Category: Cufflinks

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And Lucas Drooled Non-stop

Bow Tie o’ Yesterday Afternoon had a baby shower to attend with us. Of course, I chose to wear one of my infant-size bow ties.

Suzanne’s nephew, Robby, his wife Jorie, and their daughter, Brooklynn are expecting a baby boy in a few weeks. Thus, a baby shower had to be organized. Robby’s sister, Rachel, and their mom, Marjorie, created the bash at Rachel’s residence. (Remember, Marjorie is Skitter’s sleepover pal, who takes up residence at our house when Suzanne and I go out of town. Skitter loves Marjorie. As do we.)

So the baby shower for Jorie got planned and scheduled weeks ago. Even though Robby and Jorie currently live in Tucson, they were planning to be here in Utah to attend the party. Enter the unexpected hitch: Jorie was recently told she wasn’t allowed to travel until after the babe is born. Does the baby shower get canceled? Does the baby shower go on with nary an appearance from Robby, Jorie, or Brooklynn? Does the baby shower get rescheduled until after the bambino is born? Nope. Nope. And nope. The shower must go on, with all the usual suspects in attendance.

Solution: The baby shower was done by Skype– between the Rachel’s living room in Layton and the Tucson living room of the expectant family, in whose honor the occasion was thrown. Everybody could see and hear everybody. Presents for the soon-to-be-here baby boy were opened in both living rooms. Yes, it went swimmingly. In fact, I’m kinda thinking of never going anywhere ever again. I’ll just Skype myself to wherever I’m supposed to be.

Rachel and her husband, Walker, are the parents of the two tikes I’m hanging with in these photos. Neither child had any clue what a baby shower is or why it was happening in their house, but they were the Best. Party. Favors. Ever! The bigly boy is Liam. The new one is Lucas. They are happy kids.

At one point yesterday, Liam wanted me to go downstairs with him to watch him do his death-defying trampoline moves. AGAIN. I said I was going to stay upstairs with the adult folks right then, but I’d go downstairs again with him later. My answer sent Liam into a small pout, which teetered on the edge of a tantrum. The only thing I hate worse than a kid throwing a tantrum, is a kid throwing a weak-ass tantrum. Kids, if you’re gonna have a meltdown cuz you didn’t get your way, make it monstrous. Go all out.

“That’s not a tantrum,” I told Liam. “THIS is a tantrum!” And then I threw myself onto the carpet, on my belly– flailing my arms, kicking and pounding the floor, crying, and screaming. And guess what? Liam started to laugh. It works every time. Mission accomplished. Kid’s tantrum transforms into laughter before it can become a Category 5 storm.

And that brings me to the reason I just had to choose bowling pin/bowling ball ‘links to be my Cufflinks o’ the Day for a baby shower. Years ago, I heard a comic– whose name I can’t recall– observe that having kids is like having a bowling alley installed in your head. After you have kids, you’ll never be able to concentrate again. Your head will pound with questions and worry. You will never again be able to relax. I found this to be one of the truer analogies– literally AND figuratively– about having kids around. Kids and bowling alley similarities: lots of alarming noises; unexpected outbursts; balls landing where they shouldn’t; the occasional body going splat on the floor; fisticuffs for no reason; machines mysteriously going kaput; Mountain Dew spilled on the floor; inexplicably dirty bathrooms; volcanic eruptions of bad language; general chaos even when it’s quiet; and stinky shoes.

That reminds me. Here’s a tip: If you’ve got a kid, you will be blessed with the odor of stinky shoes. You will be doubly blessed if you are able to follow the odor and locate the shoes. DO NOT THROW THEM IN THE GARBAGE CAN! If your kid notices the shoes are missing, your kid will follow the scent and retrieve them. No, when you find the smelly culprits YOU MUST BURN THEM! YOU MUST ANNIHILATE THEM! They will find their way back into your house if you do not destroy them completely.

BTW Hey, check out the ribbon bow tie atop the Cake Made o’ Diapers. The bow tie was a special decoration at the baby shower, crafted just for me to see. Suzanne’s family knows me so well. They had a bit of extra ribbon after they finished making the “cake” and they thought of me. I love them.

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Vacation Posts Ahead For Days

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.

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Someone Call The Golf Carts

If I’m wearing my band-aid Ties o’ the Day, I must have caused some damage to my mortal coil. And I did. Golf carts Cufflinks o’ the Day had to rescue me though, cuz I don’t have ambulance cufflinks.

Let me say this: everything is Skitter’s fault. My recovery from my late-June surgery at Huntsman was extraordinary for the first seven months, and then February happened. In the last three weeks I seem to be sabotaging my recovery– all for Skitter. First, I was nearly skewered through my scar by the end of a roll of wrapping paper I ran into, as I left the pantry where I had gone to get a treat for Skitter.

Second, Skitter got chased by a bared-teeth dog, and I ran to save The Skit from a potential lightweight boxing and biting bout with a bully of a strange dog. I should not have run, ladies and gentlemen, but I had to save Skitter. My well-healing innards got jostled in all kinds of wrong ways while I ran. No permanent damage was done, but my guts feel weird in a bunch of new ways.

And third, I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Skitter has had some weird kidney things going on, resulting in occasional incontinence. She seems to be okay now, but we didn’t want to leave her roaming free in the house to possibly make puddles Saturday night when we went to Park City. We put her in her beddy-bye crate she loves, turned on “her” tv and a light, and gave her a chew. We have never left her alone in the house in her crate before. Ever. She has always had the whole house to party in when we’ve gone out. Skitter was fine, I’m sure. I, however, was a nervous wreck.

Anyhoo… When Suzanne and I entered the garage, I bolted into the house and up the stairs to Skitter’s crate to get her outside to potty ASAP. I unlatched her crate door and out she flew as if she hadn’t had access to potty grass in months. She zipped down the stairs, as did I. I never zip down the stairs, especially since surgery. But zip, I did, for Skitter’s bladder’s sake.

Until I got to the third step from the bottom. I tripped over one of the shoes I was wearing. (I’ve actually called the shoes “my funeral shoes” since I bought them fifteen years ago. I’ll explain why in another post.) I was briefly airborne, and then I landed on a storage bin I’m glad I hadn’t managed to put away yet. I landed on the top edge of the bin with my left ribs, directly opposite my scar. My left knee hit the floor at the same time. I broke the fall completely with my right palm on the floor– which didn’t hurt my hand but jammed my rotator cuff I had recently made usable again after two months of putting it through physical therapy.

I appear to be fine. But I think I might have broken or bruised a rib or two. It hurts like hell, and I can’t sleep on that side. I can breathe, so I doubt I punctured a lung. Fortunately, my surgery innards don’t feel newer and different-er pain than before I fell– just their usual tugs and pulls o’ healing. I’ve scheduled a doctor appointment for Friday, and I’m also not afraid of emergency rooms, if I should need to visit one. (Next week I’ll be a traveler, so I gotta be fine for that.)

Skitter eventually got pottied, and she had not made a puddle in her crate while we were off living it up in Park City. Score!

Earlier this week I showed you a photo of Suzanne’s scuffed face, and explained about her klutzosity. She is still the klutz in the family, by far. I have no idea why I’ve started joining in the klutz games with her though. I admire so many of Suzanne’s finer qualities, and I try to emulate them. I am not happy about emulating her klutz quality.

All I know for sure is that if I hadn’t taken off my wintry cape in the garage the minute I got home from Park City Saturday night, my attached cape would have thrown me into superhero mode as I tripped, and I would have been able to fly downstairs instead of fall splat. Perhaps I should wear a cape 24/7 from now on, to thwart any possible klutzing activities I might find myself getting into. Oh, you know how I’d hate always wearing a cape.

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Solid Ground Is Suzanne’s High-wire



Red and black Tie o’ the Day, with Chupa Chups lollipops Cufflinks o’ the Day, are pleased to sponsor Suzanne’s face update:

Suzanne says she’s okay. She says her scraped up face only hurts when she wears it. (Her pic in yesterday’s post still amuses and saddens me, simultaneously.) All I know is that the state of her face did not stop her from spending Sunday and Monday ironing fabric and cutting it into hundreds of one-and-a-half-inch strips with which to make yet another a quilt top. Suzanne creates a quilt top, therefore she is fine.

Now she’s off to work, where– when asked about her face– she will make up some tall tale about how I did it to her, so she won’t seem like such a klutz to her colleagues. And then she’ll finally tell them the real story of her innate inability to walk safely and her natural ability to trip over air. Everyone will laugh, including Suzanne, and then they’ll all get back to running the school district where they spend their careers working to improve public education for our children, despite the Utah State Legislature’s meddling and unwillingness to provide the necessary funds to pay for what public schools need. At least the Legislature has plenty of money for a new prison we don’t need. Just sayin’.

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Bad Hairs And Good Condiments

Whew! I’m glad Valentine’s season is over. I’m sick of the mushy, smoochy, lovey-dovey attitude we’ve all had to have. Now we can finally go back to arguing with friends and family, and not loving our neighbors. We can resume being rude and ill-tempered to strangers. The pressure is off to pretend we’re nice people. I feel better already.🤡

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I took condiment Cufflinks o’ the Day to sit with Suzanne for lunch at her office– just in case she needed ketchup and/or mustard on her yogurt. She did not. But it’s good to be prepared even if you’re not an official Boy Scout.

While I was at her office watching Suzanne eat, I informed her it’s time for her to help with my stoopid hairs. Some days, I’m just gonna put her in charge of my head fur. Lower your expectations though, because I haven’t had even a trim since May, as per your votes. Suzanne will only be able to do what she can do with the mop I’ve got. She is not a miracle worker with hairs, although she is a miracle worker regarding everything else.

I’m sure the hairdos will mostly end up silly, and maybe even mystifying. What’s new? I had to make Suzanne a deal though, to get her to be my hairstylist. She made me promise to NEVER let y’all vote on anything to do with my head hairs again.

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Dinner And A Chandelier

Bow Tie o’ Last Night had a fantastic Valentine’s Day dinner at THISTLE & THYME. The restaurant is located at the U of U Marriott Hotel, which is also where this Dale Chihuly glass chandelier hangs in the atrium. You gotta see it in person to get the beguiling enormity and complexity of the piece. You can see from one of these photos that Suzanne couldn’t look away from it for long enough to have her picture snapped. But the side of her head looks nice.

THISTLE & THYME has existed for less than a year, and it was our first time chowing there. We’ll be going back though. Suzanne’s scallops were luscious, and my tenderloin steak was nummy as all get-out. There are a couple of things on the menu we’d like to try. We had a tough time deciding what interesting dish to order, so we went with their special Valentine’s Day four-course feast. We’re going back for the meatloaf w/ tomato jam, and for the candied bacon. We’ve gotta give those a taste.

Our appetizer was ingenious and delectable. Imagine this: a tater tot, topped with a slice of salmon, topped with creme fraiche, topped with caviar. Who’da thunk it? It was smashing. (I am so mad at myself for not taking a pic of the creation.) A tater tot has more potential for tastiness than I have heretofore realized. And it was so incredibly cute, sitting in its minuscule dish all by it’s awesome tiny self.

Check out the Post-it Note decor I created on one of our living room walls for the day. Hearts, flowers, lips, and a couple of diamond rings. I love Post-it Notes beyond measure, but not necessarily the normal square ones.

Also, note my candy heart Lapel Pin o’ Last Night and Cufflinks o’ Last Night. With all my candy heart-design accessories, not only did my attire have a clear theme which actually fit the occasion, they made my look the most matchy I’ve dressed myself in years. It felt odd.

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Hershey’s Kisses Are Good, But They’re Not Real Kisses

The company I buy most of my bow ties from (Beau Ties LTD) names each design of its bows. Bow Tie o’ the Day’s name is KISS GOLD, because it is based on Gustav Klimt’s painting called THE KISS, a photo of which I’ve provided here. (And look, there’s a cape involved in the painting’s smooch.) Cufflinks o’ the Day provide mini lips, for added thematic detail. After I got dressed, I made one of the lips links give Skitter a kiss, and it was about the right size for her lips. Note: I don’t usually make my cufflinks kiss Skitter on the lips.

Because it’s almost Valentine’s Day, I should say something about kisses. But I’m at a loss as to how to begin or end writing about a kiss. There is so much to say, and yet no pile o’ words comes close to approximating how it feels to experience kisses. Like the kiss from your soulmate. Or how it feels to kiss your baby for the first time. Or how it feels to give your crying teenager an it’ll-get-better kiss, after they experienced an unfairness at school. Or how it feels to kiss a beloved parent’s forehead for the last time, before the casket lid is closed. I could go on. There are infinite kinds of kisses, and they can mean infinite things. Sometimes a single, solitary kiss can express a multitude of meanings, layer upon layer.

But about kissing or about being kissed, or about what a kiss even is exactly– I dunno. I am a writer, and all this “kiss” stuff is one topic I know I don’t have the skills to write about in a way that could possibly say what I want to say, and say it in the way I want to say it. Kisses leave me speechless, which is probably the most accurate, graceful thing I can say about kissing.

Having praised all kisses, I will now present the exception that proves the rule (at least for me). Here goes: Slobbery kisses on the cheek from aunts are yucky! The horror! The horror! (Not all my aunts, but most.) When we’d go visit an aunt or an aunt would come to our place, the first moment that aunt would see me, I could see it coming. I’d hide, I’d duck, I’d bob-and-weave but I couldn’t dodge the slobbery aunt kisses.

“Aunt Kiss Slobber” never dried. You were always somewhere a paper towel or tissue wasn’t handy, and you didn’t want that kiss goop anywhere on your sleeve. But you didn’t want to wipe it off with your hand because you knew you could never wash your hand completely clean of it– no matter how long and roughly you scrubbed. It would forever feel like it was there, sticky and ewwwww. Forget about your cheek. It’s toast. There’s no saving it. It’s just plain invisibly scarred for time and all eternity.

Decades ago when I was a wee one, up Oak City Canyon for a family gathering, I received an aunt kiss so wet I knew I would surely die of gross. I ran to the creek, grabbed the first leaves I could find, and used them to wipe, wipe, wipe that goo off my face till it hurt. I dunked my head in the water, holding it under as long as I could stand it. My cheek stung like the dickens and I was sure the aunt kiss had eaten clean through my cheek to my teeth. But nope. The leaves I’d grabbed to wipe it off were stinging nettle. I was too young to know my canyon foliage yet. [Do not misunderstand me: I loved my aunts, just not their over-the-top cheek kisses. Even now, I’d choose stinging nettle over an aunt slobber.]

When you become an aunt, you understand the impulse to cover your nieces and nephews in kisses and hugs. When you become an aunt, you automatically receive The Calling: you are endowed with the aunt power that makes it impossible for nieces or nephews to dodge your hugs and kisses. Despite the Aunt Calling, the memory of slobbery aunt kisses has always haunted me. As a result, I have never given a slobbery aunt kiss. I get a gold star for that.

As far as slobbery aunt kisses go, my recommendation to young nieces and nephews all across the planet is this: Since you’re never going to escape your aunts’ kisses, position yourself strategically in front of them, such that they end up kissing the same cheek every time. That cheek will be tainted, but you’ll still have one pure, uncontaminated cheek left for your soulmate.

BTW I know many a grandma gives slobbery kisses too. But that’s different. That is Grandma Slobber, and that’s the best.

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A Bow Tie Begins The Countdown To Valentine’s Day

Banana Cufflinks o’ the Day are fruitly whimsical, while red-and-gold, elegant Bow Tie o’ the Day begins a week of Valentine-y neckwear.

Valentines can be for everyone you love, but they are primarily for the one you love in the Cupid sort of way. If you haven’t yet made your Valentine’s Day plans for you and your one-and-only, you better hop to it. Time’s running out, and V-Day matters.

Should you treat your flame like every day is Valentine’s Day? Yes, you should. But daily life requires we do other things– like go to work, take care of the kids, do our taxes, get the car aligned, etc.. So it is imperative that you at least grab the one day a year designated for celebrating Cupid love, and make it a superb and unforgettable day for the two of you. If you stay with your soulmate the rest of your life– even if you both live long beyond your life expectancies– when you’re finally taking your leave from this planet, you’ll wish you still had more Valentine’s Days together. Trust me.

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Sabbath Stuff

First of all, that isn’t dandruff you can see in my hair. I’m liking the slicked-back hair look right now, but I cannot find a gel that doesn’t become flakey throughout the day. If anyone can suggest a product to help me out on this, please let me know. Flaking hair gel is not the look I’m trying to achieve. (I’ve tried pomades, but they’re too greasy and don’t hold my hair in place.)

I went to Provo yesterday to attend Bishop Travis’ ward. He’s always been a swell nephew. Travis is a superb speaker, and a listener can’t help but learn a lesson or eight from him, whether they want to or not. Whenever we visit Bishop Travis’ ward, I and my SWWTRN sit by his wife, Bishopette Collette. Collette always notices and comments on my bow ties and/or cufflinks, which makes me get a swelled head and causes me to feel way cooler than I really I am.

The reason I chose to wear my Skittles Bow Tie o’ the Day to church is because everybody knows you have to be prepared with a stash of little treats in Sacrament Meeting. Treats must be strategically parceled out to keep the antsy small children quiet. I’m a bigly kid and don’t need to snack at church, but I still like having the idea of candy. Just wearing the representation of candy is enough to keep me under control.

Eating mints helps shut me up and keeps me from bawling and running down the aisles too. I like to suck on mints during church meetings. I don’t know why. It’s just a habit. Mints aren’t treats though. I have proof: Kids know treats and if you give a kid an Altoid, it gets spit out almost immediately. Thus, mints are not treats.

My Rubik’s Cube Cufflinks o’ the Day are also appropriate to wear to church. Church is one of the places you can go to figure out answers to your existential questions: Why am I here? What’s the point of everything? How can I make my life have meaning? etc..

These questions and their answers are a kind of puzzle, and we have to shuffle ideas around in our heads and hearts, in order to put existential concepts together in a way that makes sense to us. As we go through difficult experiences and changes in our lives, the puzzle can get shuffled around. We find ourselves having to take it apart, make adjustments, then put it back together to make sense of it again. If we’re honest with ourselves, we can admit that we have to re-do our puzzle work to some degree many times. That’s called being a mortal human being.

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Dressing For Chores

All paisley, all the time. See, you can have a common thread to your outfit, while still creating the proper clashion. Hat o’ the Day, Cufflinks o’ the Day, Shirt o’ the Day, Vest o’ the Day (which I named the Pimp Vest), and– most importantly– Bow Tie o’ the Day combine to create a clash extraordinaire. I think this is some of my top work. I’m a proud momma of my fashion creation. Paisles are my fave “shape” with which to work my unmatchiness. I suppose my goal to clash makes me a non-matchmaker.

Perhaps I am overdressed for my day’s tasks. First they are all tasks I need to do at home. Cleaning, laundry, etc.. I will probably leave the house only for Skitter’s walkie. But what I’ll be spending most of my task-time doing is going through the storage bins and boxes in the garage, looking for ONE thing: a shoebox-sized box which holds half-a-dozen cassette tapes I recorded with my Grandma, Martha Anderson in 2000.

Grandma had fallen and broken her hip and shoulder. She was in the Delta hospital for a week or so before she could return to her apartment in The Sands. I stayed at the hospital with her each night. Well, Grandma must have gotten all of the sleep she would ever need in the preceding decades because she did not sleep. So we talked. At some point I started to record her stories. When I showed up at the hospital each night, I turned on the recorder and let it go. I haven’t listened to them for years. Life gets busy and you forget to do important things like that. Shame on us.

I know I still have the tapes somewhere, because I remember packing them up in Delta when we moved the contents of the Delta house up here. But I have no clue in which bin I so safely stored them. My biggest concern is that the tapes might not still be in playing condition after nearly two decades. I’ve kept them safe, but I can’t keep them safe from the passing of time. I no longer own a cassette player, but Betty/BT/Mercedes (whatever name you call my oldest sister) still has the one she got as a prize on WHEEL OF FORTUNE in the 80’s. She’s the family genealogist, so these tapes belong with her anyway.

I remember one startling moment during a night with Grandma, which I so wish had been recorded. After Grandma went back to The Sands from the hospital, I still stayed with her most nights. She stayed in a hospital bed in her living room, and I took over the couch.

One night, Grandma finally fell asleep for a few minutes. I started to nod off, when suddenly Grandma loudly said, in her sleep, “Isn’t it funny about horses? How they have sex, you know.” She stayed asleep and never uttered another word until she woke up a little later and asked me to get her some of her “cheesies.” Cheetos. Of course, I happily got her a bowl of cheesies. I did not ask her about the dream she had just had. But I really, really, really wanted to.