This Tie o’ the Day is titled by its seller, “Feliz Navidog.” The dog’s snowflake sweater reminds me of a trio of winter outfits Suzanne created many years ago for the three mutts we lived with at that time. She cut the sleeves off an old sweatshirt. She cut 4 leg holes in each of the sleeves, and also in the body of the sweatshirt. She did some clean-up sewing on the dogs’ new attire. Voila! Araby, our yellow lab, wore the body of the sweatshirt. Vinnie and Roxy, our mini-dachshunds, each wore a sleeve. They were warm and stylin’ in the snowy outdoors of Delta, while wearing their Suzanne-made doggie sweatshirts. I, on the other hand, was chilly and missing a sweatshirt.
TIE O’ THE DAY sends a bigly Merry Birthday greeting to Suzanne’s mom, Geraldine. She turned 80 a few days ago. As my family did with Mom’s 90th birthday in September, Suzanne’s family kept it safe: no party. Instead, we all secretly grooved-up our cars and created a surprise birthday parade for the Mrs. Claus look-alike, right in front of her house. Our decorated cars circled the block twice, horns honking, probably annoying the neighborhood with our celebratory exuberance. After our second lap, we halted our parade in front of the house, got out of our cars, and sang “Happy Birthday” to Geri. To be honest, I only whisper-sang. I love Geri far too much to belt out a song at her with my questionable voice, even as part of a chorus—especially on her 80th birthday.
I’ve been trying to remember my first interaction with Suzanne’s mom, and my brain can trace it to 1985, when I couldn’t afford a haircut. Suzanne offered up her mom’s services, and Geri cut my head hairs as I sat on a chair behind their former house.
Mom has always said that she was blessed to have two wonderful mothers in her life: her own, and her mother-in-law. I knew what she meant, but I didn’t fully understand it in my heart until I got Geri.
BTW Please note that Skitter wore her tie for the parade. Look closely, and you’ll see her and her Tie o’ the Day in the car.
When I tell y’all about my aches and pains—whether mental or physical, I am not in search of a pity party. I am not saying, “woe is me.” I just tell you what’s up with me and the residents of the Tie Room. And what’s up is that yesterday I woke up feeling like I’d been run over by a golf cart. My head ached, and I never get headaches. My whole body ached. It felt like a belt was tightening around my ribs. Even my Spock ear hurt. The bottoms of my feet kept cramping. I am the whitest person on the planet, but yesterday I was whiter than that. I made a bed on the couch, which I haven’t done since right after I was recovering from my Hanky Panky decapitation surgery. That’s been two years now.
I had my flu shot a few weeks ago, so I figured it wasn’t the flu. I could tell Suzanne was worried about me because she called me from work, via FaceTime, to ask me all kinds of questions about which of the COVID-19 symptoms I might be feeling. You have to understand that when Suzanne is at work, Suzanne is at work. She doesn’t know home exists. That is not a criticism, it is just a slight exaggeration. I am simply making the point that Suzanne was worried about me. She doesn’t text, call, or Face Time me from work unless there is a bigly problem. Yesterday morning, I guess she considered my health a bigly problem. She even ordered me not to die.
Anyhoo… I answered Suzanne’s questions about any possible COVID-19 symptoms I might be having. Suzanne said the questionnaire she was reading from said, based on my answers, I should go to urgent care. I don’t know everything, but I sort of know my body, and I highly doubt COVID-19 is the culprit. Nevertheless, I promised Suzanne if I didn’t feel better the next morning (today), I would hop, skip, and jump to the urgent care clinic to be tested.
Well, I woke up this morning feeling just enough better that I doubt I’ll be going for a COVID-19 test in the immediate future. My head still hurts, but not as much. My feet are still cramping up weirdly, but not as much. My chest is feeling bear-hugged too tightly, but not as tightly as it felt yesterday. I am still whiter than my usual whitest-person-on-the-planet pallor, but I’m not as white as I was yesterday.
I’m starting to think there is such a thing as “aging pains.” I remember having growing pains in my legs when I was about 10, and Mom rubbed them down with alcohol so I could fall asleep at night. Those kinds of pains mysteriously came and went for a couple of years. Just as mysteriously, I think I’m starting to have the opposite kind of pains: those growing old pains. Some days an arbitrary pain, ache, or twitch shows up and sticks around for a few hours or a few days, then it’s just as mysteriously gone. I will always be fish-belly white, but my aging pains will surely come and go. No worries here.
[This is a requested re-post from our trip to Taos, NM last October. Re-enjoy.]
We planned our vacay to Taos kinda last-minute, so we had slim pickins’ for our accommodations. Thus, our condo was not as bigly as we’d normally choose. It was nice, but tiny. We walked in the door to see nary a bed. And you know what that means: Murphy bed! It turned out to be relatively comfy. No complaints from us.
But Candy Corn Bow Tie On A Shelf o’ the Day had never seen such a thing as a Murphy bed before. To Bow Tie, it was an amusement park ride. When we were in the room, Bow Tie did nothing but open the doors, pull down the bed, jump on the bed, push up the bed, close the doors—over and over and over again. Yes, I admit that on a few occasions I just put the bed up and closed the doors with Bow Tie still playing on it. We deserved a little peace, thank you very much.
I guess we can’t really complain about Bow Tie’s Murphy bed antics. Playing on a Murphy bed in Taos was a lot cheaper than taking Bow Tie to Disneyworld for a week.
Skitter’s showing off her ghost-and-owl Halloween Tie o’ the Day, while I am pleased to wrap a Day of the Dead-themed Bow Tie o’ the Day around my neck. I’m most proud to wear my “SPREAD EMPATHY” Face Mask o’ the Day. It’s a sentiment I completely believe in. I wholeheartedly recommend it to others.
During the pandemic, we have been good citizens about staying home whenever possible. I putter around in the piles of my poetry manuscripts, and through stacks of half-read books. Suzanne has spent most of her down-time with her coloring books. She hasn’t been as crochet-y or sew-y as in the past. She says nothing’s wrong: she just happens to be in a coloring phase—every pandemic evening after work. She swears coloring relaxes her, and I can tell that it truly does.
I do my best to make sure that she has every Sharpie marker color ever made, and I occasionally go online to hunt for interesting coloring books for her. I ordered QUARANTINE QUEENS for her a couple of months ago. It’s not as funny as it could have been, and a more accurate title would be PANDEMIC QUEENS. However, the coloring book does have a few clever gems, like this Suzanne-completed page showing a fitness tracker which has counted the wearer’s movement through the whole 23 steps traveled in a pandemic day. I realize that I myself probably haven’t taken a total of 23 steps in the entire time since mid-March, and I don’t feel a bit guilty about it. Every inch of my skin feels a little flaccid these days, but not a bit guilty.
When we received our ballots in the mail, it was cause for celebration. We love to exercise our citizenship muscle by voting. Suzanne and I donned our patriotic Bow Ties o’ the Day. (Skitter wore her starry, starry Tie o’ the Day.) We placed our party hats atop our heads, and Suzanne went online to find the voter information to help us figure out whether the judges were worth keeping, as well as what all those Utah amendments were about. At one point, Suzanne’s face got a bit overwhelmed with trying to decipher the voter information.
I had promised Suzanne that our ballot-filling-out would be accompanied by only red, white, and blue food. I didn’t want to go grocery shopping yesterday, so I made do with what we had in the house already: RED cherry Twizzler pull ‘n’ peel licorice; BLUEberry muffins; and pork chops—”the other WHITE meat.”
My shattered-look wood Bow Tie o’ the Day and I had a hardware store list. Suzanne had her own hardware store list. We always have all kinds of lists going, and whenever our lists get long enough that it’s worth the trip to go out into the pandemicky stores, we go. And so it was, for our hardware store lists. We headed down the road to our local Home Depot.
I needed screws for my new license plates. After 13 years of holding the old plates on my car, two of the screws’ heads popped clean off the screwy part when I tried to loosen them. Two others were rusted and stripped by the time I was able to wrest them out of their holes to replace my plates. Suzanne even had to come to my rescue with one of her drills. Now that’s a frightening sight. If Suzanne is wielding a drill, stand back and don’t talk. Just let her work. She successfully got the decapitated screws out of their holes, sure enough. After the old plates were off, I went directly to the garage closet, where we had every size o’ screw ever manufactured—except the one size I needed to properly secure my plates. That’s how screws got on my hardware store list.
While at the Home Depot, I noticed Suzanne had “bulbs” on her list. You have to understand that I am the Light Bulb Stocker. I make sure we always have plenty. They are on a shelf in the garage closet, right by the mountain of toilet paper and paper towels I keep well-stocked. As I asked Suzanne what bulbs she needed me to get, I myself yelled “OOPSIE!” inside my own brain. I had skipped breakfast and lunch, and my thinking was two beats behind. Suzanne needed bulbs for planting in the garden. Yeah, that kind of bulb. Duh!
Another item I needed was a pack of razor blades. Plain old razor blades. I’m scraping off my out-dated bumper stickers, so I can plaster my vehicles with new ones. For whatever reason, single-edge razor blades have never been a product I keep stockpiled. But as I walked my masked self down the aisles of Home Depot in search of the razor blade section, I realized I could be buying razor blades for the last time in my life. It occurred to me that I am “at that age” when I can start saying that about certain products, and never have to put them on a list again. It was a liberating and exciting moment for me when I saw the 100-pack of razor blades staring right at me. I cannot picture a scenario in which—even if I live forty more years—I could possibly need more than 100 single-edge razor blades. For $7, my utility razor blade needs are met for life and beyond. I crossed that item off my list for good, with a bigly fat grin on my face. What a weight off my overburdened shoulders that is. 🤡
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.
Half of A Bow Tie o’ the Day is better than none at all.
Hey, earlier this week, I posted this pic in a set of pix about Mom and Skitter, but it’s the perfect photo for what I’m writing about this morning, which is Mom and Suzanne. They have been chums from the beginning. I think they trade secrets about me, and they conspire against me—if only to keep me on the straight and narrow. I am not necessary to their conversations. They talk sewing and cooking and house decor. Blah, blah, blah. After one of Suzanne’s surgeries, I took her to Mom’s and dropped her off for a week of recovery, while I drove back up to Ogden with Rowan so he wouldn’t have to miss any school. Mom pampered Suzanne with lots of quiet and plenty of tasty food, as we knew she would. I wasn’t worried about either of them. When I picked up Suzanne at the end of the week, she was nearly healed.
One of the first times Suzanne and Mom met was in 1985. We were all in Mom’s kitchen, and Mom was concocting cookies—chocolate chip, I think. (No surprise there.) The three of us gabbed and guffawed about who-knows-what. Mom plopped the cookie dough on the baking sheet and put it in the oven. I think she even sat down with us for three or four minutes. (Mom rarely sat down in her kitchen: She ruled it and hovered around guests from a standing position, always at the ready to start cooking something else, or wash a dish.) So there we were—just the three of us chatting away in Mom’s kitchen kingdom, when Mom jumped up and screamed, “I forgot to finish putting all the flour in the cookie dough!”
She did not skip a beat. She flew to the oven, retrieved the cookie sheet, and scraped the partially baked cookies back into the mixing bowl. She folded-in the rest of the flour, then plopped the cookie dough back on the sheet, and stuck it back in the oven—hoping the treats might work out. OMGolly, if I—or anybody else—had tried to correct the same mistake the way Mom did, my cookies would have come out barely worthy of going into the trash. But Mom’s “ruined” cookies were sooooooooo yummerific. It was an impressive feat to see. I think it was right at that moment when Suzanne decided she better keep me, if only to be around Mom performing her miracles.
TIE O’ THE DAY’s 2012 Presidential contender Chia heads are showing their first sprouts of “hair” growth. They are thriving under the watchful eye of Suzanne—the official gardener of the household. Her 30 years as a member of the infamous Champagne Garden Club have prepared her for this hairy Chia moment in history. Who will sprout the most magnificent hair? Mitt seems to be in the lead right now. But there’s plenty o’ time left in the race.
