Category: Suzanne

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Tunes During A March Snowstorm

I gave myself a pre-birthday present last night. I dragged Suzanne to a concert at the Eccles Theater in SLC. She knew next to nothing about the band we went to see: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. Shawn Colvin opened for them, which was great because she played solo—just Shawn and her voice and her guitar. She somehow made her guitar sound like an entire band. Yup, she plays that well. She is one of my all-time fave songwriters and has been for the last 30 years. Jason Isbell, on the other hand, is a recent discovery of mine. He plays a wild guitar, but I am most enamored of his songwriting skills. I have wide and eclectic taste in music, but there is one thing the artists I love to listen to have in common. They are generally superior songwriters. As a working poet, that makes complete sense to me. Words are music, too.

I often wear my wood guitar Bow Tie o’ the Day when I’m headed to a concert, and last night was not an exception. Excuse my uncouth Mask o’ the Evening, but my inner mode is sarcastic. I also wore my cassette tape “GOOD VIBES” lapel pin to the event.

All the usual concert types were there. You know, the group of women who didn’t open their mouths before the show, but as soon as the concert started, they immediately began talking too loudly—especially during the softer tunes. And, of course, there was the couple who just had to stand up and dance right in front of us, while holding their beers—which sloshed around and sprinkled the rest of us as they danced, kissed, and played air guitar. Remember lighters at concerts? Well, that was me last night: I wore my Bic lighter Cufflinks o’ the Evening in homage to concerts-back-in-the-olden-days.

We had a swell night out, despite the fact that Suzanne does not particularly like twang in her music. She told me more than once that she enjoyed the concert. And I almost believe her.

BTW I will be presenting some bigly news regarding TIE O’ THE DAY in tomorrow’s A.M. post. Don’t miss it, y’all.

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Harried Hair

[This is the last hippie hairs re-post I will be presenting, I think. I’ve been trying to finish editing a serious writing project I’ve worked on for months, and I didn’t have time to create new TIE O’ THE DAY posts for much of this past week. Thanks for letting me get by with repeating a few hirsute offerings from 2019.]

It took Suzanne and three Bow Ties o’ the Day to make my hairdo. Orange paisley Bow Tie helped Suzanne put in the curlers. Blue, polka dot Bow Tie was present for the two curlers-out photos. And black/ivory/gold Bow Tie showed up for the unveiling of the finished product.

This was the first time Suzanne experienced working on my hair, which she now says is the straightest hair she’s ever known. It is stubbornly straight. I had a few perms in my youth and not one “took.” I’ve always known the near-impossibility of styling my hair. Suzanne learned it first-hand last night.Remember: I haven’t had my hairs cut since May, and it was an asymmetrical cut. I think Suzanne performed magic with what she had to work with. When I told her she has to build a hairdo for me once a week until the end of May—for Thursday posts—she got absolutely gleeful. She sees my hairs as an exciting challenge. She’s getting ideas for hairdo after hairdo. And we had a blast last night while she tried to perform a hairs miracle on my noggin. She chuckled at my locks the entire time, although once her chuckle sounded like it came out of nervous fear. Yeah, my hairs do scary things. (I refer to my hair as “hairs” because each strand has its own straight plans.)

Mom’s Thursday Hair Day appointment always gave her hair what she called “a little oomph.” I told Suzanne I wanted her to give my hair some oomph too. She proceeded to rat and rat and rat and rat and rat.This ‘do is a never-do-again.

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Golf Pants Are The Best

Even without bright colors, flowery Tie o’ the Day shines every bit as boldly as my newest golf pants. Have I mentioned lately that I have fallen thigh-over-knee in love with crazy golf pants? I mean—based on a pair like this, who wouldn’t be smitten?

A couple of my fave-rave television shows over the years are COPS and LIVE PD. They are real-life cop shows. I’m sure Suzanne and I have seen every episode of both, and we marvel at some of the dopey things captured criminals will say to the cops as they plead their innocence. Our all-time favorite defense has been used more times than you can possibly imagine. It happens when a culprit’s pockets are being searched by a police officer, and drugs are found to be in said pockets. When the cop finds the drug and shows it to the alleged criminal, the suspect will often adamantly explain to the officer, in all seriousness, “That’s not mine. These aren’t my pants!” Gosh, that sounds believable. Maybe putting on someone else’s pants is a more prevalent problem throughout the USA than I’m aware of, but I doubt it. In my entire life, even when I was a professorial-level drinker, I cannot think of one time when I accidentally or purposely slipped on a pair of pants belonging to someone who isn’t me. I still watch re-runs of those shows, just hoping to hear that not-my-pants defense come out of the mouth of captured culprits.

Sometimes when, for whatever reason, things get tense around the house, it is now common for whichever one of us is in the doghouse to irrelevantly declare, “These aren’t my pants!” We immediately laugh, and it easily breaks the tension—no matter what the trouble is about. In reality, I am loyal to my pants, and this is true: no matter what is found in the pockets of my golf pants, no matter who put it there, I will never say, “These aren’t my pants!” These are definitely my pants, and you can’t have them.

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Merry Anniversary To Us

A couple of days before Christmas, Suzanne and I celebrated our 8th legal Anniversary. We had reservations for a frou-frou dinner at Log Haven, up Millcreek Canyon. I did something I don’t normally do, in terms of my attire: for Suzanne, I matched my bow tie and face mask. I decided a wedding anniversary was worthy of wearing my out-of-season, Valentine-themed BE MINE Bow Tie o’ the Day and Face Mask o’ the Day—instead of Christmas-themed neckwear. I also wore my “mrs.” Cufflinks o’ the Day.

We dined on swordfish, which was a first for both of us, and we liked it. Suzanne ordered a bottle of wine she said was dreamy, which she let me smell for a ridiculously long time. I can attest that it did, in fact, smell dreamy as could be. As we ate dinner, we engaged in a deep conversation about the nearly 40 years we have known each other. Through the restaurant’s bigly windows, we watched the trees as it began to snow. The snow continued to gradually layer itself outside, and when we drove back down the dark canyon headed for home, everything surrounding us was covered with a thick quilt of sparkling grey-white. It was a slow drive down the canyon, and the scene was storybook magnificent. The cold magic of the landscape cradled us as we drove, and I felt like we had somehow transformed from our mortal world existence into a state of pure metaphor—if only for a small and perfect moment.

Ain’t love amazing?! ❄️💝

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Paintin’ The Town

We had a theatrical night on the town last week when we went to see HAMILTON again. Before the show, we ate a luscious dinner at Tin Angel, which is located inside the Eccles Theater building. Suzanne ordered wild salmon, while I got the encrusted braised spare ribs. For dessert, we split a slice of spiced pumpkin roll filled with cream cheese frosting, and covered in caramel and chocolate. Yes, it was yummy.

Y’all might recall that we had first seen HAMILTON a couple of years ago, after which I gave my review in a TIE O’ THE DAY post. My review was simply this: “It was a little too sing-y and dance-y for my taste.” The truth is, that’s my review for almost all musicals. I can appreciate a well-done musical production, but I’m partial to plain old words. I prefer the spoken word on the stage. Having said that, I will admit that I enjoyed HAMILTON tremendously this time around. The first time I saw it, my brain was filled with all the excessive hype about it. This time, I knew what I was in for, and I could simply watch without any expectations. HAMILTON was still too sing-y and dance-y for my taste, but as I sat in my seat and let the show just wash over me, I was enthralled. I had a good time.

Because I am who I am, Suzanne must always have her antenna up for any sign of my misbehavior. The Eccles Theater ushers carried little “please, wear your mask” hand-held signs. If an audience member were to remove their mask during the production, an usher was supposed to quietly walk up to the maskless person and politely wave the sign in front of their face. I wanted so badly to take a photo of it happening to someone, but everyone in the audience was good and kept their masks on. As the night wore on, Suzanne could feel me wanting nothing more than to lower my mask, for the sole purpose of having an usher shove a sign in my face, so I could snap a photo of it happening. I don’t know exactly how she knows when I’m plotting to be bad, but she does. She gave me “the look,” and I immediately abandoned any plans I had for misbehaving with my face mask.

Face Mask o’ the Evening was covered in X-mas holiday mutts. I exercised my right to be thematically appropriate by wearing a jumbo Bow Tie o’ the Day depicting The United States Constitution. It was a spot-on choice for HAMILTON. Oddly, not one person who saw me at the theater mentioned my Constitutional bow tie. Nor did they comment on the funeral potatoes 2002 Olympic pin I wore in my lapel. But do you know what part of my attire I was explicitly complimented on by a number of folks throughout the evening? It was my green Nike golf hat! One woman told me the hat looks good on me and that I wear it well—whatever that means. Yeah, my thirty-year-old, seen-in-post-photos-all-the-time hat got more compliments than my incredibly cool and infrequently worn U.S. Constitution Bow Tie got. And while at HAMILTON, to boot! Weird.

I enjoyed HAMILTON more the second time around.
My lapel pin is a 2002 Olympic pin depicting funeral potatoes.
At Tin Angel, I had the braised short ribs in a pastry, atop mashed potatoes.
Suzanne patiently waits for her wine to show up.
My over-tired Saddle Purse fell asleep before the production had even begun.
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It’s A Body Thong Conspiracy

It’s a good thing I still have access to this photo from last Christmas season. I had come up with a swell idea for a new TIE O’ THE DAY selfie for today, in which I once again wore the Rudolph body thong some anonymous reader sent me in the mail a couple of years back. This morning I eagerly headed directly to the Tie Room to retrieve the attire, accessories, and various props I would need for the bigly reindeer thong photo I had promised I’d show you. But for the life of me, I could not find my Rudolph thong. It was not where I usually keep it. The tuxedo thong was there. The tuxedo boxers were there. But the Rudolph thong was nowhere to be found.

I suspected foul play immediately. I suspected a devilish, war-on-Christmas interloper had somehow breached the sanctity of the Tie Room for the sole purpose of stealing my fabulously awkward Rudolph thong. I even got thinking that Suzanne might have accidentally-on-purpose snuck into the Tie Room and gotten rid of my jingly garment, in order to prevent me from ever wearing it on TIE O’ THE DAY for y’all ever again.

Normally, Suzanne’s cool with my over-the-top fashion shenanigans, but I have always suspected this particular festive fashion gift of reindeeer-thong-from-a-stranger crossed the line for her by about eight country miles. I can understand how she might feel like that. However, whatever mystery has befallen my dear deer thong, I resolve to find it—no matter who is ultimately to blame for stealing it from me in the first place. I will indeed show off a new photo of me in my Rudolph thong for y’all before the end of this Christmas season. Mark my words! 🦌

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Skitter Witnessed My Happy Old Epiphany

Here’s Skitter in her first Christmas 2021 Tie o’ the Day. She was present, watching with doggie amusement when the following tale played out.

On the day after Thanksgiving, I was dizzy all day long. I’d get up to do something, and I’d sort of catch myself leaning and weaving as I gingerly made my way from place to place. At some point, I began to wonder if I’d started drinking again without my own knowledge. It was an odd feeling. But honestly, I was more curious than concerned about my wobbly state of equilibrium. I chalked it up to having eaten excessive amounts of cheese bread, tater tots, and green Jell-O the day before. Or maybe what I was experiencing was simply due to my age. I blame “getting older” for a plethora of inexplicable and/or idiosyncratic things that occur in, on, to, or anywhere near my body. I’m positive I’m mostly correct to direct blame at this culprit of time.

Anyhoo… It was the day after Thanksgiving, and Suzanne had her side of the love seat reclined so her recently operated-on foot could be constantly elevated. Her foot stuck out towards the middle of the living room like a sore thumb (har, har, har) the entire day. She was following her surgeon’s orders to stay off her hoof and be a couch potato slug. As the day wore on, so did my light-headed condition. So we spent the bulk of the holiday sitting safely on the love seat watching television. At one point, as I unsteadily walked across the living room to get something, I felt myself falling—slowly but surely—to the floor. To catch myself, I instinctively reached out and grabbed the nearest available object, which just happened to be Suzanne’s recently operated-on-and-still-throbbing, elevated foot which stuck out in the perfect spot to save me. Which it did. Which caused Suzanne to yelp out in pain. My apologies yelped out in response. I felt like the worst dizzy person on the face of the earth.

I saw it in my mind’s eye then: the tableau we had made at that very moment. Picture it yourself. Suzanne sitting in the love seat—footrest deployed. Her decades-worn foot elevated and iced, protruding into the center of the room. If she were moving, her joints would be creaking. She is cozily semi-swaddled in her Minky blanket because she has been perpetually cold for the last decade, no matter the temperature. Her reading glasses are perched perfectly on her nose, so she can sufficiently see what she’s currently embroidering. To conquer painful inflammation, a dishtowel-wrapped bag of frozen peas is draped like a too-tiny shawl around the back of Suzanne’s neck, which aches these days with an ever-increasing regularity.

Now picture my part in this tableau o’ long-settled domesticity. There I stand, on the verge of falling in my own living room. Babying my pancreas. Hand over my still-scabby surgical scar. My own eyeglasses on so I can focus better on increasingly blurry words, things, critters, and people. Full set o’ dentures in my mouth. Tinnitus blaring in my brain. Hearing aids like barnacles growing out of my ears. An amnesia haze developing about what it was I even crossed the room to do or retrieve in the first place. My balance weeble-wobbly, at best that day.

After I managed to sit my butt back down on the love seat to calm the adrenalin, I recognized the implications of the scene Suzanne and I had just made. I said to Suzanne, with all the exuberance I could muster, “It has happened! I think it’s official!” She asked me what I was talking about. I said, “Finally! When we were young, we talked about how nice it would be to achieve it. And after all these years—as of this very moment—I am certain we have accomplished it: We have officially grown old together!” Even with all manner of natural maladies which might accompany it, I can say it’s even better than I imagined it would be. It feels like home to me. 🛋 📺 👣 💝

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Our 2021 T-Giving Feast

I was going through photos on my phone this afternoon when I realized I had not yet posted anything about our bigly Thanks Feast of last week. I admit I had a cheese bread hangover for a couple of days after the event, and that’s the likely reason the documenting photos slipped my brain. Note this: Turkey Tie o’ Thanksgiving can also function as a handy bib!

Anyhoo… We stayed home this year for the holiday, so it was just me and Suzanne and the skittish Skitter for the entire day. When it’s like that, you know I have to put my spin on the traditional food offerings. I once again prepared food one item at a time, at various junctures throughout the day. I launched the festivities with the opening of the can o’ jellied cranberry and dumping it on a plate—thus, causing the traditional cranberry-blob-from-the-can-suck sound. And we were off.

We ate “canned”-ied yams and baby corn-on-the-cob and stuffing. At some point, Suzanne ate a whole can of olives. In lieu of mashed potatoes, I slaved away baking tater tots, which is one of Suzanne’s all-time fave potato creations to eat. (It’s true. When I’m in the proverbial doghouse with Suzanne, I just drag out the tater tots, and I am immediately forgiven.) We ate bow tie-shaped ham and turkey sammiches. There are no photos of the loaf of cheese bread I sculpted, because we were so busy eating it while it was warm that it would have been blasphemous to take up valuable eating time to find my phone or camera. And since we live in Utah, I served up green Jell-O—bow tie-shaped, too. Also, of course, we napped-and-snacked intermittently. For dessert that evening, I scooped up mounds of Dreyer’s pumpkin pie ice cream for us to snarf down until we were beyond full. Fortunately, we ate so much that I’m sure we won’t need another meal until Christmas—or possibly Easter. Yup. Mission accomplished.

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A Vehicular Decision

Channeling the spirit of Dad, while ordering a truck.
I haven’t yet given this baby a name. But I’m working on it.

I channeled Dad in order to make a final decision about purchasing the new truck I’ve been eyeing. Dad knew his trucks. Also, Dad always had a red or blue hanky dangling from his back pocket, so I wore a hanky-esque Face Mask o’ the Day to the car dealership yesterday. I doubled-down with the black in my Bow Tie o’ the Day and the yellow in my shirt—the two colors signifying the bees Dad expertly cared for in his life-long work.

I picked up Suzanne from her office and took her on a test-drive in my potential auto acquisition. Suzanne’s tummy gets hyper-queasy when riding in bouncy vehicles like my old jalopy truck, so I wanted to make sure she could stomach the ride in this new vehicle. If she couldn’t relax and enjoy the truck’s ride, I would not even entertain the idea of acquiring this truck candidate. At some point during the test-drive—as I drove, and as Suzanne played with all the gadgets and controls in the cab—Suzanne seemed to be remarkably pleased with the level of smoothe-icity of the truck’s ride. Suzanne’s perfectly settled stomach was saying, “Yes!” to the truck. Consequently, I made my bigly decision to buy the 2022 Ford Maverick—and in my kind of flashy color, called Velocity Blue. When we finally returned the demo truck to the dealership, I was grinning through my face mask as I signed my “Helen Hancock” on the necessary paperwork. Oh, happy, wallet-emptying day! 💸💸

The bad news is this: My brand new travel toy is a special order, and it will not be built and delivered to me for 2 or 3—or maybe 4 or more—months. The good news about the bad news is this: If I don’t explode to smithereens with anticipation before my truck gets here, I will have grown my patience to superpower-strength. That kind of patience comes in handy on this planet full of imperfect human beings. Patience, I fervently believe, is the next best quality to kindness.

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The Foot Check-up

We went to yet another doctor appointment yesterday. This time, it was a trip to Suzanne’s foot surgeon, for her post-surgery exam. After the doctor unwrapped her hoof for the first time, he practically gushed over how well it was healing after only 4 days of it being elevated and wrapped in ice. Indeed, even Suzanne was proud of how pretty and svelte her healing hoof was looking. She’s almost walking like a professional walker now, too.

For our trek to see the hoof doc, I wore my bow-ties-being-tied Shirt o’ the Day. Face Mask o’ the Day literally speaks for itself. I also donned my forks-covered Tie o’ the Day—as a nod to the fact that I’ve been busy polishing the silverware for the impending Thanksgiving feast. And the cherry on top of my outfit is the “woman parts” pin in my hat which simply says, “Grow a pair!” Yup. Isn’t that speshul?!🍴🍽🍗