Today, I’ve been busy catching up on a quiver of projects, errands, and even stoking a fervent wish. Tie o’ the Day is symbolic of my wish: I want a beach, somewhere far from the cold and snow I live in. But that’s not on the schedule currently, so I guess I will half-heartedly settle for beach-y, tropical neckwear. I want to rent a palm tree and some white sand. A girl can dream.
I’ve been playing phone tag with the car dealership where I ordered my new truck in November. I have heard nothing from them or Ford since placing my order. I knew I would have a months-long wait to get my Maverick, so I’m not worried. I’m simply wanting to check in with somebody official about it, though, just for reassurance that my order didn’t get lost somewhere in the process. But my car salesguy hasn’t returned my texts or calls yet. I see a drive to the dealership in my plans, which I really don’t have time for—but okay.
I’ve been considering my head hairs this afternoon, and I am having a heckuva time deciding whether to keep shaving it or to let it grow out again. I have kept it shaved for almost exactly a year now. I’m feeling like a hairs change would be nice. But I also really like how it feels to have teensy-weensy head hairs. Maybe I should do both: keep my head shaved, but start a wig collection and wear a different hairstyle every day. Hey, it could be the best of both worlds. I can see the wigs now: all the obnoxious colors I can find and every hairstyle yet known on the planet. I am tempted. But if I start another collection, I can count on collecting divorce papers, too. What to do?
Another bigly project for me today has been to get working on choosing my Oscars gown. I had almost forgotten about the ceremony being only a month from now. I must get crankin’ on that. I know that sometimes I make bold attire moves that I later regret. That just comes with being a fashion genius. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss. But messing up with a gown at the Oscars is committing a faux pas in an entirely different universe. I cannot afford to pull a blunder on that socially-enormous, over-blown, bloated-ego stage. Nope. I must get my look right on the Red Carpet. So I’m working on it.
Where there are wild golf pants, there must be wild golf shirts. And here’s the first loud golf shirt to live in my closet. I have always wanted a stained glass golf shirt, although I never knew it until I saw this one online last week. It’s all mine now. I suppose many golfers think of a golf course as their outdoor church. They show reverence to well designed courses they play, so a stained glass shirt fits right into that vibe. I’m partial to stained glass and the eloquent brightness it conjures. The golf part of crazy golf attire, I can take or leave.
Although I’ve only played it a handful of times over the years, I do like the golf course in Delta. I recommend swinging at a bucket of balls on the driving range, as the sun goes down. You’re hitting balls right into the most spectacular desert sunsets you’ll ever find: sherbet colors galore. Who cares if you lose sight of the ball you hit both ?! While playing the Delta course itself, the following have crossed my path at one time or another: rabbits, snakes, deer, dogs, cats, chukars, foxes, ground squirrels, mice, owls, antelope, Wolfenringer, and Sasquatch. It’s a happening place.
Oh, and most importantly, I’ve encountered coyotes on the course. My wiley Tie o’ the Day honors both the desert coyotes and my dad. Dad and those wild pups played tag with each other on a daily basis. 🏌️♀️🐇🐍🦌🐕🐈🐿🐁🦉
Skitter takes a cozy nap in her dog bed—with her hard-working new pal.Skitter joins Rumi at the Roomba helipad.
TIE O’ THE DAY is pleased to introduce the arrival of a new pet at our house. As you know, Skitter and I have been angling for a new critter for a couple of years now. Suzanne has not joined us in our wish. At some point, we finally gave in to the reality that Skitter is so weird there is no plausible way she could handle having another living creature in the house 24/7 without shaking to her tragic death—no matter how badly she tells me she wants an animal pal. Folks, it’s good to let go of the impossible (at least until you figure out how to make it possible). That’s the only way to be free to embrace The Great What Is.
When I got Suzanne the bigly red rug for her birthday, I somehow knew I would eventually be getting her a Roomba to keep her rug immaculate—so a Roomba was Suzanne’s Christmas present. It has made itself at home here with us since then. And it is exactly the kind of pet Skitter can calmly co-habitate with. Part turtle, part manta ray, all vacuum—The Great What Is for us is a Roomba we’ve named Rumi, and we’ve pet-utized it. Suzanne programmed Rumi to be a primarily nocturnal beast.
Skitter has a routine tendency to leave trails of food and slivered bits of dog chews on Suzanne’s red rug—and nowhere else at all—for us to gaze upon with wonder. While Suzanne was initially programming and trying out Rumi, Skitter tried very hard to relate to the new critter, but she was sore afraid of it. She watched it move and it caused her to vibrate with fear, as Rumi seemingly took over the house. It’s not like we could explain a Roomba to Skitter to ease her anxiety. She is just a dog even though I pretend she’s not, and as such she only has a brain the size of a walnut. In the end, I think we came up with a pleasantly livable solution for all involved.
We decided to make Rumi a primarily nocturnal animal. It runs only in the middle of the night. This suits Skitter just fine cuz she’s asleep upstairs when Rumi has run of the first floor. So we have a new “pet,” but Skitter doesn’t have to be askeered of its furtive movements. Skitter ventures over to where Rumi sleeps all day on its own pad, to see and smell her new pet. And Rumi and Skitter occasionally nap together in the dog bed—if Rumi is off. Of course, Suzanne never sees Rumi in motion either because she’s also upstairs asleep when Rumi is awake and active. Rumi and I are tight, however, because I have insomnia often so I go downstairs to putter around and eat popsicles or ice cream while I’m not sleeping: Rumi and I thus share its brief awake time. I guess you could say I supervise the work as Rumi does it.
Twice I have come downstairs in the morning to find Rumi motionless and self-trapped in the tiny 1/2 bathroom, having accidentally pushed the door closed behind itself as it toiled away at cleaning the floor for us. Poor thing. I can imagine Rumi bouncing from one bathroom wall to the next, over and over again, for an hour or so, trying to find a way out and back to home base. Rumi looked so pathetic when I found it like that, so now I try to remember to shut that bathroom door before going up to bed. Yes, I know Rumi is a mere object, but I still felt so sad to picture it trapped and temporarily dead, so close—but yet so far—from its tiny Roomba helipad. Oh, it had places to go.
[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.
[In yet another repeat TIE O’ THE DAY post from March 2019, my scary hairs are again the star o’ the show. I need my hairs cut and I’m trying to decide whether I’m shaving it again or growing it out.]
Colonel Sanders Tie o’ the Day helped me re-think my baseball caps. Do I really need them, or can I get by with this glued-up visor hairdo? I dunno. My hairs visor seems to be keeping the sun out of my eyes so far today. If I got rid of my hats, I could free up their space in the Tie Room, so I could house more bow ties. But alas! I love my hat collection too, so that’s not gonna happen. There’s somehow room in the Tie Room Resort for all things that wander in.
Small towns are like that, even though we tend to think of them as narrow-minded. A small town will generally set a place for you at its table. Trust me, you will find narrow-minded people anywhere you go. You will find jerks everywhere you go, as well. And if you act like a jerk in a small town, be prepared to lose that place at the table you were so kindly given—as you would deserve to. But most people realize nobody’s perfect, and they’ve got plenty of their own issues to work on. A lot of “mind your own biscuits” combined with even more of “love your neighbor” goes a long way toward allowing you to live like a mature human being among other grown-ups.
We had our annual H&R Block appointment to file our taxes yesterday evening. I think of it as tax settlement, after the manner of the equally math-related technical thing called “tithing settlement” over at the church. Filing our taxes was, as it generally is, a mostly painless but ultimately uninteresting yearly event. We left the appointment certain we hadn’t committed any fiscal infractions which might cause us to be audited, so that itself felt like a success.
If you’re a long-time TIE O’ THE DAY reader, you know that my annual tax post is where I happily repeat the claim that I am proud to pay taxes. I co-own this country, with every other citizen who has lived here or ever will live here. I literally pay for it. It’s mine. Furthermore, I assert that every tax dollar I spend buys me more than any other dollar I spend—from roads, libraries, schools, parks, baseball diamonds, airports, cemeteries, police departments, deer hunts, fire departments, the military, national parks, public health research institutions, 911 service, etc. to unseen layers of infrastructure and security for my personal benefit. I could never afford to pay my share of the actual cost of these services I use, even if I forked over my entire paycheck—even if my paycheck was exponentially and astronomically more than it is. A tax dollar spent is a bargain. My dad taught me how to see it this way.
So my taxes are done for the year. And my annual tax post is written and offered up for perusal on TIE O’ THE DAY. My tax work is done here. 💵💸
I have posted a bunch of sappy stuff about love recently, in honor of Valentine’s Day. I’m a cheerleader for kindness, forgiveness, empathy, and compassion. I will defend those higher values until the day I drop dead. I really do believe in the ideas I’ve been writing about, but I also believe it’s a sign of a healthy mental state to face and deal with other, less sweet-and-gushy, feelings. As human beings, we all have what I will call moments of feeling darkly—those times when we encounter rudeness, unfairness, betrayal, injustice, etc. We feel more darkly when these negative things we encounter are such that we can’t (or think we can’t) really do anything to change what we see. We struggle with the way things are. We have emotional responses to these situations that are natural but not especially nice. Don’t feel guilty about feeling “not especially nice.” I suggest you acknowledge your feelings, figure out why you feel them, and then move on. If you can do something to fix the situation that upsets you, do. If you can’t, keep on truckin’, as we used to say in the 70’s. Been there, felt that.
There’s a trick I came up with in order to accomplish just this. It might not work for you, but I swear by it. If I’m in the midst of a situation in which someone is promoting contention, I talk to myself in my head. More specifically, I say not-nice things privately to myself. Outwardly, I will be as civil as the situation allows. I will try to talk the contention-maker down to a dull roar. But at some point, if it’s clear this person is hell-bent on being contentious to others, I give myself permission to rant in my head—while remaining polite. If a person is being a jerk, I give myself permission to repeat a mantra like, “You’re being a jerk” over and over again, out loud inside my brain. It is true that sometimes I say—in my head—words that are a bit stronger than “jerk.” I make no apologies for doing this. It makes me feel better without creating more contention by throwing fists or by running my mouth directly at someone else. Generally, if I just acknowledge and respect my not-nice feelings, these not-nice feelings pass. In most instances, there’s no reason to ruin a relationship about it.
Here’s an example of what I’m saying. In the late 80’s, I had a spiky short hairdo with one small tail of neon hair down to my right shoulder. I was in my mid-20’s at the time. I was with a friend (also in her 20’s) at Trolley Square in SLC, when we ran into her mother. It was the first time I had met my friend’s mother, so she introduced me. I said to the mother I was glad to meet her and stuck out my hand to shake hers—you know, I was polite. My friend’s mother kept her hands to her side and immediately asked me, “Do you really think you can meet Jesus with hair like that?” Now I know for a fact that I had never used the spikes in my hair to stab anyone or poke their eyes out or pick a lock to steal stuff. And I know for a fact that my neon yellow or pink or blue hair-tail never strangled anybody. Sadly, I had dealt with people like this before, so it didn’t startle me. I said to my friend’s mother, “The Jesus I am familiar with is busy dealing with real problems like hate and poverty and fear and hopelessness. The Jesus I know isn’t a busybody judging people’s hair.” I don’t remember how the conversation went after that, but I do remember that talking to myself, repeating “You are a jerk,” over and over again in my own noggin, helped me remain relatively civil in the situation. I knew the mother for many years after that and I grew to appreciate her for her other, less judgmental qualities. No matter the style of my hair during the more than decade I knew my friend’s mother, I always knew that in her eyes, my head hairs and I were never worthy of meeting Jesus. Oh well. I’m not worried.
The first three paragraphs of this post set the context for this afternoon’s “coded” Tie o’ the Day. It’s an uber-easy code to break, with only two words to be deciphered. (I realized as I was writing this that I’ve never actually said these two specific words together out loud to a person in my life.) The idea I’m trying to explore in this post is that it is sometimes fitting to feel not-nice about a not-nice situation or a not-nice person. It doesn’t make you a bad person to get fed-up with something. It is, however, usually better to deal with the raggedy feeling yourself, rather than lash out directly at someone in the heat of the moment. Egos get bruised that way. Pride gets injured. Even the most helpful, insightful point gets lost in translation under such circumstances. Saying things only to myself and/or wearing this Tie o’ the Day at strategic times can help me remain composed in life’s mean chaos: I’m subtly registering my dissent by expressing an authentic not-nice emotion, without causing emotional injury to someone else’s fragility. It’s a strategy which works effectively for me. 👁 💜 U’all
I seem to have been feeling a lumberjack-y vibe when I put on my clothes today. Tie o’ the Day is replete with split wood ready for stacking, on top of my red-and-gray plaid shirt. The paisley mask is just because I try to rock some paisley no matter what I wear, as y’all well know. I can’t explain the reason for wearing the cow-spots flat cap, except to say it seemed like a silly way to finish the look. Perhaps the hat is just my way of saying “howdy” to my friend, Myrt, who is a faithful TIE O’ THE DAY reader and is always up for any cow-themed attire I have to show off. Consider yourself “howdy-“ed, Myrt. 🐄 Moo!
On this Monday after the Super Bowl, I would like to offer my sincere congratulations to the Seattle Seahawks for their League Championship win yesterday. I would like to, but I can’t—since my Seahawks were not in this year’s bigly game. ‘Scuse me while I sob about it for two whole seconds. Oh, well. There’s always next year. Go next year, Seahawks!
Candy conversation hearts Tie o’ Valentine’s Day is joined by my Suzanne-sewn pink hearts Cape o’ the Day. As far as love itself goes, I say, “Go bigly, or go home!” If you’re not willing to put in the effort that love of any type requires, don’t even attempt to get involved in it. If you aren’t in it for the long-haul, you’ll surely end up inadvertently hurting people who don’t deserve it. And you will just as certainly end up dooming yourself to regrets. Once embarked upon, love is a deepening and complication of every decision you will make thereafter. If you’re loving another person properly, you’re always juggling your own goals, feelings, needs, and wants with those of someone else. To keep a relationship alive, you must nurture the closeness between you and your beloved, while at the same time maintaining clearly defined boundaries that keep your own soul free, independent, and accountable. That nugget of wisdom is as true for loving your companion, as it is for loving your kid, your parent, or your neighbor. Maybe even your football team.
Loving someone is a wondrous task. It demands work. It requires regular attention and ever-evolving interpersonal skills. It requires selfless passion and pointed self-reflection. It also requires unending resilience, because no matter how much you care and how hard you work at a relationship, you will sometimes get hurt—as certainly as you will cause pain to whoever you love. When human beings are involved in an endeavor, pain and loss are inevitable. The distress that comes out of plain old human imperfection can be intentional or unintentional (It’s mostly unintentional, from what I’ve observed)—but if you love somebody, you will experience it from both sides. Remember: you are perfectly you, but you are not perfect. Let me yell that thought boldly, so you don’t miss it: YOU ARE NOT PERFECT! No one is, so it’s a good idea to always love with a dollop of forgiveness handy. Continue to love onward, with your trusty shield of resilience at the ready. Resilience won’t keep you safe from the pangs of loving, but it will help you survive pain like the Adult of God you are likely trying so hard to become. 💝 ❣️
So far, no one has ever left a baby on my front step. Sometimes, however, I open my front door to find that some anonymous but wonderful delivery driver has left me a bigly package like this. This one hails from ties.com—one of only a handful of companies with whom I will do neckwear business. They were having a clearance sale on their website earlier in the week, and I ended up ordering nearly 40 new neckties. Most of these ties were thriftily priced at $2.18 or $3.28, so y’all can see why I had to stock up. A star item in this particular crop o’ neckties is the bacon tie you saw in this morning’s TIE O’ THE DAY post. That bacon tie is normally $38.50. I’ll tell you a little secret about collecting just about anything with a price tag: the key is to be patient about prices. Everything goes on sale at some point. Of the thousands of ties and bow ties I have in my collection, I have paid full price on maybe a dozen. For all of my alleged extravagance regarding my neckwear, I am truly a thrifty chick. 💸
