Bat signal Bow Tie o’ the Day seemed an appropriate piece of neckwear to be the cherry on top of my Superman tank and my Suzanne-made harlequin cape—along with my madras shorts. My cow Sloggers boots are deceptively fast. Even as an old broad, I can run fast enough in them to cause my cape to fly. If you put together a truly fantastic outfit, you’ll be amazed at the powers you can utilize. I learned this fact one morning when I was 12, when I woke up late for softball practice. Practice was at 8, and I woke up at 8:07. I scurried to get dressed and grab my mitt. On the way out of the front door, I was putting an old, broken set of spurs on my tennis shoes—just for the style of it. Spurs on, I jumped on my bike with all my fashion superpowers, pedaling so fast to the softball field that I was able to get there at 7:59. I kid you not.
It was that time of year again—time for the Davis Education Foundation’s Gala, with its accompanying silent auction. This year we were treated to dinner and a screening of the movie, A Quiet Place II. This annual event is better known in our house as The Night We Spend Too Much Money On Acquiring Too Many Completely Unnecessary Things. My excuse for bidding with a vengeance is always the same: It’s for a good cause. I then spend the next year making a gallant effort to use at least some of the items I brought home from the event, so I can feel better about all the spending I’ll surely do at next year’s annual fundraiser.
And what did we walk away with from the 2021 auction after we emptied our purses? (Yes, I took the Saddle Purse to the shindig.) We ended up with a funky blue chair we don’t need, a portable grill we don’t need, a fluffy green chair I can’t wait to deliver to Gracie, and a 6 ft-long fuchsia metal cabinet which nobody on earth needs. I do love the color, but I have no idea what I’ll use it for beyond storage. It really is for a good cause, though. 💸
I’m wearing a diamond-point Bow Tie o’ the Day here as we erranded over the weekend. My Face Mask o’ the Day is the closest to my heart, with its own multitude o’ ties. Skitter is branching out with her own bold fashion statements by wearing her orange slices Tie o’ the Day curled and askew at the side of her neck. Skitter is so style-daring. It makes a neckwear mama proud.
I finally have a Cranky Hanky Panky medical procedure update. I have an appointment for a follow-up ERCP (scope-down-the-throat) on June 28 at University of Utah Hospital—to see if the lithotripsy I recently had successfully smashed my pancreatic boulder into bits and sent them on their way out of my body. I’m trying to be optimistic, but the fact that my Panky still stings makes me think the lithotripsy probably didn’t work. I won’t really know until they perform the ERCP.
I’m not complaining, but this current Hanky Panky round of appointments has taken waaaay too long. I’ve been trying to get this Panky problem solved since February. I know it’s because of the hospital backlog created by the pandemic, so I understand. But I can’t wait to get to the finish line on this particular Panky issue—even if that means having another surgery. I just want it finished. I know you’re probably sick of hearing about this seemingly never-ending saga. And I’m sick of writing about it. It just so happens to be what’s going on in my life, so we’re stuck with it as a tblog topic for a little while longer. Sorry.
Here’s an interesting thing to consider, though: My Panky appointment is on June 28. My PANCREATICODUODENECTOMY (I love writing that word) surgery was also on June 28, exactly three years ago, in 2018. You know I love a rich coincidence to think about. Is this date coincidence a sign telling me that I’ll find out at my ERCP appointment on this June 28th that I’m going to need another surgery? Or does it mean my ERCP will be the last procedure I will need this time around, because it will be as bigly a success as my PANCREATICODUODENECTOMY was? I could play this coincidence/meaning/connection game forever. In fact, I drive myself nuts with it. I can find meaning and connection, both literally and figuratively, in anything literal or figurative.
In this photo, my watermelon-y Bow Tie o’ the Day and I are waiting in line at the Dick’s Market pharmacy. Note that the ice cream aisle is directly behind me, which means I can shop for my most important food item while simultaneously waiting in line to pick up my meds.
This is the last photo which shows my left ear’s hearing device. What happened to it is a complete mystery to me, and I have been searching for it since I noticed it missing on Friday afternoon. Since discovering it was not in my ear, I have been unable to focus on anything but finding it. I have looked and looked and looked for it until my looker is sore. I’ve scoured my truck and my car. I have looked in all the potted plants in the house. I have checked the household garbage cans: under the kitchen sink, in the bathrooms, in the loft, in the bedrooms, and in the Tie Room. I even emptied the official bigly recycling and garbage cans, one stinky item at a time, searching for my hearing device. That was an experience I hope I never need to repeat. I had no luck finding my target.
I have swept the floors. Suzanne and I have lifted furniture to pull apart the dust bunnies beneath, in search of my little hearing gadget. I have sorted through our garden gravel near where I park my truck—although I did not rake the gravel like I had to do to find Dad’s lower dentures back in the day, as I wrote about a few weeks ago.
My next step is to check to see if someone might have found it at Dick’s and turned it in to customer service. It’s not just about the cost of replacing my hearing aid, it’s also about solving the mystery of how I lost it in the first place. I’m intrigued, and I will not give up the search. The hunt is personal, now.
As I was finishing up this post, it suddenly dawned on me that my left ear’s hearing aid is the same one the wind blew out of my ear in Farmington a few months ago. I wonder if, once it got a taste of freedom by flying around in that wind, its little gadget soul just could not face a life of captivity in my ear every day for the rest of its life. Somehow, it might have leapt to its escape. Now, that’s something I can understand.
This past weekend, my nephew, Jeff, tied the nuptial knot with the beauteous Sharida. If my aging memory is correct, the first time I met Sharida was exactly four years ago this week, when she and Jeff visited Mom in her hospital room at Utah Valley Hospital—where Mom was recovering from emergency hip replacement surgery. I was not at all surprised to see Jeff walk into Mom’s hospital room. He is Mom’s first grandchild, and he adamantly maintains he is her favorite grandchild. (Of course, each of Mom’s grandkids claims to be her favorite.) But the fact that Jeff brought Sharida to join us in the chaos of Mom’s High-flying, Broken Hip Trick Adventure spoke volumes to me about how Jeff and Sharida thought about each other. Sharida’s concern for Mom was all it took for her to win me over.
Anyhoo… Suzanne and I drove to Ogden for the wedding celebration, which was held on the rooftop at Ogden River Brewing—a place which did not yet exist when we lived in Ogden. It was a fine-and-funky venue for the event. I can verify that the Diet Coke was good. Suzanne can verify that the wine was of yummy vintage. Oh, and Suzanne liked the peach cobbler, too. My one sadness of the day is that I missed running into the Father of the Groom, my longtime bro-in-law, Kent. Fortunately, my sister, Mercedes/BT, sent me a photo of Kent being his cute self in his neckwear. I have included the snapshot here. Kent’s wearing a paisley tie, in honor of me and my love for paisles. I regret that Kent and I missed out on gawking, in person, at each other’s neckwear choices.
For my own Tie o’ the Day, I chose to don my “usual” wedding tie. It’s kissy and romantic. I haven’t worn it to every wedding get-together I’ve attended since I bought it in the late 80’s, but I’ve probably worn it to more than half of them.
It is sometimes tricky for me to dress for events like wedding celebrations. It’s not that I don’t have anything appropriate to wear. It’s that I”m…well,…me. I have too much to wear, and—if left to think of only of myself—it would be kinda easy for me to devise a way to wear all of it at once! But somebody else’s wedding reception is not my show. I don’t want to stand out from anybody’s event’s purpose in any way whatsoever. On the other hand, after all these years of expressing my fashion ingenious-ness, I do have a style reputation to uphold. People expect a little flash-and-chuckle from me, in terms of my attire—whether I’m at a funeral, or at church, or at an Elton John concert. If I’m not wearing some piece of clothing or an accessory that is—for lack of a better word—LOUD, people tend to worry that I’m not feeling well. I have to carefully calculate to find the style balance between being who I am and being part of a family/community gathering.
My style mission is further complicated by my Bigfoot-like/Loch Ness Monster-like way of attending bigly events. Ask anyone who has ever thrown a party I’ve been invited to: I’m there, and then I’m suddenly gone. Sometimes, the only way people are completely convinced I even attended a shindig is that they tend to remember seeing something weird or excessively cool about what I was wearing. Someone will ask, “Was Helen there?” Then someone else will say, “I think so, because I remember seeing chicken-print Sloggers shoes under a bathroom stall door.” And then, someone else will say, “I’m pretty sure she showed up, because I saw someone wearing a cape out on the patio.” They tabulate the eccentric evidence, and eventually come to the conclusion that I had, in fact, been wherever I was invited to be.
The Tie o’ the Day. I have worn it to decades of wedding celebrations.The beautiful people. My nephew, Jeff, and his bride, Sharida. They like each other. A lot.The wedding celebration was held on the roof at Ogden River Brewing.My soda pop Socks o’ the Day and my animal-print Sloggers o’ the Day.The Father of the Groom wore a paisley tie just for me. Thanks, Nuk.Suzanne enjoyed the view by the river and a tomato or two.And the sunset view to the east of the party was dreamy too.
Bow Tie o’ the Day and I went on a bit of a boring, pre-weekend erranding escapade today, which had nothing to do with shopping for new clothing. But as I erranded—from far across a crowded discount store—I spied out of the corner of my eye, this lonely SpongeBob SquarePants shirt on a clearance rack. You know I had to have it. More specifically, I had to have the embroidered SpongeBob Squarepants with his signature red Tie o’ the Day. Ah, the unmitigated exuberance of running across psychedelic striped attire I can’t possibly ever actually need! I feel like I’m wearing Lucky Charms marshmallows. I so win bigly!
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.
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. 💿🎙
The LDS Primary songs of my youth continue to make it impossible for me to wallow in tedious labor. “Saturday” is a song that has gone through my head every Saturday for more than fifty years now. I can’t help it. It’s just there, being the soundtrack of one entire day of every week. Some people work all week long just to get to the excitement of a wild Saturday night on the town, but that’s not how it works for me. Because of the aforementioned song, “Saturday,” from the official Primary songbook, being permanently stuck in my head, Saturday is tasks, chores, and to-do lists. But it’s oh-so fun because there’s a song to sing about it.
Like any good kid song, it is simple, and so it easily accommodates new lines about the real-life Saturday tasks I find myself engaged in. One of my best “true” lines came about because my dad—not too long before he passed away—had been on his back in the driveway, fixing something underneath his forklift. Later that Saturday afternoon, he was puzzled because he couldn’t find his lower dentures. Mom was poking around in every nook and cranny of their house to find them. I asked Dad where he had been working. I got the rake and headed for the forklift. Dad was yelling to me out the front window that he didn’t have his teeth at the forklift, so I didn’t need to look there; meanwhile, Mom came outside to give me a run-down of all the places where she hadn’t found his lowers; and just at that moment Suzanne called from Ogden, needing something. My dogs circled my feet, wanting me to throw the ball for them. My head was full of all these voices. I answered the phone and said to Suzanne, “Whatever it is, handle it. I can’t talk to you right now because I’m busy raking the gravel for Dad’s dentures. Click.” Thus, the following line was born, and I forever added it to “Saturday:” “We rake the gravel, and look for Dad’s teeth,/so we can be ready for Sunday.”
I did, in fact, find Dad’s lowers in the gravel under the forklift. My instincts were correct. He had put them in the chest pocket of his overalls while he worked, and they had slid out of the pocket as he tinkered. Suzanne later told me she thought I was drunk on the phone, because it didn’t make any sense to her why I would be raking gravel to find Dad’s teeth. Like any really good story, it didn’t make any sense at all. Of course it didn’t make sense: It was true!
I’ve been wearing my COVID-19 model Mask o’ the Day quite a bit lately, as my way of acknowledging the wind-down of the pandemic. I think it pairs nicely with purple/lavender Bow Tie o’ the Day.
I got a FaceTime call from Gracie and her parents last night, during which Skitter and I got to watch Gracie open the birthday gifts we left for her earlier in the day. Among the books and sweets and star-shaped sunglasses we thought she’d like, we gave her some balls and a tee-ball mitt—clearly her first mitt, cuz she had no idea what to do with it. Like the whip-smart gal she is, though, she immediately figured out how to make dandy use of the mitt. She decided it was a hat and wore it on her head. I like that girl’s style! She looked smokin’ in the tee-ball mitt hat. I see bigly things for her in her fashion-forward future.
