Category: Shirts

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My Excuse For Missing Last “Hairs Thursday”

My nephew, Bishop Travis, and his wife, Bishopette Collette, have been married 23 years. Their union overfloweth with blessings. But one blessing has never come to pass for them until this past week: a child. And then look who showed up, knocking her little BYU Cougar fists on their front door. Not only is she a dreamboat, she came into the world already knowing how to do her first bambino trick: she sneezes almost every time her diaper gets changed. She’s worth keeping just for that show-offy trick. TIE O’ THE DAY is pleased to introduce to our readers Grace Anne Blackwelder. (I adore that middle name.)

This is the only grandbaby for my Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless. She hogged Grace during our visit to Grace’s home. I was, however, allowed to hold the tiny darling while the new grandma went to the potty room. I timed it: I was allowed to hold Gracie for 1 minute and 9 seconds. That was longer than I realistically thought I’d get to cuddle her, so I felt lucky. I knew to not ask The Grandma if I could hold her again.

I’ve been alive long enough to know it’s downright hazardous to get between a newborn and a new grandma. Just remain calm; don’t touch the baby; and let grandma do her thing. Coo at the baby from a safe distance. Use binoculars from across the room if you want to examine the munchkin’s perfect toes. If you can remember these tips, your arms will most likely remain intact. Eventually, you’ll get your turn to hold the wee one. Or so they say.

BTW I chose to wear my fish taco Shirt o’ the Day and my popsicle Bow Tie o’ the Day to meet Grace for the first time, because I believe it’s never too early to teach kids about the finer things in life: things like Beethoven, Van Gogh, Meryl Streep, and fish tacos and popsicles. I did not introduce Grace to the captivating elegance of The Saddle Purse on our first visit. I thought that might overwhelm her just a bit much.

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It’s Hairs Thursday #12 All Day Long

With the help of Tie o’ the Day, the bigly clash fashion is on. This unmatched match o’ dots was a go-together must. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t usually “choose” my get-up: I grab the first shirt I find in the closet, and I take the first bow tie my eyes see from whichever bow tie drawer I open. Or I blindly nab a necktie from the closet, where they all hang in hibernation. Sometimes, on a special occasion, I will plan an outfit on purpose. Of course, for church I tone my outfits down a bit. Okay, I tone them down a lot. It is a humongous effort to lower the volume of my attire.

But when it comes to “doing” my hair, I don’t. And I never have. It’s not just that I can’t do anything with my scraggly, overgrown hair. I can’t do nothin’ with my hairs no matter how brilliantly they are cut. My hairs are against me. They are thin and straight beyond measure. And I personally have no talent for creating any kind of hairdo. Doing hair is a craft, an art. I can appreciate visual art of all kinds. However, I cannot create anything resembling any kind of visual art. Wash-‘n’-go is how I roll. That’s why I need masterful haircuts.

BTW For my Mormon readers: I am curious about something, and so far no one has been able to answer my question. Please help me out if you know the answer. Can men wear a white bow tie with LDS Temple clothes, or is only a white necktie allowed?

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I Joke, Therefore I Am

I take my mental health seriously, as we all should. But part of what allows me to keep trudging along through my bipolarity issues is poking fun at myself and my “crazy head.” If I can’t laugh about it daily, no matter how precarious or smooth my state of mind, I can’t survive it. In fact, my ability to joke and snark about almost any hard time in life is a great comfort to me. Being playful with words helps me be patient and firm with whatever is at hand. Humor is one of my self-defense tactics. I’ve been told my vaudeville act has helped others keep their heads healthy on occasion. I hope so.

Anyhoo… To be silly for my TMS technician this morning, I put together a hypnotic, googly-eyed Bow Tie o’ the Day (complete with matching Cufflinks o’ the Day) and a googly Shirt o’ the Day. (I did the best I could with the hat. Paisley will have to do.) My attire symbolizes my dizzy, goofy, insane, wacko, loony, mesmerizing “crazy head.” When I use these words– and others like them– in my quest to be comedic about my bipolar travels, my purpose is to take away any power they might have to mock mental illness. I own the words, so they don’t own me. I work to transform them into my zaniness.

Hey, it works for me.

15 TMS treatments down, 21 to go.

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Just Let It Wash Over You

True art transcends language. Bow Tie o’ the Day will be the first to tell you that when you’ve created an outfit that ranks on the highest artistic level of clash fashion, words are not enough to describe it. Just wear it. Let people gaze at your get-up until their eyes hurt, which probably won’t be long if you’ve clashed your threads in a superior way. Talk about shock and awe! I can’t really see the mismatch-mix while I’m wearing this set o’ duds, but my eyes are in pain at what I can catch of it in my peripheral vision. Skitter naps all amazed at the look I’ve put together.

I love clashion days like today! It’s a mismatch score of 10. I win!

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Office Lunch. Office Not-lunch.

Circles and browns. That’s Bow Tie o’ the Day. Shirt o’ the Day is seeing the state of the planet more clearly with its zillion pairs of glasses. In this photo, we are hanging with Suzanne in her office for an hour. It’s time for lunch. It’s cold outside this time of year, so our usual lunching at the park is not an option. This place will have to do until spring temperatures show up.

Suzanne eats yogurt for her meal. For my meal, I watch Suzanne eat yogurt. I’m never hungry at that time of day. I like to hang with Suzanne at lunch because I can make sure she takes the time to eat. I like to know she hits PAUSE from her duties for a bit, and also for a bite.

The other reason we lunch together is because we need to right now. This has been a tough year for us, relationship-wise. No worries. We are more than fine, and we will continue to be more than fine. We’ve just had some tinkering to do.

Before we sold the Delta house, it was necessary for me to split my time between both places. Now that we’re in one house, I’m in Suzanne’s face and space all the time. Even though living in one house is exactly what we’ve always wanted, we have both had to make adjustments to our daily routines. The more time we spend together, the more the tinkering pays off.

I also think my summer surgery made last year more problematic, in terms of our relationship. In some ways, it’s made us closer. But recovering meant I had to mostly be a slug, which meant Suzanne had to take over the house and outside errands. She also got a hoity-toity promotion, which means she got handed a long list of more responsibilities, which means longer hours at the office. For a few months, I was just one more job she had to do. And I felt incredibly guilty about that. I still do. Suzanne said she was happy to do it, and even happier that I let her. It’s almost impossible for me to accept help with anything. (Except the computer glitches. Suzanne is welcome to fix my computer issues at any time.)

In the context of these things, can you feel the occasional tension popping up?

With fashion, I always try to achieve dis-harmonic clash. In relationships, clashing is not ideal. Suzanne and I are on the same page on pretty much everything, but there is always a torn page or two in any relationship. There’s always relationship work to be done. You can love someone– as in, you can feel love for someone. But for that love to be “real,” you have to commit to doing the verb of love too. You have to actively love, by doing things to show the love you feel. Sometimes we forget that fact.

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Pet Peeve Alert!

Bow Tie o’ the Day presents a map of the planet, and Shirt o’ the Day presents the heavens above us. They are a perfect pairing for me to present something which ticks me off to the moon and back. My peeve? The general thoughtless incivility which seems to have crept into every nook, cranny, and pothole of public and private discourse– from grocery store chit chat to politics, and every other kind of conversation or op-ed in between. It’s so often childish in the sense of being rude, crude, inaccurate, and just plain mean.

That got me thinking about how we say everyone is a child of God. Do we really believe that? I don’t think we always treat others as if they’re as much a child of God as we think we are. In fact, at times, I’m starting to be uncomfortable with terms like “child of God.” And it’s more and more difficult for me to be comfortable with any statement whose gist is that “We are all God’s children.” Nope. Those words and sentiments don’t really resonate for me completely, with the way we behave toward each other right now.

Don’t get your feathers in an uproar about what I just wrote. Of course, I know there is a difference between being “childlike” and being “childish.” Childlike = good. Childish = unacceptable. That’s not my problem.

Here’s the thing. I think we should add another term to be spoken with as much fervor as we say “child of God,” and it should be “adult of God.” We should grow up. We should become civil to one another– whether it’s in politics; in the drive-thru line at Burger King; or even in the crowded pool lane where you’re swimming laps. Let’s grow up. Let’s be considerate and say “please” and “thank you.” And let’s mean it. Be a child of God who acts like an adult of God.

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Dressing For Chores

All paisley, all the time. See, you can have a common thread to your outfit, while still creating the proper clashion. Hat o’ the Day, Cufflinks o’ the Day, Shirt o’ the Day, Vest o’ the Day (which I named the Pimp Vest), and– most importantly– Bow Tie o’ the Day combine to create a clash extraordinaire. I think this is some of my top work. I’m a proud momma of my fashion creation. Paisles are my fave “shape” with which to work my unmatchiness. I suppose my goal to clash makes me a non-matchmaker.

Perhaps I am overdressed for my day’s tasks. First they are all tasks I need to do at home. Cleaning, laundry, etc.. I will probably leave the house only for Skitter’s walkie. But what I’ll be spending most of my task-time doing is going through the storage bins and boxes in the garage, looking for ONE thing: a shoebox-sized box which holds half-a-dozen cassette tapes I recorded with my Grandma, Martha Anderson in 2000.

Grandma had fallen and broken her hip and shoulder. She was in the Delta hospital for a week or so before she could return to her apartment in The Sands. I stayed at the hospital with her each night. Well, Grandma must have gotten all of the sleep she would ever need in the preceding decades because she did not sleep. So we talked. At some point I started to record her stories. When I showed up at the hospital each night, I turned on the recorder and let it go. I haven’t listened to them for years. Life gets busy and you forget to do important things like that. Shame on us.

I know I still have the tapes somewhere, because I remember packing them up in Delta when we moved the contents of the Delta house up here. But I have no clue in which bin I so safely stored them. My biggest concern is that the tapes might not still be in playing condition after nearly two decades. I’ve kept them safe, but I can’t keep them safe from the passing of time. I no longer own a cassette player, but Betty/BT/Mercedes (whatever name you call my oldest sister) still has the one she got as a prize on WHEEL OF FORTUNE in the 80’s. She’s the family genealogist, so these tapes belong with her anyway.

I remember one startling moment during a night with Grandma, which I so wish had been recorded. After Grandma went back to The Sands from the hospital, I still stayed with her most nights. She stayed in a hospital bed in her living room, and I took over the couch.

One night, Grandma finally fell asleep for a few minutes. I started to nod off, when suddenly Grandma loudly said, in her sleep, “Isn’t it funny about horses? How they have sex, you know.” She stayed asleep and never uttered another word until she woke up a little later and asked me to get her some of her “cheesies.” Cheetos. Of course, I happily got her a bowl of cheesies. I did not ask her about the dream she had just had. But I really, really, really wanted to.

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An Irreverent Time Was Had By All

Glittery Christmas tree Bow Tie o’ Last Evening was the festive finishing touch to my go-to-an-event outfit. I don’t know about you, but I think I paired the perfect Shirt o’ the Evening with the harlequin side of my Cape o’ the Evening. Non-matchy matchy. Snazzy-licious. It’s a wardrobe combination I might repeat, even though my policy is to never wear the exact same “costume” twice. I suppose a different bow tie would qualify as making it a different outfit, so I guess I needn’t fret about going against my self-imposed style rules.

Anyhoo… Last night, Suzanne and I went to the Eccles Theater in downtown SLC to listen to a reading by David Sedaris– an author and humorist, who mines most of his material from his childhood, his family, his partner, and just from stuff he notices going on around him. Gee, that sounds kind of familiar, eh? I, of course, do not claim to exhibit writing or humor skills that even remotely approach those of David Sedaris.

I captured this selfie in one of the theater’s restrooms, because no photography was allowed in the theater itself– which is where I usually get TIE O’ THE DAY shots of me and Suzanne when we attend events. I made the bold photo choice to snap this selfie with the baby changing station and the “vending” machine in the background, rather than the potty. I thought staging it like this would exhibit just a bit of class. I might be a character, but I value the fact that I am rarely uncouth.

Suzanne and I had a swell evening. I laughed until my  belly scar broke open. Seriously, if I’d gone to a David Sedaris reading two weeks after my surgery, I really would have popped my scar bigly wide open. Come to think of it, that would have been kinda cool because then I could say, “I laughed so hard I literally busted a gut.” I quite enjoy making clichés and over-used descriptions come to life.

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Working Out With Errands

As my t-shirt says, bow ties ARE cool, and so is Tie o’ the Day with its herd of black-and-white neckties. I had to take clothes to the dry cleaners today and I thought I should fancy up a bit, so that’s why I had to don Tie. How much fancier can you get than wearing black-and-white ties? I do not own anything remotely like a tuxedo or I would have worn that too.

You see, I am still doing the recovering-after-surgery thing, so doing anything at all tends to exhaust me. I don’t want to leave my recliner. I walk Skitter, then I have to rest. I do chores around the house, then I crash again. But I make sure I do at least one errand each day. It gets me out of the house and it helps build my stamina. It also gives me a chance to do my clash fashion thing out among the masses. A person really should get out of their pajamas sometimes. And by “a person” I mean me.

As one of my house chores I have been cleaning up The Tie Room a little bit this week, which means I have been re-arranging the closet in there. I have some ties hanging in the closet, but shirts are most of what’s taking up the closet rod space. Over the weekend, I had this brilliant idea to organize my shirts by color. It did not work. Why? Because apparently I have about three shirts that aren’t blue. I am The Queen o’ Blue Shirts, so my closet is organized thus: three non-blue shirts at one end, and blue shirts on the remainder of the closet rod.

I told Suzanne that if I ever buy a shirt again– and I will– it will not be any shade of blue, no matter how groovy it might look. She simply looked at me with that look that says, “Helen, do you have one clue about the reality of how you are?” She’s right. Hello, more blue shirts.