Category: Suzanne

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A Summary Of Suzanne’s Birthday

Well, I was there in my magnetic, wood punch-hole Bow Tie o’ Suzanne’s Birthday. My beach hat alerted me to the fact that since I shaved down all my head hairs, my hats are too bigly. Hey, it’s a look, right?

We watched movies—The Shape of Water, and Babel—and ate popcorn. The birthday cake, truffles, and cookies I ordered from Milk Bar showed up on time. I installed a mammoth “57” formed with Post-it Notes on the wall, which was my feeble attempt at being artistic. When I’m trying to get my craft on, I wisely keep it as simple as possible, so I can’t screw it up into an all-out hideous decoration. The “57” wasn’t too icky.

For eats, I made clam strips for Suzanne for breakfast. And I surprised her with a dinner of Happy Meals because she makes me happy. When we lived in our SLC apartment which we called The Kingdom of Scary Yellow Carpet, in 1986, I created a hanging sculpture of empty Happy Meal boxes in our living room. So, after dinner last night, I made an attempt to recreate that hanging sculpture from the past. It brought back memories of a time when we were young and poor and always in school or working—and our hanging light fixtures weren’t nearly as nice as the ones we own now. And finally last evening, to top off her birthday, I sent Suzanne on a treasure hunt through our domicile which culminated in her uncovering a pile of what I call Chips On A Chair, as seen here. You see, although she enjoyed the expensive and luscious birthday cake, Suzanne always falls in deepest, truest love with whatever potato chip she’s with. 🤡🍟🍔🥔🎂

BTW Suzanne was overwhelmed with the birthday wishes some of y’all sent her yesterday. She says THANKS. She also thanks to y’all for reading TIE O’ THE DAY. After this many years of showing off my neckwear and telling stories, I don’t think she’d let me quit writing it even if I wanted to: it keeps me out of her hair.

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Suzanne Has A Birthday Today

Every year on this date, Suzanne catches up to me, age-wise. She now joins me in my 57-ness. I kinda like that I get to get older first, so I can scout out the new territory that comes with the next age number. I get to tame the wilds of each year’s age and pave a clear way through it. I get to map out the age by myself for four months, making sure it’s safe for her to proceed. I consider getting there first—whatever age it is—to be part of my job. So far, I haven’t found 57 to be significantly different from 56, so I think Suzanne will easily manage the transition to an older number quite well. Of course, Suzanne manages to do just about everything well. Everything except dancing. Dancing is not in her skill set. We will not be going out dancing tonight to celebrate her birthday. At 57, her old bones are getting too brittle to try something so dangerous for her. I have learned at least that much from being 57.

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Liquor Stores Can Be Fun

Suzanne has an annual get-together with her Champagne Garden Club gals later this week, so we had to take a jaunt to gather plenty of champagne for their retreat. We had never been to the new state liquor store in Farmington before, so off we flew to see what it was like. The new liquor store is so shiny and pristine that I swear it still has that new car smell to it.

While Suzanne made her potation selections, I amused myself by finding a theme to follow as I wandered the aisles. As a daughter of St. Ron, The Beekeeper, I decided to sniff out honey. After my research, I can attest it is a verifiable fact that current vintners and brewers are using more honey in their new-fangled concoctions than ever before. I was finding honey used as an exotic ingredient in almost every ilk of alcoholic beverage in the liquor store. Honey is trending right now.

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I settled most of our liquor store selfies on various offerings of honey-imbued whiskey. Y’all can see honey whiskeys in the first three pix of this post. But wait! I also found a couple of peanut butter-flavored whiskeys. Y’all can see the PB whiskeys in the last two shots.

If you put those two flavors of whiskey together with a fine red wine (the jelly) and a heavily yeasty brewski (the bread), you’ve got the alcohol version of a PB and J w/ H sandwich. 🥜🍯🍇🍞

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A Day At The Hospital. Again.

I tried to play my cards right. I figured a king card Bow Tie o’ the Day might be enough to win the Battle o’ My Pancreas. I spent yesterday having a follow-up ERCP procedure to see if the lithotripsy had pulverized the pancreatic boulder currently blocking my pancreatic duct. It was clear that the lithotripsy had failed to break the calcified thing. The ERCP doc attempted once again to remove it with the scope-claw gadget, but couldn’t even get close to it. What’s left of my Hanky Panky after my Whipple surgery three years ago is highly unusual, to say the least. Its duct is apparently impossible to navigate with even an endoscope.

Surgery is likely the only option I have left. I predicted at the outset—way back in February—that it would most likely turn out this way, but we had to try the least disruptive options first. Well, here we are. And I ain’t happy about it. Not one bit.

My Hanky Panky surgeon retired last week, so I have to set up an appointment to meet the surgeon he handed me over to. Perhaps she will have other options for me. I hope so, but I doubt it. I’ve seen enough doctors in my day to be able to read between the lines of what they actually say with their words, and through this whole process, what they’ve been saying is “You’re probably gonna need surgery.”

What can I say? I’m a rather healthy 57, other than having a Cranky Hanky Panky. I really can’t complain. I’m getting older. It’s just life. Stuff happens, and then you deal with it the best way you can. Might as well make people smile by wearing a novelty Bow Tie o’ the Day to your ERCP—and everywhere else you go. It works for me.

I wasn’t the only thing being worked on in Endoscopy.
My trusty sidekick took the day off work to chauffeur me, so I didn’t drive after anesthesia.
Surgery is probably the only option left. I ain’t happy about it.
I wish we were leaving the Hospitals On The Hill for the last time.
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Pa’s Day

Father’s Day without being able to plant a kiss on Dad’s bald head is still a tough day every year. Fortunately, I am blessed with an incredible pa-in-law who is always up for a hug. We celebrated him yesterday with a combo Father’s Day/Birthday party. Suzanne’s family knows how to put together mega amounts of yummy eats for family shindigs. They are easy people to be with and welcomed me into their family from the minute I showed up in their lives over thirty years ago. Merry Pa’s Day, Steven. You are a beloved soul.

FYI Suzanne’s dapper Dad is the one in the blue Hawaiian shirt in both pix. In the first picture, I am with my best buddy, Liam, who enjoyed posing with me and Bow Tie o’ the Day for pix. He also took me on a tour of every room of his house—three times.

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Donate, Donate, Donate

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. 💸

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Hospitals, Shmospitals

Yesterday was finally my bigly lithotripsy procedure at the University of Utah Hospital. Technically, the procedure is called Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL). The word “lithotripsy” is derived from Greek words meaning “breaking stones.” (Insert joke here.) Yup, a machine called a lithotriptor pinpoints the offending calcification/stone, then zaps high energy shock waves at it to blow it to smithereens tiny enough to pass through your system and be eliminated by your body. Thank the heavens I was sedated while the pulverizing occurred. I didn’t feel a thing at the time, but I sure do now. The left side of my upper torso feels like someone beat the HELLen out of me. And it looks like it too. My ribs appear battered, bruised, and swollen. I tried to take a snapshot of the gore to post, but I couldn’t keep my left breasticle out of the picture. I decided it was best to not post that on TIE O’ THE DAY.

Anyhoo…The lithotripsy procedure itself went well, but I won’t know if the stone in my Cranky Hanky Panky was sufficiently pulverized until I go back to undergo yet another scope-down-the-gullet procedure (another ERCP). I wish I had something more definitive to tell you about whether yesterday was successful or not, but I don’t. Welcome to My So-Called Pancreatic Life.

However, I consider my day at the hospital a screaming success for two reasons—neither of which really has anything to do with my Cranky Hanky Panky. The first triumph is that, just by being ourselves, Suzanne and I made professional healthcare workers guffaw, chuckle, and snicker for about 5 hours. We didn’t mean to be entertaining. We were just entertaining ourselves in our usual banter about whatever crossed our minds, and doctors and nurses happened to overhear us. A good time was had by all, as the saying goes. At one point, one of my anesthesiologists stepped back into my room and said, “I love to hear you both laughing in here. Your conversations are so strange. That stuff about the yellow, fungal toenails was something I never even thought about.” I guess he had heard me when for some reason I said to Suzanne, “If I ever get a thick, crumbly, yellow, fungal toenail, just grab the pliers and yank it out.” Suzanne and I are highly educated gals. We think deeply. Sometimes, Suzanne and I speak about profound philosophical complexities. Apparently, we were sometimes Shakespearean stinkards, engaged in coarse—but relatively clean—conversation at the hospital yesterday.

But my ultimate triumph yesterday was the pickin’ out o’ the perfectly appropriate Tie o’ the Day. For weeks, I had been asking myself what clever neckwear I should wear to experience this new-to-me thing called lithotripsy. I was stymied. And then, when I was in The Tie Room the night before the procedure, a tie caught my eye and my wit: my cartoon “BAM, BOOM, WOW, HEY” lightning bolts and stars print kids’ tie. BAM and BOOM was exactly what the lithotriptor machine did to my torso. Tie o’ the Day was so lithotripsy-y. 👔

Before the procedure.
After the procedure.
You can never make “kindness” disappear completely.
I was feeling it.
I was proud to know I owned an appropriate Tie o’ the Day for lithotripsy. It’s a real stone smasher.
The ball-and-chain. My better half.

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A Costly Simple Errand

So Suzanne said, “I need to return some shoes to Nordstrom Rack. Wanna go with me?” I said, “Heck, yeah!” All the errand required was going to the RETURN desk, handing over the shoes, then getting a refund. That’s it. That’s all. And you know exactly how it ended. The mission was accomplished. We were headed to the door, when Suzanne asked, “Is it okay if I look around at a few things?” To be fair, if she hadn’t said it, I would have. Fast forward to an hour later, and I’m leaving the check-out counter with a full shopping bag—newly empty wallet in hand—wondering how an errand that began as a $50 refund ended up costing $400. Refunds are pricey. 😜

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Sunday In The City O’ Salt

After a pandemic year of not doing our weekly brunching out, Suzanne made us brunch reservations at Cafe Niche. I was relieved to embark on some of our “old normal” events—sort of. We still had to wear masks in common areas of the restaurant, but I have to be honest and say that I like some of the “new normal” that I hope will not go back to pre-pandemic times. I like that there is now more space between the tables in restaurants. I like that hand sanitizer is strategically placed throughout the restaurant. I really like that I don’t have to touch a physical menu that has a battalion of other peoples’ sticky fingerprints on it. It was such heaven to use my phone to scan the code at the table, then read the menu right on my personal screen. I like that salt-and-pepper shakers—and condiment bottles—don’t sit out on the table to be pawed by forty customers per day. I’m not an OCD germaphobe, but it has always bugged me that every diner who sits at a given table throughout the day touches the stuff to be used there. I like that the server now brings me a personal portion of whatever seasoning or condiment I ask for. I so hope I find these changes in whatever dining establishment where we end up brunching this coming Sunday. I’ll keep y’all updated on things of such high import.

FYI If I ask her next month, Suzanne might not even remember what she ate at brunch yesterday. However, if I ask her in five years about the foliage outside Cafe Niche in May of 2021, she will remember exactly what was blooming there. Just sayin.’

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Look At My Hairsy Forehead

It was hairscuttin’ time again. I knew the head hairs I got shaved off last month were due for a tune-up shaving, but I wasn’t in any real rush to get a touch-up at first. And then an odd thing started happening—or, I should say, an odd thing started not happening. You see, after I got that bigly shave, every time Suzanne walked past me, she was automatically compelled to rub my bald head. I liked it. But this past week, I noticed she easily walked right by my head billions of times a day, without paying any attention to my barely-there head hairs whatsoever. Well, my head fur is not going to stand for being ignored. I can take a hint: It was time for a #2 razor shave. Miss Tiffany at Great Clips was happy to oblige. And Miss Tiffany was just as happy to see me show up in my beautifully designed Tie o’ the Day, with its open straight razors and shaving brushes.