Category: Face masks

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Paintin’ The Town

We had a theatrical night on the town last week when we went to see HAMILTON again. Before the show, we ate a luscious dinner at Tin Angel, which is located inside the Eccles Theater building. Suzanne ordered wild salmon, while I got the encrusted braised spare ribs. For dessert, we split a slice of spiced pumpkin roll filled with cream cheese frosting, and covered in caramel and chocolate. Yes, it was yummy.

Y’all might recall that we had first seen HAMILTON a couple of years ago, after which I gave my review in a TIE O’ THE DAY post. My review was simply this: “It was a little too sing-y and dance-y for my taste.” The truth is, that’s my review for almost all musicals. I can appreciate a well-done musical production, but I’m partial to plain old words. I prefer the spoken word on the stage. Having said that, I will admit that I enjoyed HAMILTON tremendously this time around. The first time I saw it, my brain was filled with all the excessive hype about it. This time, I knew what I was in for, and I could simply watch without any expectations. HAMILTON was still too sing-y and dance-y for my taste, but as I sat in my seat and let the show just wash over me, I was enthralled. I had a good time.

Because I am who I am, Suzanne must always have her antenna up for any sign of my misbehavior. The Eccles Theater ushers carried little “please, wear your mask” hand-held signs. If an audience member were to remove their mask during the production, an usher was supposed to quietly walk up to the maskless person and politely wave the sign in front of their face. I wanted so badly to take a photo of it happening to someone, but everyone in the audience was good and kept their masks on. As the night wore on, Suzanne could feel me wanting nothing more than to lower my mask, for the sole purpose of having an usher shove a sign in my face, so I could snap a photo of it happening. I don’t know exactly how she knows when I’m plotting to be bad, but she does. She gave me “the look,” and I immediately abandoned any plans I had for misbehaving with my face mask.

Face Mask o’ the Evening was covered in X-mas holiday mutts. I exercised my right to be thematically appropriate by wearing a jumbo Bow Tie o’ the Day depicting The United States Constitution. It was a spot-on choice for HAMILTON. Oddly, not one person who saw me at the theater mentioned my Constitutional bow tie. Nor did they comment on the funeral potatoes 2002 Olympic pin I wore in my lapel. But do you know what part of my attire I was explicitly complimented on by a number of folks throughout the evening? It was my green Nike golf hat! One woman told me the hat looks good on me and that I wear it well—whatever that means. Yeah, my thirty-year-old, seen-in-post-photos-all-the-time hat got more compliments than my incredibly cool and infrequently worn U.S. Constitution Bow Tie got. And while at HAMILTON, to boot! Weird.

I enjoyed HAMILTON more the second time around.
My lapel pin is a 2002 Olympic pin depicting funeral potatoes.
At Tin Angel, I had the braised short ribs in a pastry, atop mashed potatoes.
Suzanne patiently waits for her wine to show up.
My over-tired Saddle Purse fell asleep before the production had even begun.
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A Visit With The Queen

One day last week, we headed to Delta to spend some time with Mom at Millard Care and Rehab. For the trip, I donned my Santa-hatted scottie dog Bow Tie o’ the Day. I wore a Christmas-camo Face Mask o’ the Day as well.

Mom was in fine form while we were there. Her humor remains intact, as does her feistiness. The details of her stories change or sometimes get completely lost, but the gist of each story still comes through loud and clear. She is, as always, a ball of fun and generosity. As Suzanne and Skitter and I were leaving her, we walked Mom to the care center’s beauty shop, so she could get her hair done. I mask-kissed Mom and told her I loved her, and I thanked her for everything. I thanked her for my whole life. As I turned to leave her, she said to me, “You’re a good daughter.” And, like the smart-ass she taught me to be, I said, “Well, I’ve always tried to stay out of jail for you as much as I could.” She winked at me and she thanked me for that. We left each other laugh-crying—just as it should be.

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I’m A Jolly Slacker This Year

This photo is more documentation of a somewhat rare happening: my neck is not be-decked with any neck-cessories. I figured the bow tied deer on my Face Mask o’ the Day and the bow tie on my t-shirt’s gingerbread dude sufficiently combine into a slew of Bow Ties o’ the Day, in order to make up for my own neck’s nakedness.

I’ve been bad, folks. I’ve been shirking my TIE O’ THE DAY holiday duties this December. First, I didn’t even attempt my annual task of wearing all the holiday neckwear I can possibly fit into the month. And then, I have gone whole days without posting any neckwear at all—whether Christmas or otherwise. I dunno what’s up with me, but I’m not in the Christmas groove. Excuse my French, but I’m just half-assing it this year. I don’t think it has anything to do with my bipolar pendulum. Nor does it seem to have anything to do with my on-going recovery from my pancreas surgery in October. (My Hanky Panky is healing up right on schedule, although my stamina still doesn’t have much stamina to it.) I’m not reeking of bigly bah humbug. There’s nothing overly tragic going on in my life. Still, I just seem to have gradually opted out of the holiday hustling and bustling for some reason. Indeed, I’m quite passionless about the 2021 holiday season. The reason for this is a complete mystery to me. And I’ve decided it’s a mystery I’m not going to worry about right now—except that I feel guilty about possibly letting down my TIE O’ THE DAY readers who tune in here regularly to see the eccentric array of festive Christmas neckwear I so freely and obnoxiously offer up for y’all’s viewing pleasure. Forgive my current slacking, but I think I’m going to roll with this laggard vibe a little longer. In fact, I’m rather enjoying being a temporary slug and accomplishing very little of consequence—for a brief time anyway. That sounds sort of like a vacation, eh? Maybe that’s all I needed.

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Rudolph and I Both Have Red Noses Today

Here I am in my fave pajama bottoms. The Grinch is one of my fave fictional characters. I generally like villains in stories, especially if they eventually see the error of their ways and decide to try to make bigly changes in themselves accordingly. When I read fiction or watch movies, or just watch actual human beings live, I am usually drawn to shady characters with struggling souls. They are the ultimate underdogs. They are usually trouble incarnate. They certainly aren’t boring. I secretly cheer for them to gain enough scraps of insight to make a choice to rise above their tendencies to self-destruct. Whether causing harm to themselves and/or others, the fight is on to define what higher/lower principles the character is—or is not—made of. Causing harm to the self or causing harm to others are, inevitably, the same thing. In the end, everybody involved with a villain is somehow injured. Everybody gets “schooled,” as they say. Which means everybody involved gets taught a valuable lesson. We read it. We see it. We can tell someone else what the lesson of a story is.

But do we apply the lesson to ourselves? Do we benefit from it and learn it deeply, for use in the fight for our own souls? I’d like to say that we do. And sometimes, some people do take a lesson or two to heart. They incorporate lessons learned by others into their lives—moving seemingly easily from one wise choice to the next. But so often, we like to read these stories and watch these stories on tv or at the movies—then leave any valuable lessons the story might conveniently offer us right where we found them.

A lot of us are kinda dopey in this respect: We seem to prefer to make our own mistakes, despite any lessons we’ve watched other people—fictional or human—make and learn from, throughout all of history. In fact, as I’m thinking more about it right at this moment, it seems to me that many of us are downright very, very, very dopey. Hopelessly dopey, in fact. We make the same dang mistakes over and over even in our own lives, as if human beings are brand new here on the planet and haven’t learned a bloody thing. We’re ridiculous. We’re so ridiculous that writers and artists continue to look at us and see even more stories to write about the absurdity of our continual refusal to learn from our mistakes. They write books and tv shows and movies about us making bad choices—stories which we pay bigly bucks to read, watch, and NOT LEARN FROM. This evidence suggests we are addicts, hooked on our mistakes. We must like our mistakes. We’d rather make monstrous mistakes than learn something from anybody who has already learned the lessons from experience. We bark out: “Ain’t nobody gonna show me how to make wise choices!” Perhaps we should reconsider that impulse. Perhaps we should learn. But we’re very dopey dopes—so we won’t.🤠

And that’s the end of my TIE O’ THE DAY’s cynical sermon. 🤓

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Shoppin’ For Christmas Gifties

In my humble estimation, this jumbo holiday Bow Tie o’ the Day is stark and quietly gorgeous. It evokes the chill and darkness of December nights, leading up to Christmas. It reminds me of bringing in shopping bags from the car, under the dark evening sky. In those jolly bags was the resulting haul of newly purchased gifts, after a busy day of seeking out the exactly right present for each name on my personal naughty-or-nice list.

While out shopping for a few X-mas gifts on Saturday evening, I managed to find myself staring up longingly at a certain scented candle. The candle scent? Maple glazed donut! I thought seriously about stealing a package of matches from another aisle, and lighting up that candle right there in the store—for my own personal smelling pleasure. But my brain kicked in and promptly overruled the desires of my olfactory sense. I decided I didn’t really like the idea of being arrested for shoplifting a match and creating a public nuisance by arson—just so I could smell the mouth-watering aroma of artificial maple-glazed donuts. I did seriously contemplate it for a flash of a second, though. Alas! I am a failed criminal, yet again. In the end, I did the right thing. I settled for breathing-in the existing odor of the Target store in which I stood. Sometimes I dislike following the straight-and-narrow. 🔥🤡

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And Another Ugly Sweater T-shirt

I spent my Friday night on the town at Huntsman Cancer Hospital last night, for one more “last” post-surgery CT Scan. The hospital was good to me throughout my October stay, but I’m sick of seeing the place. In a healthy passive-aggressive fit of fashion, I walked right in through the doors of that hospital with all the COVID-19 I own: my COVID-19 Face Mask o’ the Day. The virus does have a snowflake-ishly festive look to it. I wore another of my pre-printed ugly sweater t-shirts, which wears its own Christmas Tie o’ the Day. God bless us, every one!

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An Ugly T-shirt O’ The Season

This Bow Tie o’ the Day is pre-printed right onto my pre-printed ugly sweater t-shirt. Suzanne recently crocheted my new red beanie. And my Red-nosed Rudolph Face Mask o’ the Day is one of my very fave masks in our Christmas collection. 😷🎄

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My Tiniest Chuck Brown X-mas Tree

With a jumbo Bow Tie o’ the Day covered in wrapped and be-ribboned presents, I present my munchkin-est Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It stands at just under a mini-majestic 10 inches tall. Its singular ornament is a milkweed pod creation by my grandma, Zola Walker Wright. She made it in the early 70’s, and it is indeed the beauteous Zola whose photograph adorns this particular ornament. She made similar photo-personalized milkweed pod ornaments adorned with pictures of each member of the the family. When she and my grandpa, Walter, decorated their X-mas tree with all the milkweed pod faces, it both figuratively and literally became a family tree. I still have my precious Zola-made, milkweed pod face-ornament. It is securely stored away somewhere so secret and safe in our garage that even I can’t find it. 🤓🎁

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A Vehicular Decision

Channeling the spirit of Dad, while ordering a truck.
I haven’t yet given this baby a name. But I’m working on it.

I channeled Dad in order to make a final decision about purchasing the new truck I’ve been eyeing. Dad knew his trucks. Also, Dad always had a red or blue hanky dangling from his back pocket, so I wore a hanky-esque Face Mask o’ the Day to the car dealership yesterday. I doubled-down with the black in my Bow Tie o’ the Day and the yellow in my shirt—the two colors signifying the bees Dad expertly cared for in his life-long work.

I picked up Suzanne from her office and took her on a test-drive in my potential auto acquisition. Suzanne’s tummy gets hyper-queasy when riding in bouncy vehicles like my old jalopy truck, so I wanted to make sure she could stomach the ride in this new vehicle. If she couldn’t relax and enjoy the truck’s ride, I would not even entertain the idea of acquiring this truck candidate. At some point during the test-drive—as I drove, and as Suzanne played with all the gadgets and controls in the cab—Suzanne seemed to be remarkably pleased with the level of smoothe-icity of the truck’s ride. Suzanne’s perfectly settled stomach was saying, “Yes!” to the truck. Consequently, I made my bigly decision to buy the 2022 Ford Maverick—and in my kind of flashy color, called Velocity Blue. When we finally returned the demo truck to the dealership, I was grinning through my face mask as I signed my “Helen Hancock” on the necessary paperwork. Oh, happy, wallet-emptying day! 💸💸

The bad news is this: My brand new travel toy is a special order, and it will not be built and delivered to me for 2 or 3—or maybe 4 or more—months. The good news about the bad news is this: If I don’t explode to smithereens with anticipation before my truck gets here, I will have grown my patience to superpower-strength. That kind of patience comes in handy on this planet full of imperfect human beings. Patience, I fervently believe, is the next best quality to kindness.