Suzanne, Rowan, and I spent most of Saturday in Delta for Oakley’s funeral and burial. We ended our day there with a visit with Mom. Mom had been able to attend the funeral, but was glad to be back home at the care center. (I will write more about our visit with Mom in another post.) In honor of Oakley, I tried to pack as much purple into my wardrobe as I could, including Bow Tie o’ the Day. Even my socks and shoelaces were purple. When I commit, I am true.
I’m taking a deep breath this morning. Oakley was privately and publicly honored over the weekend, and then her body was laid to rest near family. Last week was a constant shock—of loss, and breakdown, and gutting through every moment. I can only speak for how it seemed to me, but it felt like, from one minute to the next, family and friends were alternating between being supportive to each other and being supported by each other. Now, we are supposed to get back to normal. We are supposed to go back to business as usual. But the thing about the idea of “normal” is that there is no such thing. There never was. Things are always changing, always in flux. Movement in time and space is the way all of this works. Change is the constant. Last week, in barren grief, time seemed to stop for our family. But we were the ones standing still. We stood as witnesses to Oakley’s earthly dance, and we applauded her as she entered into the eternal present she now inhabits. Today, we are again tasked with finding our momentum. We are left to choreograph our own dances. We are left to interpret the moves Oakley taught us while she was with us. I will tell you this: If you did not learn something about life’s dancing from our Oakley, it’s only because you didn’t know her.
Yes, I purposely matched my socks so I’d blend in.Suzanne seriously cogitates over her decision on a new phone.
Tie o’ the Day couldn’t believe it either. But I tried to tone down my normal clash. I tried very hard to look like everybody else. I’ll explain, but it’ll take me a minute to get to the reason. You see, Suzanne and I had a list of errands we needed to do together on a weekday, so she took the day off yesterday. First, we were off to the credit union to sign some paperwork for our trust and estate planning. That went off without a hitch. Then we were off to the Apple store, so Suzanne could choose a new iPhone. If you’ll remember, in July—on Suzanne’s birthday—I told her I would like to gift her a new phone, but I wanted her to pick out whichever one she wanted. Flash forward to nearly 3 months later, and she was finally ready to make her decision yesterday. She went for the lilac iPhone 14. And then we were off to Verizon to get Suzanne’s new phone hooked up with a line on my account, so I and Suzanne and Rowan and Mom are truly on the same family plan.
Okay. So here’s the part where I finally tell you about why I purposely attempted to blend in yesterday. I knew one of our errands meant we were going to the credit union, and I thought we might have time to start the loan paperwork for my new truck—which really might be here sometime next week. A thing I’ve learned in my life is that what you wear in certain situations makes a bigly difference in how you are treated. If you’re going to the credit union to get a loan to buy your Velocity Blue new Maverick, there’s a better chance the credit union people will give you the money if you don’t look like you just walked in out of a hurricane under the Big Top at a circus—which is probably as good a way as any to describe my normal garb. Yesterday morning when I first got up, I was all set to wear a wood bow tie, my new Lemonhead socks, one of my protest t-shirts, my half-boots, and one of my protest baseball caps. But then I suddenly remembered our errand list. I knew it would not be to my benefit to wear what I had planned to for the day. So I found a pretty, somewhat low-key (for me), long-sleeved shirt. I paired it with a somewhat subdued (for me) Tie o’ the Day. I found a pair of not-loud-colored (for me) Sloggers shoes that didn’t have cows or paw prints, or chickens on them. Most important to my toning my look down a notch, was my decision to wear my pastel orange Bombas socks. It happened: on purpose, I chose to match my socks with my shirt! I knew this would give me the edge at the credit union when it came time for them to approve the truck loan. And I wore the most serious-looking golf cap I own. It does have black in it, after all. Alas! We didn’t even end up dealing with the truck loan yesterday, so I’ll never know if I successfully blended in enough with the other customers at the credit union, in order to achieve my loan approval.
After we got home from our errand-y day, I confessed to Suzanne that I had not been my normal self that day. I had lied with my style. She looked at me quizzically, and I told her about my decision to dress more like normal people and less like my usual clashy kind of normal-for-me attire. When she heard why I dressed down, she squint-eyed, belly-laughed out loud for a good 15 minutes straight. I suppose that meant I didn’t look all that different from how I usually do. I suspected as much. But hey, my confession made Suzanne lose herself in laughter, so my efforts were well worth it.
On Saturday, the second day Suzanne was gone with her Champagne Garden Club, I planned to grab Skitter and drive up to Pleasant View to spend some time with my oldest sister and her hubby. I haven’t seen BT/Mercedes or Kent in person for months. But I thought I should accomplish something around the house before I left the house for the afternoon. I had the brilliant idea to organize the garage into something resembling order and tidiness. I figured it wouldn’t take me longer than the morning to knock out that chore. I should have known better. By mid-afternoon I knew there was no way I was going to be able to complete the job the way I envisioned, even if I spent the whole day on it. I texted my sister to tell her not to expect a visit from me that day, since I had made a mess that couldn’t stay a mess. I couldn’t leave the place all torn apart from my “organizing” all the stuff, or the garage would be unusable and un-navigable. So I had to spend that afternoon getting items mostly back where I had originally found them. My garage mission was a failure AND I didn’t get to visit my sister. But I was able to dream up a magnificent plan for when I next attempt real garage organization. It’s not that our garage is all that messy: it’s just that we have accumulated way too much stuff. Just look at my photo. There I am, holding a rainbow pinata and next to my left shoulder sits a cupcake pinata. I couldn’t find the pinata I have that’s shaped like a crown, but it’s there somewhere. Pinatas are not the kinds of items most people have taking up space in their garages, or in their 2-year supply (as we called it in the 70’s).
I have no earthly idea why I think we need pinatas, but I’m holding onto them. You never know. I’ll tell you this tidbit, too: a couple of years ago Suzanne texted me from work and asked if I still had the taco-shaped pinata I used as a prop for a Skitter photo on TIE O’ THE DAY. And if I did so, could she have it for a work party. Of course I still had it. She then texted and said, “So-and-so wants to know why you have a pinata around the house.” I had no answer for that question other than to say, “So-and-so clearly doesn’t yet know me very well, does she?” Then a while later that day, Suzanne texted and asked if I happened to have something with which to break the pinata open. Of course I did. I had a pinata stick. Later, she texted again to ask if I had candy for the pinata or did she need to assign someone to go get some. I texted back that not only did I have candy that would fit into the pinata, I had a bag of authentic pinata candy—right from the authentic pinata store. I let Suzanne have the taco pinata, pinata stick, and pinata candy. Her office had their little party. The taco pinata was hit with the pinata stick many times. It was hit—and it also was a hit. The pinata candy rained down on the office mates. While eating a piece of the fallen candy, Suzanne’s boss commented to her that the candy was very hard. I told Suzanne to tell her boss that old, hard candy is how you know the candy is authentic pinata candy. 🍬 🍬
It happens every year around this time: Suzanne’s Champagne Garden Club gals head off to the mountains, where they hunker down in a cabin for a long weekend of not gardening. No one knows what goes on there, but there are plenty of hints for me to add up. I can say for a fact that when Suzanne left, her car was filled with gifts, embroidery gear, books, magazines, salty snacks, sweet snacks, cheesy snacks, and numerous bottles of wine and champagne. There is no electricity at the cabin, so they must keep themselves entertained, which they have no problem doing. The gardening women have been pals for around three decades now, so they talk and laugh and never tire of each other. Fun will be had by all. And then Sunday afternoon, they will trickle out of the cabin and into their vehicles for the drive back to their regular lives. No outsiders will be the wiser about what really went on at the cabin. They will then see each other at their rotating monthly Champagne Garden Club meetings, until next year’s cabin festivities.
So from now until Sunday afternoon, I am on my own. Well, Skitter’s here with me, but she can’t seriously get in the way of me causing whatever havoc I might want to conjure up. I always wonder what I can do with my annual 3-day freedom pass when Suzanne is away, but as I get older, I am finding I’ve already done so much of whatever I’ve wanted to do—especially when it comes to the trouble I’ve wanted to cause. There’s just not much I haven’t already done. And of the things I haven’t done, there aren’t many that I wouldn’t rather do with Suzanne along for the ride with me.
These days, I rather enjoy being alone when I’m faced with the opportunity. I’m rarely bored, and I know I’m not a boring person. But I will likely hang around the house most of the weekend and do my usual weekend-y things. I’m sure I’ll read more than I do when Suzanne’s around. Suzanne’s not a bigly fan of twangy music, so I’m certain that this weekend I will guiltlessly crank up more of the twangy music I normally don’t listen to around the house when Suzanne’s here. And I’ll play all the Springsteen songs that aren’t her faves. I will get to do at least one thing that’s not allowed when Suzanne is around: I can leave the bedroom television on all night long. Having the TV on helps me sleep more soundly than my Trazodone.
Of course, I’ll also chat with Skitter over the next few days more than I already do. (Yes, she’s speaking to me again—having finally forgiven me for taking her to the vet earlier this week.) I have a sneaking suspicion Skitter will find her way into the bed with me during the next few nights, as well. When Suzanne is away at night, I have this bad habit of forgetting to shut the door tightly on the dog crate when I put Skitter to bed. And then Skitter eventually leaps stealthily up on the bed and pokes her nose under the covers. Yup, that’s about as wild as I roll when I’m left to my own devices these days. I am rich with the simplest contentments. I hope you are rich with your own.
The grocery bag Mom is checking out is the stash o’ candy we gave her.Mom and her purple housecoat, earrings, and snowman pin. Again.Suzanne and Mom talked about something serious which they wouldn’t tell me about, so I know they must have been talking about me. I don’t yet know if I’m in trouble with either and/or both of them.
With all due respect to the recently departed Queen Elizabeth, Queen Helen is NOT dead. We made a jaunt down the road to visit with Mom, and she is as alive as can be. In fact, she’s unstoppable. At some point in our lively conversation Mom mentioned she’s “quite content” to spend time in her room. She says she doesn’t “jingle” like she used to. She quickly corrected her mistake, saying she meant to say “mingle.” Then she went off on a rift about how she’s had a good, long life and she has—in her words—”jingled, jangled, and mingled all over the place.” She kept repeating that she had jingled, jangled, and mingled. I said, “Gee, Mother, you make it sound like you were a stripper!” To which she replied, “And your dad loved it!” Talk about wearing your feelings on the sleeve of your purple housecoat! That’s how Queen Helen rolls.
Mom assured us she’s not ready to die just yet, because she knows exactly where she’s going to go when she does: to Hell, of course, according to no one but her. We told her not to worry because we and Skitter will be there, too, so that works out okay. That got us all talking about sitting around and making s’mores over the fires of Hell, and Mom was all for that. Suzanne reminded us that Hell can be hot, but it can also be “as cold as Hell.” Suzanne said this is a good thing, because we can make those s’mores when we’re in the hot part, and we can eat ice cream when we’re in the cold part. Either way, I’m positive it’ll be nothing less than tasty as Hell. 🔥 🍫 ❄️ 🍦
My ice cream bar Bow Tie o’ the Day was an appropriate selection for when we went to Sunday brunch at Plated Dreams—a new restaurant that opened a month or so ago in Woods Cross. It was our first foray into the place. My pal, Darci, had posted about eating there with her lovey-dovey hubby, Dan. When I saw her photos of their visit, I knew from the decor that it was a Suzanne place we had to try: it is very pink and flowery. There is even a rose-covered retro phone booth, which makes for a nice spot to take a photo. I purposely did not snap a picture of it, so that I can have a really good excuse to go back soon.
The place did not disappoint. I had the Smoked Rainbow Trout Roses, which dish is described on the menu as follows: “Sourdough Bread, Feta Cheese Mousse, Pickled Mustard Seeds, Caramelized Shallots, Puff Baby Capers & Pink Peppercorns, Dehydrated Lemon & Fresh Dill.” I had them add a poached egg on top. Suzanne had the Chef’s Benedict, which came with corn & cheese bread instead of the traditional English muffins. She said it was delicious, but she will order it with English muffins next time. She didn’t like the texture of the corn & cheese bread.
We were too full to eat dessert at Plated Dreams, so we took home four of their decadent-looking dessert offerings to try at our leisure. I’d like to say some of the four confections lasted a full 24 hours, but I cannot say that truthfully. They survived in our house for just under 10 hours. I only got a picture of two of the creations to show y’all because we were dessert piglets and ate the first two treats before I even thought of my TIE O’ THE DAY responsibilities. I am pleased to report they were all yummerrific to the palate. I included a photo here of the kids’ menu because I liked the clever-yet-somehow-perfectly-accurate names of their various kid meals.
BTW Whenever I make reservations at Plated Dreams in the future, I will ask them to seat us in the “Feed me cake and tell me I’m pretty” booth you see behind me. If that booth isn’t available at that time, I will make our reservation for a time when it is.
When I was a wee sprite, Mom rarely commandeered the living room television. Before cable, satellite, streaming, and even VCR’s, we had a grand total of 5 channels in Utah from which to chose what to watch: ABC, NBC, CBS, KBYU, and KUER. That was it. Televisions were pricey back then, so most families I knew only owned one, and we were no different. Eventually, Mom and Dad got a color TV (with remote!) in their bedroom, and I got a clunky and tiny black-and-white TV set (remote-less) in my bedroom.
In the evenings of my single-TV childhood, Dad was kind of the unofficial boss of what the family watched, although he generally let whoever had a strong preference for a certain show watch whatever they wanted. I guess you could say Dad let anybody who was at home figure out what we were going to watch between ourselves, and he went along with it. He did exercise ultimate veto power whenever he felt it necessary to our benefit or for his own viewing sanity. When it was down to just me, Mom, and Dad left in the house, I fully admit I pretty much chose our nightly living room TV schedule. Dad and Mom both seemed fine with my choices, mostly. However, I give Dad props for enduring hours of TV shows he would rather have missed. When faced with a program like The Smothers’ Brothers Comedy Hour, Laugh-in, Chico And The Man, or The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, Dad sat in his chair, silently gritting his dentures, and reading The Salt Lake Tribune, his hunting magazines, the encyclopedia, and volumes of Popular Science. He read harder when I chose to watch shows like Mod Squad, One Day At A Time, All In the Family, Charlie’s Angels, Hill Street Blues, Police Woman, Facts of Life, and Columbo. He read extra hard when I wanted to watch artistic PBS offerings on KBYU or KUER—like Masterpiece Theater, classical music concerts from Carnegie Hall, and ballet and plays from Lincoln Center. Eventually, I took pity on Dad and decided arts programming was too problematic for him to watch, so I regularly retreated to the tiny, remote-less, black-and-white TV in my bedroom for the majority of my bigly art-viewing choices.
It was universally understood in our house—like the Law of Gravity—that the unalterable living room television default for Sunday day viewing was NFL football or NBA basketball, depending on the season. LDS General Conference weekends were the exception to the NFL/NBA rule. Likewise, the living room TV was always tuned to the national news (usually Walter Cronkite) at 5 PM, and the local news at 6 and 10 PM, every day. No exceptions. Other than that, what we watched was a mostly civil whoever-calls-it-first matter.
Mom liked to watch Hawaii Five-O, Barnaby Jones, and a show called Petrocelli, which was a remarkable TV show on NBC that didn’t make it past its first season. Mom rarely had a programming preference—except when it came to a handful of occasionally shown movies. When any one of these movies was going to be broadcast (usually on KUER), Mom was adamant about watching it on the bigly living room TV, no matter what else anybody might have wanted to watch. The list is small, but clearly I remember it well: A Summer Place, An Affair to Remember, any Doris Day/Rock Hudson film, The Days of Wine and Roses, I Want to Live, The Student Prince, and Picnic. I loved watching Mom sit down to completely immerse herself in watching these movies. I loved seeing how much she loved letting the cooking go, letting the dishes go, letting preparing her Sunday School lesson for the Sunbeams go. For these films, Mom stopped flitting around the house from one duty needing to be done to another duty needing to be done, if only for a brief while. For my part, I would secretly take the phone off the hook, so there could be no outside interruption to Mom’s state of movie grace. Throughout my life, I rarely saw Mom light somewhere and let it all go for a couple of hours. But for the duration of these only-occasionally-shown movies, Mom was enthralled and perfectly still.
It’s Picnic that prompted me to write this post. The events in Picnic take place on a Labor Day weekend. I have long had the Picnic DVD, and I have watched the movie on almost every Labor Day since I managed to find it. Suzanne is not impressed with the film, so she’s watched it with me only once. So I am usually an audience of one when I throw it into the DVD player—unless you count whatever dog(s) we have at the time. I like the movie, separate from how I associate the movie with indelible memories of watching it with Mom. Yes, William Holden is too old to be the character he’s playing, And the scene with the-train-racing-through-the-tunnel symbolism is a bad cliche. But the writing is otherwise generally strong. William Holden and Kim Novak give fine performances. I would dance to the song “Moonglow” at a Labor Day picnic with either one of them. The air sizzles when they dance to it. Above all else with this film, what will stand the test of time is Rosalind Russell’s performance as an aging-and-looking-for-love school teacher. Her acting is beyond fantastic. I mean—Russell’s acting in this flick approaches Meryl Streep realms at times. She makes her character a dynamic blend of spot-on smarts, biting humor, and devastatingly desperate and perpetual disappointment. The movie is hilarious and sad and and hopeful. With a small side order of cheesy.
Oh, I know none of y’all are ever going to sit down and stream Picnic, and most of you have likely never even heard of it before. But I watched my mom watch it a couple of times when I was in my kidhood, and that alone has sealed it as one of my all-time fave films. If you had ever watched Picnic with Mom, I have no doubt you’d feel exactly the same way I do about putting it on a movie pedestal. Every Labor Day when I watch it again, I feel like Mom is sitting right here beside me—content and still and entirely unconcerned with any world beyond the movie. She is purposely—but temporarily—not doing something for somebody else. She is relaxed in her soul, and the wrinkles fall away from her face. The wrinkles fall from both our faces, really. Mom and I are exactly how I always see us.
Wow! The same camo Bow Tie o’ the Day, posted twice in one week. This old post is from August 2019. Good anecdotes—and bow ties— can always be repeated. Please read it with joy, as always. 🌵 👔 💻
SOUNDS CRAZY, I KNOW
Camo Bow Tie o’ the Day is one of my faves. Its size is referred to by Beau Ties Ltd. of Vermont as “butterfly jumbo.” Here, I am waiting in line at DICK’S Pharmacy. Of course, as a fashion maven, I know my cactus-print shirt needs to be ironed, especially down the front. Suzanne is as picky about ironing as Mom and Peggy always were. That’s one of the Top 10 reasons they’ve always liked Suzanne. Those three gals were born to be Wrinkle Whisperers. All Suzanne will see when she looks at this photo is the bigly wrinkle by the buttons. I didn’t iron my shirt, but on purpose.
Okay, so I’m in a minor snit at Suzanne today, and knowing how she feels about pressed shirts and ironing, I know this wrinkle biz will get under her skin mightily. It will bug her. That’s my goal. This is how I’m being passive-aggressive in a way that is tiny, but irritating enough to get her attention. She’ll know exactly what I’m up to when she sees this photo’s shirt needs pressing, then she’ll think about what she could have done which might possibly be upsetting me. She’s smart, so she’ll figure it out and fix the wrong. I will then notice she fixed the problem, and I’ll say, “Hey, will you please iron a couple of shirts for me?” That will signal to her that she’s forgiven, and all’s right with us. The whole routine saves us a squabble over some crumb of an issue that amounts to nothing, without either of us ever having to bring up the real topic.
Weird? Yes. It’s a kind of shorthand that lets us both save face. If you’ve been attached to someone for a long period of time, you know darn well you do similar dances with each other about certain things. The dance’s strange footwork is part of what helps you stay with your person long-term. You have to choreograph your own “happy family” groove. Sometimes you both have to just pipe down and dance a jig together no one else in the galaxy could possibly understand.
Purple-striped Bow Tie o’ the Day was on display when we had a second appointment at the attorney’s office, to help us get our when-we-die concerns in order. The process is somewhat lengthy, which seems weird since our “estate” is straightforward except for a couple of things. We don’t have more than one house anymore, and we don’t collect cars or yachts, or stamps or coins. We do not have a fortune in cash locked away in a secret safe hidden behind a picture on the wall—or anywhere else, for that matter. We do have books, but there’s no money in having them. There is value in books, but not money. I doubt anybody we know has the space to adopt the whole bigly herd of slender volumes and bigly tomes we have acquired over the decades. It’s a huge job to look after thousands of books under one roof. We’ll have to do some deep thinking to divvy up the books. We know a ton of readers and I think we have a pretty fair idea of who might be interested in what. Still, it’s sad to think of our books living with other people in the not-too-near future. Yes, it’s the circle of life, but it kind of sucks anyway—to not be alive and reading, in the thick of things on the planet.
And then there is my neckwear circus. Exactly who will inherit the thousands of ties and bow ties I’ve amassed over the decades is an entirely different story. It’ll be challenging to divide them and/or designate them to go anywhere, because I can’t think of anyone who shares my adoration of the critters. Maybe I can get the Guinness Book of World Records people to send somebody to declare my neckwear collection to be the bigliest tie/bow tie menagerie in existence. That could increase the collection’s value, making it worth a tidy bit of pocket change. Rowan could then sell my collection on ebay and make enough money to buy himself a gallon of almond milk and a vegan Slim Jim to eat. Or he could just decide to open up the Tie Room as a museum and charge admission. That ought to be a negligibly lucrative money pit venture. Of course, Suzanne and I will be dead when anything happens to our belongings, so it really won’t be any of our business anymore. And that’s probably a good thing. All we can do is love the stuff we love for as long as we’re here. 📖 👔
I could not let this FB memory with me wearing makeup be forgotten. I’m fairly confident ain’t nobody gonna see the likes of this again. In case you haven’t noticed, I am not—nor have I ever been—a wearer o’ makeup. For me, it was a conscious decision I made decades ago for my own personal philosophical reasons. I cast no judgment on those who choose to wear makeup, but as far as I’m concerned, my unpainted face has a right to exist in the world. Nobody’s face needs to be altered in order for it to be considered presentable to the masses. I have some important true news for y’all: in case you don’t know it already, your naked face is perfectly worthy of being seen. Your naked face is enough. You and your face—just as you are—are enough. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
The following is a post from August 2018. Jump right into it.
SUZANNE PERFORMS A MIRACLE
OMGolly! Last evening, Bow Tie o’ the Day pinned me down, and Suzanne opened up every makeup bag she owns. I mean—I was simply reclining away in the loveseat, watching LIVE PD. Suddenly, a foundation brush was headed my way. And then eyeliner went everywhere except where it was supposed to go, cuz I couldn’t quit blinking when Suzanne was applying it. I kid you not: she had to wipe it off and apply it a second time. And then it felt like the mascara applicator was gonna poke my eyes out every time it got near my eyeballs. Suzanne asked me when I last applied mascara to my lashes. To the best of my recollection, the answer is 7th Grade—and once was enough. I must admit that last night I did enjoy the application o’ the eye shadow. It felt dreamy.
The lipstick is so me, the way its color pops out. You know how I like a dash of bright color. Suzanne told me her philosophy about wearing lipstick has changed over the years. She used to wear calm, subdued colors, but now she thinks if you’re gonna wear lipstick, people ought to really, really, really see it. See what happened there? My loud style has rubbed off on her lips a little bit.
BTW Do you know what most weirded me out about this whole makeup ambush? All evening long, there was lipstick on the rims of my Diet Coke cans. I kept wondering: who is this mysterious woman who keeps drinking my Diet Coke?
