Tie o’ the Day screams to show y’all the Delta house we had for 17 years. Mom and her Pepsi are with us in this collage snapshot. Suzanne’s holding Skitter. I’m being the tie/bow tie missionary I truly am. And Bernie Sanders stopped by to chat.
Suzanne and I called our Delta house Southfork (as in the tv show DALLAS), and we called it the Desert Beach House. I think of it most fondly as my grandparents’ former house. When I owned it, I thought of it as my own private tumbleweed ranch. I had a serious green thumb for growing all shapes, sizes, and styles of tumbleweeds. The best part about this house is that it was just an easement away from my parents’ home, which came in especially handy after Dad passed away. When we were in Delta, we could keep a protective eye on Mom, without cramping her gallivanting style. Rowan and I spent the bulk of his childhood summers in this house, while Suzanne stayed in Ogden and slaved at the office. She grabbed chunks of time to spend in Delta whenever she could get away from work. Rowan got the benefit of growing up by my parents and surrounded by my grandnieces and grandnephews. Our summer porch was always full of Mom, and kids, and bubbles, and root beer floats. Oh, and the porch was home to buckets of sidewalk chalk for creating miles of kid art to behold. I am proud to say that no self-respecting kid ever walked off our porch clean. 🏖
Back in December 2020, closer to our actual anniversary, we made a pilgrimage to the one place we had lived in Ogden. This was not just an apartment, like all our SLC residences had been. This was our house—with a swell porch for sittin’ and watchin’ the world go by. It was located on the “bad” side of Harrison Blvd, but it was a good area for Rowan to grow up. We lived here until we moved to our current residence in Centerville, almost a decade ago.
Note that in this photo I am wearing a Christmas Tie o’ the Day and a Suzanne-made Cape o’ the Day.
At our BAMBARA brunch, Suzanne gave me a Valentine’s card, a birthday card, and an Easter card. This was her signal to me that our first real dining-out-fancy in a restaurant since the pandemic began was meant to celebrate more than just Easter. In my post this morning, I told you Suzanne called our 3-in-1 holiday “Valenbirtheaster.” But after we completely filled our tummies at brunch, Suzanne had yet a fourth “holiday” which we needed to acknowledge on her agenda.
Not only did we not venture out to a restaurant to celebrate our 7th Anniversary back in December, I had told Suzanne that in honor of our anniversary, I wanted us to go on a trek to re-visit the three places we had lived in Salt Lake City when we first got together way back in the ancient 80’s. Due to the pandemic and life’s busy-ness in general, we never got around to doing the anniversary abode trek—until Suzanne surprised me with just such a nostalgic drive after brunch yesterday.
Behind us in the first photo is a house which had been split into apartments, one of which was our first residence. Our apartment was on 8th East, near the 9th and 9th neighborhood. We lived on the 2nd floor, in a U-shaped apartment. Suzanne’s brother, James, lived with us in this apartment too. We enjoyed watching him eat pizza-sized pancakes whole. Most notably, our apartment had red popsicle-colored walls surrounding the bathtub. Also, we had a neighbor across the hall who had the jaunty name of Sadie Cowboy. She was probably not much older than us, but she had lost most of her teeth—likely to violence. She did have a young daughter whose laughter brightened Sadie’s otherwise dire situation. One of our downstairs neighbors was a Goliath of a U of U football player named Kyle who took a liking to us, and made sure nobody gave us any trouble.
Our second apartment was in a big complex on 9th East, around 3rd South. We had a lot more room there, and the apartment was closer to the U of U where I had a teaching fellowship. But the apartment’s plastic yellow carpet was sharp to bare feet, so we wore shoes in the apartment all the time. If we wanted to sit on the floor to read the Sunday paper or watch a movie, we had to lay down a thick blanket over the carpet first. I kid you not, if your skin directly touched the carpet, it gave you a carpet burn even if you were completely still. We named that apartment The Kingdom of Scary Yellow Carpet. We had another U of U football player living right next door to us there too, but he wasn’t protective like the football guy from our first apartment building. On more than one occasion this guy threw his wife against the wall we shared, knocking out his wife, and knocking our pictures off the wall.
In the third photo here, you are seeing us in front of two houses on 10th Avenue, just off I Street. When we visited our third—and final—SLC apartment we once occupied, we couldn’t agree which house our garden apartment was in. Suzanne thinks we lived in the baby blue one, and I think the gray-blue one’s house numbers sounded like the right address. We aren’t sure which one housed us, but we are sure it was one of the two. It doesn’t surprise me we aren’t positive about it, because we didn’t live in this one very long.
And so, after revisiting our old SLC domiciles, the word Valenbirtheaster had to get longer. I have officially christened yesterday’s celebration of four different things to be “Valenbirtheastaversary.”
I don’t think Suzanne and I have been out on a Friday night adventure since the pandemic began, so when the soonest appointment I could get for my CT scan was an evening appointment last Friday, I took it. My CT scan at 8:30 PM was the perfect chance to finally go out on the town. And since it was an evening affair, I chose to treat it as a formal “black tie” soiree. (Note my black sequined Face Mask o’ the Evening.) Unfortunately, we didn’t go to dinner. I had to fast before my scan, and we had to get right back home after the scan because Skitter had been colicky and spitting up all day. Indeed, after I fasted, then drank two bottles of the CT scan goop, then had the CT, my reward when I returned home was to clean up the urp in Skitter’s crate. It was still a Friday night and I was dressed up, so I cleaned up after poor Skitter while still wearing my formal Bow Tie o’ the Day.
Thank’s, y’all, for the bounty of birthday wishes you graced me with yesterday! I am humbled to think anyone would take the time to acknowledge the occasion of my birth. I am blessed beyond what I deserve.One of the birthday presents Suzanne gave me yesterday was a pair of these trilobite bumper stickers for my vehicles. I knew that for this TIE O’ THE DAY photo, I simply had to pair the bumper sticker with my arrowhead Bow Tie o’ the Day. The bumper sticker’s trilobite stirred so many childhood memories of hanging out in the west desert with Dad and Popo, where I often searched for trilobites and arrowheads and geodes—and dead animal skulls. I knew there had to be some hidden meaning behind Suzanne’s cool gift, so I asked her why she chose this particular sticker to give me on my 57th birthday. She explained it was her way of declaring to me and to everyone who sees the sticker on my car that I am officially an old fossil. 🤣 ‘Nuff said. Maybe she’ll give me a dinosaur bone on my next birthday.
Everyone needs a cow-covered Face Mask o’ the Day and a crossword puzzle Bow Tie o’ the Day—as well as a pair of Bernie-Sanders-at-the-Inauguration socks. Okay, maybe not absolutely everyone needs these things, but I do. They keep me somewhat grounded in my authentic style during my times of roller coaster brain chemistry. The spirit o’ Bernie has warmed my feet on some of these days. Yes, the spirit o’ Bernie’s mittens has been punching right along with me through my most recent boxing match with my own complicated, manic-depressive head.
As my head finally started to find its balance a week or so ago, I was finally able to jot down some tblog ideas for updating y’all about my shenanigans you missed out on while I was not up to the demands of writing TIE-O-THE- DAY content. I went to bed that night, fully intending to get up at the crack of dawn and write a bigly original post the next morning, when—WHAM!—the ghost of my bum pancreas (my Hanky Panky) woke me up at 3AM with lightning strikes o’ pain. Two-and-a half years ago, I had successful Hanky Panky surgery, which left me with only one-third of my pancreas. Despite my Panky’s smaller size, I have been in relative Pancreas Heaven ever since the operation—until that night last week. Just my luck: I was thrown out of the bipolar frying pan, and into the pancreatic fire!
The sudden, old Panky pain felt entirely too familiar to me. Since then, I’ve been trying to ignore the discomfort, which has ebbed and flowed but hasn’t completely gone away. I luckily managed to wrangle an in-person appointment with my Hanky Panky surgeon at the Huntsman Cancer Institute tomorrow. I have bigly confidence that my doc can figure out what the Hell-en is going on with my Cranky Hanky Panky innard. A battery of tests and scans will follow over the next few weeks, I have no doubt. I am not askeered. Suzanne is askeered for me, but she shouldn’t be. She made me promise a long time ago that I won’t die before she does, and I consider it my main job to always keep my promises to Suzanne.
After much contemplation, I have decided I will gladly take painful flak from my teeny Hanky Panky any day of the week, over being lost in the dangerous labyrinth of my bipolar brain. Physical pain only hurts. Bipolar anguish, on the other hand, can trick you into thinking you can instantly make the world a better place by simply jumping off the nearest craggy cliff into your own annihilation. Hey, folks, how ’bout let’s none of us buy into that slick trick o’ the mind.
Anyhoo… I’m crossing my Cranky Hanky Panky that TIE-O-THE-DAY is back for a while, whether you’re ready for it, or not.🤠👔
[A love-themed re-post that finishes this story I began this morning.]
Caught in the crosshairs o’ love, Bow Tie o’ the Day waited patiently to read Part 2 of our little tale. When we left our saga o’ love in the previous post, this is where we were: Suzanne and I had decided to quit being we/us. And, as I have admitted, it was all because I was a dope. My bad.
Fast forward to the year 2000, when I moved back to Delta from the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area. Between my freshly diagnosed bipolarity and my freshly flaming Hanky Panky (pancreas), I was not well. I seriously expected to die soon. I was drained of health and hope. I needed to choose a power of attorney (POA) to handle my finances and medical decisions if I couldn’t deal with them myself. I pondered about who knew me best in the world. I pondered about who I trusted most in the world. And even though I hadn’t seen her or talked to her in over a decade, Suzanne was the answer.
I had no idea where Suzanne even was. I searched. Was she still in Utah? Did she move to England? It was almost Christmas so I decided to try to contact her by sending her a Christmas card, in care of her parents— hoping they still lived where last I knew them. A couple of days later, Suzanne replied to my card by telephoning me from her house in Ogden. I was glad her parents still lived at their same address and that they actually gave her the card. And I was gladder that she still lived in Utah. And I was gladdest of all that our phone conversation wasn’t one bit awkward.
I drove my 1970 Ford Falcon from Delta to Ogden a few days after that phone conversation, to meet Suzanne for dinner and a chat about my need for a Power of Attorney. We went to her fave Italian place on 25th Street, where I ate halibut and explained exactly what I needed her to do and why. That dinner changed the course of our lives. Everything since that dinner has been nothing less than a wondrous second chance. From the moment we sat down in the restaurant, we talked easily, laughed far too loudly, and couldn’t quit smiling at each other. It was as if the years we lived through without each other had never happened at all—like we had never been apart. Love at second sight. The decade-long homesickness for something I could never quite pin down made its exit. We were where we belonged. We were home at last.
Tie o’ the Day is a luscious Art Deco print. My harlequin Cape o’ the Day was made by Suzanne, as per usual. Suzanne is feeling under the weather, so she took the day off to sleep. I have neither seen nor heard her stir all day. I have done my best to not wake her. I have purposely made nary a noise or spectacle of myself, which is difficult for me to do, in general. I’ve simply worn Tie and pantomimed through my entire day in the house, while wearing my cape—without even once narrating what goes on in my head to Skitter, which is how I usually move through my day. Skitter probably thinks I’m giving her the proverbial silent treatment, which, I suppose— technically—I am. But the silence is for a good cause, which I will certainly explain to the mutt after Suzanne finally wakes up from her soporific state of being.😴
[I re-post this at the request of a reader who asked if I would “post the one about your fight with Suzanne and the roll of toilet paper.” After searching my post database, I’m confident this is what the reader was referring to. (Notice that I was wearing my grapes Bow Tie o’ the Day in the photo, which was in another post only a few days ago.) The following post hails from August of 2018, a few weeks after my bigly pancreas surgery—during which time Suzanne pestered me relentlessly about my not lifting anything, so I wouldn’t pop open my incision or otherwise damage my recuperating self. Enjoy, or re-enjoy this old post.]
Bow Ties o’ the Day had a fantastic time at Cafe Niche for Sunday brunch. As you can see, Suzanne wanted to get in on the bow tie act. We donned our bow tie bibs for the feast because we were famished, and we were afraid we might eat sloppily. The bow ties on each bib did a perfect job of keeping our clothing from being defaced by our lack of delicate eating. And bigly Bow Tie o’ the Day presents its grapes—Mormon grapes for Sunday, I’m sure.
Brunch can have a calming effect. I recommend it when you’re stressed out or tense. Suzanne and I stressed ourselves out by having a little tiff last night—over nothing of any real importance. But the tiff happened, and the tiff went on in silence, right on into today.
In the middle of the night when I had to potty, I ended up using the last few squares on the toilet paper roll. There was a new roll on the bathroom vanity, three inches from the tp holder. Normally, of course, I’d change out the rolls—no matter what time of the middle of the night it was. But I was still miffed about our earlier tiff, and there was no way in heck I was gonna politely take the old roll off and put the new one on. Nope. Suzanne was gonna have to do it herself the next time she needed to potty. (That’ll teach her!) And do you know what I thought in my tiff-miffed head as I walked back to bed? I thought with great sarcasm, “Well, she told me I wasn’t allowed to lift anything, and I’m sure that includes a roll of toilet paper.” And I sooo wanted her to say something to me about the tp roll incident this morning, so I could say the same snotty thing right to her precious face. But she didn’t mention it, on purpose, I’m sure. And then we went to brunch, and everything got forgiven and forgotten.
I love my world map Bow Tie o’ the Day. We haven’t traveled anywhere since the pandemic came around, and I’m getting itchy to see some new sights. I was thinking I might choose where to go next by sticking a pin in Bow Tie’s map. But just the thought of sticking a pin in any bow tie made me grimace, as you can clearly see.
Last night, when Suzanne was at the puzzle, she asked me where I want to go when we finally feel like we can go on a bigly adventure again. I said I wasn’t sure where our next destination should be. Suzanne doesn’t fool me, though. She knows darn well where I want to go: Traverse City, Michigan. She’s just not sure she wants to go there. I’ve read about it, and it seems like it could be a laid-back place to play. It’s tourist-friendly, without being too touristy. And we’ve never been to that proverbial neck of the proverbial woods. Now, I don’t mean to make this post self-serving, but if any of you run into Suzanne in the near future, I’d appreciate it if you could sort of organically drop the name “Traverse City” into your conversation with her. Maybe she’ll start thinking it’s her idea to go there. That would really help me out a lot.🤓🤣
