends and readers. And I’m blessed to be fifty-damn-five.
For my Sabbath birthday, I donned balloons Bow Tie o’ the Day; sugar skeletons Cape o’ the Day; paw prints Sloggers Garden Shoes o’ the Day; and “Best. Life. Ever” Cufflinks o’ the Day. What a Day o’ the Day! And, no, your eyes are not playing tricks on you: I gave in and bought my airport saddle purse, which I call the Purse o’ My Life. I call it that because I’ve never had a purse before, and I will probably never buy another one. Once I saw the saddle purse, I could not move forward in my life without it. (I will write a post about the saddle purse saga, which I have already titled in my mind: A Tale O’ Two Purses.)
Suzanne took me to birthday brunch at BISTRO, in the SLC Avenues. I was pleased trout was on their menu. There’s nothing better than trout and eggs. Later, Suzanne made me a German chocolate birthday cake. We fully intended to invite Suzanne’s parents over to have a piece, but somehow the cake went mostly missing as soon as it got frosted. Oops! Doh!
I debated between actually going to brunch, or just sleeping in. We got home from our travels Saturday, and we were still beat. Sleeping in was only a brief thought for me though. Suzanne had made birthday brunch reservations, and I decided I better take advantage of that– since one year she completely forgot my birthday even existed. Poor Suzanne. Her sin of forgetfulness happened nearly two decades ago, and I still harass her about it every year. And for the past five years, I’ve done it in this public forum. It’s obvious I forgave her, and we can guffaw about her little faux pas. I razz her annually about it with gratitude and adoration for each and every OTHER day we’ve been together.
Since I declared yesterday to be a Pajama Day, I need to report that I did, in fact, loiter around the house in my mismatch-y pj’s and old-timey sleep hat for every minute of my Saturday. Well, I did leave the house once for about 45 seconds, for which event I changed into a striking wood-polka-dotted-pink-glitter Bow Tie o’ the Day. And, of course, I had to step into my Sloggers cow-print boots and don my harlequin-design cape for a dash to my car, to retrieve the new MUMFORD AND SONS cd I had left in there. (Oddly enough, the cd is titled DELTA.) Every Pajama Day requires tunes!
Oh, yes. I must also report that I did eat ice cream for each of my three meals, as per Pajama Day protocol. The entire TILLAMOOK tub of Caramel Butter Pecan ice cream has passed on into the vast, warm Heaven o’ my tummy. Pajama Day or not, today I’m opening up the tub of TILLAMOOK brand S’mores ice cream.
I threw together my BE MINE Bow Tie o’ the Day and my hearts Cape o’ the Day–with nicely clashing paisley, and Suzanne and I headed to Sunday brunch. It was our first time dining at TRADITION, a trendy restaurant near Liberty Park in SLC. It was a sort of pre-Valentine’s Day food outing.
Here I am, squinting into the sun, so I could do my traditional brunch selfie with the restaurant’s name in the photo.
Finding parking was a pain because the place was busy, and snow filled the gutters. It was fortunate we had reservations. In fact, Suzanne finally dropped me off at the door to hold our reservations while she searched hither and yon for a parking spot. She found one and promptly got stuck in the snow, whereupon two good samaritans (2 of the 3 Nephites?) descended to push her out of her dire straits. She finally got a not-so-snowy spot, and into the restaurant she breezed. And I say “breezed” because the wind literally blew her in through the doorway.
The restaurant’s decor was simple and modern, but it was clearly not a place you could have a conversation. Everyone seemed to be yacking, but I have no clue how they understood each other. Suzanne and I yelled our conversation and still had to repeat most of what we said. I am not exaggerating. The din reminded me of a full school lunchroom. It was worse than that, though, because school lunchrooms are larger, so people and their conversations are more spread out.
And how was the food at TRADITION? I had the maple and oatmeal crusted chicken, and sourdough pancakes. You know how I like to try new food at new places. I want to like whatever new dish is on the plate in front of me. At the very least, I want my meal to be edible. Thumbs up on the chicken. Thumbs down on the pancakes. And they sounded yummy. Not! Suzanne and I aren’t opposed to eating at the place again, if for some reason we find ourselves in the neighborhood, but we wouldn’t go out of our way to return. We won’t end up there because we get a craving for the food.
Maybe as I’m growing older, my taste buds are becoming less adventurous. Maybe they are harking back to my younghood. I’m beginning to want the same old familiar food, over and over. Of course, I can’t get any of Mom’s food anymore, so I mean the next lower level of the same old, simple food. I like my steak, pizza, tuna sandwiches, spaghetti. I mean– funeral potatoes never sound like a bad idea to me anymore.
My current pet peeve about most finer restaurant menu’s is that aioli is everywhere. Lemon-insfused aoili. Spice-infused aioli. Garlic-infused aioli. Pomegrante-infused aioli. Oh, please! “Infused” is basically a fancy word for “flavored.” And “aioli” is mayonnaise.
I hereby inform all dining establishment owners: Your whatever-infused aioli does not need to be on every food creation you offer. You also do not need to charge a buck more because you print this exotic-sounding item on your menu. If you see me coming, whatever I order, hold the aioli. I will be the one in the cape and bow tie. If you value my patronage, DO NOT DRIZZLE AIOLI ON, IN, OR AROUND MY FOOD! I can bring my own mini bottle of mayo with me to your establishment if that will help you out.
