Y’all know I have a one-track mind, which pretty much begins and ends with Ties/Bow Ties o’ Every Day. Some days my one-track mind is one-trackier than usual, and today is one of those days. I’m likely suffering a hangover from the final 2020 presidential debate which was last night—even though I could tolerate watching it for only a grand total of 15 minutes. Golly, I’m glad the debate farce is over for another 4 more years. Folks, whatever monstrosities exist in the world, I’m grateful to know I can always count on my mighty neckwear to revive my troubled soul. Every person needs something ever-unfailing in their life. Everyone needs a go-to passion. I hope you’ve found your thing, like I’ve found mine.
FYI My apologies to some of you tblog email subscribers who haven’t been getting pix with the text the last couple of posts. (I hope it came through on this post.) I’m working on the technical problem, which means it might or might not be fixed at some point. Photos are showing up as they should on the website itself and on the posts relayed to Facebook, so you can find them there. I hate when technology that has always worked for me suddenly stops working, for no discernible reason. Makes me wanna put on another bow tie.
My creepy face in this morning’s photo reminded me about this photo, in which I find my visage to be almost as creepy. This snapshot is from the early 2000’s. I am shown here with my Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless, at the Pub in Delta. You can see I was at what I call “my beer-drinkin’ weight.”
I hope I don’t look like this regularly, but the creepiness is there in my eyes sometimes. They make me look like I’m hatching a plan to commit mayhem and slay zombies. With my mesmerEYEzing eyes, I could sell used cars, or hypnotize people to write-in my name for President on their ballots. Hey, I’m always in search of a new experience. Your eyelids are getting very heavy….You are getting sleeeeepy…..sleeeeepy…..
BTW When I started TIE O’ THE DAY, my Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless was hesitant to have her real name mentioned on it, even though most of y’all know her name anyway. Someone asked me recently if I think she will ever let me refer to her by her actual name, and my answer to that question is this: Even if SWWTRN says it’s okay to use her name, I won’t refer to her in any way other than SWWTRN—because after all these years, SWWTRN is now a real character on the tblog. It makes me chuckle every time I type those capital letters.
Glow-in-the-dark, spiderweb Bow Tie o’ the Day and I are patiently waiting in my truck for Suzanne to buy all the dirt Home Depot sells. I was ready to go in to the store with her, but I ended up not feeling like making the effort. As I sort of mentioned in this morning’s post, I woke up on the wrong side of bipolar today. In case you’re wondering which side—manic or depressed—is the wrong side, I can cloud things up for you about my bipolarity by saying BOTH and NEITHER. Suffice it to say I’m feeling colicky in my brain.
[It’s time for this re-post from October 2017. Enjoy.]It has happened to us all. You and Tie o’ the Day are cruisin’ in the fast lane on the freeway. Suddenly, you’re stuck behind a car traveling at a speed barely resembling motion. As you pass on the right, you see the driver: Old Man In A Hat! Yep, that guy. He’s also known as Old Man Wearing His Waistband Around His Chest. Tie gets into roady rages at slow-driving geezers. Tie has a potty mouth 🚽 👄, and a bad finger too. 🏎 Bad Tie!
A Monday always feel better if you stay in your pajamas as long as possible, perhaps all day. And popcorn Tie o’ the Day suggests you throw some popcorn in the microwave immediately after you drag your sorry butt out of bed. The sounds of popcorn-popping-in-the-microwave help keep you awake, and popcorn is as fine a breakfast as any—as long as you don’t have to set an example for any children who might be in your house. Even better, ice cream for lunch is just around the corner. I love being a grown-up.
As I’ve mentioned on TIE O’ THE DAY before, Suzanne has been nagging me for a couple of years to get a new vehicle. It’s nice of her to want me to have a new mode of transportation, and I sometimes muse on the idea of driving around in a ding-less, scratch-less, rust-less auto. But my jalopy truck—my Isuzu Hombre— is only 22 years old, and it still has a few sections of metal that haven’t yet rusted. Who cares if the keys no longer open its door locks? Who cares if the driver’s window refuses to roll down/up sometimes? Who cares if I have to sit on a pillow while driving it because the metal seat frame pokes up through a bigly hole in the seat upholstery? My car—Vonnegut Grace Pontiac Vibe —is only 13 years old, and still gets the same 34 MPG she’s gotten since day 1. Who cares if it rides like it’s always driving on a gravel road—despite regular balancing and alignment? I just don’t yet see the need to abandon my old horseless carriages yet.
I decided to compromise with Suzanne on this issue: I got new license plates for Vonnegut Grace Vibe, and they showed up this week. I tossed around a few different ideas before ordering my vanity plates. According to the DMV website, somebody in UT already has BOW TIE, so that was out. I settled on BOWETRY, a combination word in honor of my two passions: bow ties + poetry. It is pronounced to rhyme with the word “poetry.” And the license plate really does make my car look like a brand spankin’ new classic car. A little.
Wearing my new flat-bill, hip-hop hat is almost the same as wearing a bow in my hair. It is our Bow Tie o’ the Day.
The left side of my face is settling down. The gift of swelling the stinging wasps gave me is almost gone. My face is just about back to my usual old lady puffiness. Some of the sting sites are highly visible to the naked photo eye, but not all of them. Trust me—I know where all the stingers made contact because those sites still itch. And that leads me to Benadryl. I am not fond of Benadryl. It makes me drowsy. It doesn’t make me tired enough to be able to nap, which would be fine with me. It just makes me too drowsy to read, or write, or drive, or follow the plot of whatever show I’m watching on TV. I’m trying to make today a Benadryl-free day. Here’s hoping the itchiness does not overcome me. I need to get some work done.
I am a bit sad to see the swelling on my face go down. I have had such fun with it. In fact, for a couple of days I felt like my dad. You know how “Dad humor” is. We’ve all experienced the same “Dad humor” from our fathers. We’ve watched our fathers beat a joke to death. It happens like this: 1. Dad says a clever, jokey thing. 2. Dad tries to fit the clever, jokey comment into every conversation with every person he runs into that day—or for a few days. 3. Dad tells every person to whom he tells the jokey thing, about everybody else he said it to, and he describes what their reactions were. 4. The clever, jokey comment dies away when “Dad” thinks of a new clever, jokey comment. And the cycle repeats.
So how does this relate to my feeling like Dad because I’ve had a swollen left eye and right ear? The day after I was attacked by the wasps, I had to go to Dick’s Market to do some grocery shopping and pick up some prescriptions. The folks who work at Dick’s know me. The minute I walked in, a cashier nearly ran me down asking what happened to my face. I automatically said, “I got on Suzanne’s nerves.” I passed three more store employees on my way to the pharmacy, and I said similar clever, jokey comments to each one when they asked me what happened. Their reactions were the same: Silence. Laughter. Then I move on. It was intoxicating. I realized that I was feeling Dad-mode. At the pharmacy, the pharmacists and techs all had to see the swelling for themselves. “I guess I finally irritated Suzanne beyond all reason,” I answered when they queried me about what happened. I heard the silence, then the chuckles, then a chorus of, “Yeah, right!” They know Suzanne too.
Yesterday was packed with drama, so I knew my Madam Butterfly-inspired Bow Tie o’ the Day would be appropriate for today’s post pix. You can’t get much more dramatic and operatic than Madam Butterfly.
So here’s the scoop. Here’s the reason I can’t open my left eye, use my left thumb, or wear my right hearing aid. My truck has needed a new battery since before the pandemic began. For months my truck has been sitting in the front of our house, where we look longingly at each other every day. I’ve missed my old jalopy truck, so yesterday I called AAA and asked them to bring me a battery and install it. Easy enough. But no! The kindly masked AAA dude arrived, and we chatted about our business for a minute or two, and as I unlocked the truck door, a zillion angry wasps flew out of their nest inside the door—directly at my head. The hat I was wearing protected the top of my head. My face mask protected the lower part of my face. My left eye and my right ear were the pests’ two favorite targets. Both of them were each stung at least a half-dozen times. My left thumb got stung at lease three times.
Y’all know I grew up around bees, so I know how to not panic about swarms of insects flying in my direction. I know how to stand still and let them move past me. I do not pick fights with the likes of bees and wasps and hornets, because I am allergic to their stings. But yesterday, the wasps who set up condos inside my truck refused to play by the rules. They were out to get me. There was bigly carnage, and I was it. I decided to not go to the ER because, surprisingly, my breathing remained fine. In a pandemic, I feel it’s my duty to handle my health issues on my own at home, if at all possible. But don’t think for one minute that my EpiPen isn’t beside me at all times.
Anyhoo… My truck has a new battery. It started right up for the AAA guy, who also happens to be allergic to insects bites and stings. He was valiant in the fight with the wasps, and he never got stung. I certainly gave him a bigly tip. I haven’t dared drive the truck yet myself. Suzanne wants me to call an exterminator to make sure the truck is completely wasp-less before I drive it away to find a dusty gravel road in the middle of nowhere. I should listen to her, but you know how that goes. Now that I wear hearing aids, I can do that thing called “selective hearing.” It’s amazing what my hearing doesn’t hear.
And sometimes, when I can’t decide which specific topic to write about, I just sit at my desk in the loft and do nothing but smirk at myself. Bow Tie o’ the Day patiently poses with me and my face o’ many smirks.
Ever on the cutting edge o’ fashion trends that begin and end probably only in my own mind, I have discovered that a clashing Floppy Sunhat o’ the Day and Floppy Bow Tie o’ the Day play dreamily off each other—giving the wearer a grand style of self-presentation that’s sure to pinch the eyeballs of all onlookers. I thought it was important that y’all should know that. And now y’all do. You’re welcome.
