Category: Hats

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It’s Inevitable

I’ve been a bit bummed out the last few days, and it has nothing to do with the state of my Cranky Hanky Panky. The sweetest angel on the planet—who happens to be my very own mother, Helen Sr.—has caused me to be upset. It’s certainly nothing she’s done intentionally. She doesn’t go around agitating her family or friends, or even the few people she doesn’t necessarily care for all that much. So, what did she do that got my heart in a dither? Well, when I called to check on her at Millard Care and Rehab earlier this week, Mom had to ask me which of her kids I was. That has never happened before. This was a first, which I hoped would never happen at all. I did not like it one bit—no, sir!

To be fair, my siblings and I do all sound remarkably alike, especially on the phone. But still, I am my mother’s babiest baby, and she knows my voice. I think it should be against the law for her to not know my voice. Mom will be 91 next month, and changes like this make it feel like she is gradually moving farther and farther away from us. I feel like she is moving farther away from being the mother of her babiest baby. I hate having to deal with these complicated feelings. Logically, I understand exactly what is happening. It makes perfect sense. I know it is the Circle of Life and all of that stuff. It’s all the feel-y things that go along with these natural changes that get me stirred up.

I also know that as hard as it was for me to hear Mom tell me she didn’t recognize my voice, it was just as hard for her to have to ask me which kid I was. These changes never go just one way. We still need each other’s help to get through it. That’s called empathy. I learned it from my mother.

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In Line

Here I am, standing in the line at the pharmacy to pick up my meds. This is one line I never mind standing in, because the pharmacy line is directly across from the ice cream section of Dick’s Market. You can see it here behind me. While I wait in line, I can survey the current ice cream offerings and make my choices mentally. I’m accomplishing two things at once. After receiving my rx’s, I simply grab my ice cream choices, breeze through the self-pay area, and head home to arm myself with a clean spoon. Life is good.

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Hump Day Accessories

Hump Day—or any day of the week, for that matter—can always be made better by the wearin’ o’ the sequins. Yellow sequin Bow Tie o’ the Day proves it. A cowboy hat improves one’s fashion panache, as well. No day of the week should be dreary. Express your gratitude for the fact that you’re alive by choosing accessories that show your joy at being here on the planet. To wear sequins is to give a memorable wink to all the folks you encounter in your day. Stand out. There’s nothing wrong with letting people notice you exist. Let them see you are not afraid to show up as the star in your own life. You aren’t trying to hog all the attention. You’re simply saying, “I am here—and I’m grateful for the chance to be a part of it all.” 🤠

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Just Relax

The ocean relaxes me. So do lakes and rivers and creeks and lawn sprinklers. If it’s moving water which I can sit and look at, it’ll do. Sailboats-and-lighthouses Bow Tie o’ the Day symbolizes what I miss most about living on the east coast: the easy access I had to the Atlantic Ocean. (No, this is not another post about the nudist beach in Delaware where I spent some time.) The skies and sunsets of Millard County are my spirit’s home, but the beaches of DelMarVa (Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia) somehow haunt my thoughts — in a deeply cosmic way I am still unable to articulate. I’m working on understanding and explaining it more accurately, so I’ll get back to you on that.

And speaking of relaxation — On our little foray to R. C. Willey a few days ago, I found the absolute perfect chair for Suzanne. She works long days in the salt mines of Education, and that translates into a number of aches and pains in her body. And, unlike me, she’s getting older. 🤡 Our bodies were born programmed to die, you know. The massage chair pictured here works you over from head to literal toes. When I showed it to her, she jumped right in and tried out every one of its functions. I couldn’t get her to get out of it. At some point, I had flashbacks to when my wee ones wanted to stay on the electric horse ride on the sidewalk in front of the grocery store, and they would cry and cling to the reins until you could wrangle the reins out of their sticky kid hands. I was sure Suzanne was going to have a similar tantrum if I had to drag her out of the chair. I was getting myself ready to promise her a candy bar if she’d go quietly with me to the car. I was getting ready to promise Suzanne a new toy, if she would leave the chair without me having to peel her out of it.

I so wanted to buy the massage chair for her. I checked my wallet and my pockets. I told her I left my change at home, so I didn’t happen to have the $6,499.99 on me right then. In the end, Suzanne exited the chair with her recently chair-massaged dignity, trying to act like the adult she is. I told her I’m saving for the chair in the Bee-Pig Piggy Bank. I’m sure I’ll have the necessary amount of spare change to buy it sometime around the middle of Eternity.

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A Summary Of Suzanne’s Birthday

Well, I was there in my magnetic, wood punch-hole Bow Tie o’ Suzanne’s Birthday. My beach hat alerted me to the fact that since I shaved down all my head hairs, my hats are too bigly. Hey, it’s a look, right?

We watched movies—The Shape of Water, and Babel—and ate popcorn. The birthday cake, truffles, and cookies I ordered from Milk Bar showed up on time. I installed a mammoth “57” formed with Post-it Notes on the wall, which was my feeble attempt at being artistic. When I’m trying to get my craft on, I wisely keep it as simple as possible, so I can’t screw it up into an all-out hideous decoration. The “57” wasn’t too icky.

For eats, I made clam strips for Suzanne for breakfast. And I surprised her with a dinner of Happy Meals because she makes me happy. When we lived in our SLC apartment which we called The Kingdom of Scary Yellow Carpet, in 1986, I created a hanging sculpture of empty Happy Meal boxes in our living room. So, after dinner last night, I made an attempt to recreate that hanging sculpture from the past. It brought back memories of a time when we were young and poor and always in school or working—and our hanging light fixtures weren’t nearly as nice as the ones we own now. And finally last evening, to top off her birthday, I sent Suzanne on a treasure hunt through our domicile which culminated in her uncovering a pile of what I call Chips On A Chair, as seen here. You see, although she enjoyed the expensive and luscious birthday cake, Suzanne always falls in deepest, truest love with whatever potato chip she’s with. 🤡🍟🍔🥔🎂

BTW Suzanne was overwhelmed with the birthday wishes some of y’all sent her yesterday. She says THANKS. She also thanks to y’all for reading TIE O’ THE DAY. After this many years of showing off my neckwear and telling stories, I don’t think she’d let me quit writing it even if I wanted to: it keeps me out of her hair.

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On The Last Day Of June

June is over, almost. On this final day of PRIDE Month, I must display my grandmother, Zola Wright’s colorful handiwork. She made this humongous rainbow afghan many decades ago. I like to think she made it just for me. I’m wearing her rainbow caftan, as well. The rainbow scrub cap and Bow Tie o’ the Day are my contribution, of course. Until next year, Merry PRIDE Month to y’all!

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Day #6 In My Madras Shorts: A Tyvek Suit

I’m glad the pandemic panic is slowly winding down. I’m gladdest to know that if the dang thing lingers and powers back up, I can simply slip into my Tyvek suit and pull on my madras shorts—adding a Tie o’ the Day, of course. While being safe, I can still be as stylin’ as ever.

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Hospitals, Shmospitals

Yesterday was finally my bigly lithotripsy procedure at the University of Utah Hospital. Technically, the procedure is called Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL). The word “lithotripsy” is derived from Greek words meaning “breaking stones.” (Insert joke here.) Yup, a machine called a lithotriptor pinpoints the offending calcification/stone, then zaps high energy shock waves at it to blow it to smithereens tiny enough to pass through your system and be eliminated by your body. Thank the heavens I was sedated while the pulverizing occurred. I didn’t feel a thing at the time, but I sure do now. The left side of my upper torso feels like someone beat the HELLen out of me. And it looks like it too. My ribs appear battered, bruised, and swollen. I tried to take a snapshot of the gore to post, but I couldn’t keep my left breasticle out of the picture. I decided it was best to not post that on TIE O’ THE DAY.

Anyhoo…The lithotripsy procedure itself went well, but I won’t know if the stone in my Cranky Hanky Panky was sufficiently pulverized until I go back to undergo yet another scope-down-the-gullet procedure (another ERCP). I wish I had something more definitive to tell you about whether yesterday was successful or not, but I don’t. Welcome to My So-Called Pancreatic Life.

However, I consider my day at the hospital a screaming success for two reasons—neither of which really has anything to do with my Cranky Hanky Panky. The first triumph is that, just by being ourselves, Suzanne and I made professional healthcare workers guffaw, chuckle, and snicker for about 5 hours. We didn’t mean to be entertaining. We were just entertaining ourselves in our usual banter about whatever crossed our minds, and doctors and nurses happened to overhear us. A good time was had by all, as the saying goes. At one point, one of my anesthesiologists stepped back into my room and said, “I love to hear you both laughing in here. Your conversations are so strange. That stuff about the yellow, fungal toenails was something I never even thought about.” I guess he had heard me when for some reason I said to Suzanne, “If I ever get a thick, crumbly, yellow, fungal toenail, just grab the pliers and yank it out.” Suzanne and I are highly educated gals. We think deeply. Sometimes, Suzanne and I speak about profound philosophical complexities. Apparently, we were sometimes Shakespearean stinkards, engaged in coarse—but relatively clean—conversation at the hospital yesterday.

But my ultimate triumph yesterday was the pickin’ out o’ the perfectly appropriate Tie o’ the Day. For weeks, I had been asking myself what clever neckwear I should wear to experience this new-to-me thing called lithotripsy. I was stymied. And then, when I was in The Tie Room the night before the procedure, a tie caught my eye and my wit: my cartoon “BAM, BOOM, WOW, HEY” lightning bolts and stars print kids’ tie. BAM and BOOM was exactly what the lithotriptor machine did to my torso. Tie o’ the Day was so lithotripsy-y. 👔

Before the procedure.
After the procedure.
You can never make “kindness” disappear completely.
I was feeling it.
I was proud to know I owned an appropriate Tie o’ the Day for lithotripsy. It’s a real stone smasher.
The ball-and-chain. My better half.

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Up All Night

I am so tired this morning. I won’t lie: I will be taking a long morning nap. I walked the floors last night, in what I can only describe as my own slapstick episode of the Keystone Cops. I blame my tinnitus. I blame a phone app. And I blame Suzanne. I blame everything and everyone except me.

Here’s what happened: I fell asleep the minute my head hit the pillow, so my night of rest started out just as it should have. I woke up a couple of hours later to the sound of water running. I got out of bed and walked through all the rooms on the second floor, pressing my ear to the walls, listening for running water. I could hear it everywhere and nowhere. I figured it was just my tinnitus acting up extra loudly, so I went back to bed. But the sound soon woke me up again. I investigated further and discovered the sprinklers were on outside, so that must be the culprit I was hearing. Back to bed again, I went. I wasn’t asleep for very long when the sound of water running seemed to get even louder. I looked out the windows—front and back—and saw that the sprinklers were off. I cursed my tinnitus, but I still wasn’t completely convinced I there wasn’t water running somewhere in the house. There was something not quite tinnitus-y about what I was hearing. I went downstairs to listen to all the walls I had not listened to yet. I was coming up with no answers. Finally, I crept back upstairs to try to ignore the water-water-everywhere-that-wasn’t-really-there, so I could get some shut-eye. It was 4:30 AM. The stoopid tinnitus in my head was real. The sound of water running was real, too, I tell you! I flew out of bed yet again, more determined than ever to locate the watery culprit that was causing me to lose sleep. I got down on my hands and knees while I listened to the bedroom floor. If the sound wasn’t in the walls, it had to be in the floor. And that’s when I heard the sound I was able to follow to the source. I slithered my way around the side of the bed to Suzanne’s bedside steamer trunk, upon which was her phone. Apparently, she’d had difficulty falling asleep and had decided to use her relaxation app to play water sounds to help her drift off to sleep. If I had only known! I can sleep to water sounds, if I know they are not doing water damage. It was the worry, not the sounds themselves, which had me on edge. Must. Sleep. Now.

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The Skit Is Hip

There is “cool.” And then there is “Skitter-cool.” In her hat and Tie o’ the Day, Skitter exudes cool-osity from every fur follicle. This is how The Skit faces a Monday. Since she woke up, she’s been listening to nothing but Lucinda Williams cd’s. And just what is Skitter’s fave-rave Lucinda Williams song to sing along with? “2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten,” of course. 💿🎙