Witty & Wise Ties, Trivia & Lies
Candy Bow Tie o’ the Day knows what’s what. Bow Tie does not manufacture fake news. The truth is the truth, and Bow Tie wants you to know it: Candy corn is one of the modern world’s greatest confectionary inventions. Snack on, my friends.
October is a jam-packed month, in terms of awareness/causes and celebrations. I plan to address as many as possible. The neckwear and I won’t be doing Oktoberfest, yet again. I haven’t celebrated that doozy since 2006, which is the right thing for yours truly. You’ll have to tackle that one on your own, if you are so inclined. Halloween, of course, is the bigly party deal of the entire month. And then there are the various hunts going on up in them thar hills. I was born to celebrate all that hubbub.
Skitter showed support for Breast Cancer Awareness Month yesterday, decked out in her pink. Today, her hat represents that cause. In addition, she’s hoping her purple Tie o’ the Day calls your attention to Domestic Abuse Awareness Month.
Skitter and I have chatted about domestic abuse, and we decided on something to say to y’all about it: Hey, folks, that all-encompassing commandment about loving one another– I think that’s supposed to start in your own home. Just a thought.
Flouncy Bow Tie o’ the Day joins me in solid pink because October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It’s a cause I believe in, and that’s the only reason I was able to stomach showing up in one solid color. You most likely will not see me “solid” again, especially in real life, so gander at the pink and pink and pink now, while you can.
You are in charge of your breasticles’ health, ladies. Do your self-exams. If you have someone who can help you with the task, that’s okay too. Just sayin’.
I haven’t selfied today, so I’ll let Grace Anne show off her cute Bow Tie o’ Last Sunday before she got in a fancy polka dot dress for church. See, her bow is on the ballerina costume emblem on her chest.
So….. I’ve been writing here about wanting to just un-me myself, cuz I keep needing to re-learn the lesson of using moderation in assisting folks in solving their own problems. When I do too much, I short-change myself and disappear, which makes me realize I really don’t want to change into someone I’m not. I just want myself to grow to be better at being me. I think we all want that for ourselves.
But why do we make the same mistakes again and again? Yesterday, I said that one reason is because we are familiar with the pattern. It feels comfortable to us. We feel safe in a pattern we’ve set, if only because we’re used to it.
However, I think there’s a much bigly-er reason we get stuck in our patterns of behavior that replay our weaknesses. What complicates our battles with our own personal deficiencies is the fact that our weaknesses are usually intricately tied to our strengths. And we don’t want to chance giving up our strengths.
For example, I think most of us will agree that helping others is a good way to be. Helping others, to the detriment of ourselves is not so good. We have to keep learning how to harness all the bells and whistles of our helping, so we don’t collapse in self-neglect. Ideally, we want our characteristic strengths to grow, while our characteristic weaknesses diminish. So although it is true in some sense that we must lose ourselves in order to find ourselves, it’s also true that we can lose ourselves in helping others to the point that our “self” can starve to death. If that happens, we are of no use to anyone. We have made it impossible to love our neighbors. Now, that’s what I call a sin.
To use a car metaphor, the long and short of it is that I had been speeding around for others a bit recklessly, until I had no speed with which to move. My tank wasn’t just empty, it finally rusted out. My wheels were stuck in a mud puddle of my own making too. I spun my wheels out of helpless anger, knowing fully well that I was only throwing mud and making deeper ruts. I gotta remember to not do that again. Y’all know exactly what I’m sayin’.
As a decrepit old gal these days, my “me” is like the muddy used car. Folks, I’m never gonna be a new car. I’m pretty much AS IS. But used cars can be detailed, so I’m also AS I WILL BECOME. I wanna be a continually NEW used car, regularly detailing myself with mostly snazzerrific bow ties.
End of deep thoughts.
BTW You know how I find connections everywhere I look? Here I am posting about the good and bad of helping others, and what did my fortune cookie tell me at lunch today? “Life’s greatest privilege is being able to help someone in need.” Duh! I kid you not.
Here are some rare photos of me and Skitter naked of our neckwear. When I lounge on the reclining loveseat in my mis-matching pajamas, somehow Skitter manages to gradually squish me and hog my seat. You can see I hate it when that happens.
Anyhoo… In the previous post I wrote about wanting to be un-me, cuz being me creates problems for me at times. One thing I do that makes problems for me is this: I come to the rescue. It’s what I do. (I’m sure that’s why Suzanne has to make me so many capes.) I think I must say YES to every plea that comes my way. Suzanne and I call me ERRAND GIRL because I have been known to spend much of my time doing for other people what they don’t have the time, patience, or availability to do themselves. I am a do-gooder. I do not say it in a braggadocious way. I mean it in the sense that I seem to have an intuitive skill to pitch in and help. It was a kind of fate I was born into, too. I can’t take credit for that part of it. You do know who raised me, right? My do-gooding skill comes naturally, like some people have a natural musical ability. Perhaps I can’t say NO because I am covered in blessings, and some people have so few. (Let’s face it. Many of you share this yes/no struggle. I know you, you know.)
I think my recent postlessness is very much about getting burned out by too much doing for others. You’ve been there too, no doubt. I’ve been overly generous with my mental and physical energies for others recently, to the extent that I began to feel like I was living other people’s lives while ignoring my own. I was spending my days in the Kingdom Of Saying Yes To Other People. My own behavior caused me to lose my sense of me. I “helped” others let me lose my balance, in order for them to maintain their own.
Balance. That’s my “issue.”
I keep having to learn the same lesson about balance, over and over– and in different scenarios– in my mortal existence. I think it’s kind of like that for all the bigly lessons we each have to learn. We might be working on conquering different things in ourselves, but a lot of the stuff you need to learn is unique to you. Some of the ideas are the same for all of us. We find ourselves running into our own same lessons repeatedly, and that’s a clue we really need to work on that idea.
It’s not necessarily that we’re too stoopid to learn our lessons the first time we encounter them. It’s not that we don’t know we have to grow to be better people– and to keep from being boring to ourselves and others. No, I think we keep hitting our heads against the same lessons at increasingly deeper and more meaningful levels in our souls. We’re stubborn and defensive about our weaknesses, but we hold onto them because they’re what we know. Holding on makes growth slow or even impossible, when growth is always oh-so possible.
Why else do we greedily hold on to what holds us back? There’s a really, really, really, bigly reason we hold onto stumbling blocks, and I’ll explain it in the rest of my theory tomorrow in PART THREE: the final post in this particular philosophical exploration. And then we can get back to silliness. And neckties and bow ties and bolos, oh my!
Even heart-target Bow Tie o’ the Day knows I post, post, post. And then I’m suddenly silent. I’ve done it before, but never in TIE O’ THE DAY history have I been post-less for nearly half a month. (Thanks for your patience.) With the exception of a short post on Mom’s birthday last week, that’s how long it’s been. And even more astounding is the fact that I purposely haven’t worn neckwear (this is an earlier photo) for that amount of time. Oh, the pigs are flying about that! I am simply not myself.
Usually when all’s quiet on the laptop it’s due to some bipolar thing, or connectivity issues while we’re vacationing. This time my silence has been part bipolar vortex and mostly existential crisis. I wore my spirit out, and I wanted to be un-me. I guess even I couldn’t handle my high-maintainance diva self. Thus, I haven’t worn neckwear, nor have I had the oomph to consider posting. I haven’t perked up to think of clashy fashion. I haven’t been clever or chatty. I haven’t restocked the fridge with Diet Coke. I have not had one story or sermon formulating in me to write. I have not offered to assist others. I have tried to be as un-me as I can be. What if the un-me is the best me? I don’t know if anyone has missed me and the neckwear that is so much a part of me, or not. I kinda haven’t missed myself, which tells you I’m not quite back to my normal. I’m the kind of person I and other people regularly need a vacation from. But trying to be a matchy, low-key me isn’t working all that effectively for me either. My “me” got pooped. What’s a me-gal to do?
Besides, we can’t really run from ourselves anyway, can we? I mean– really, escaping ourselves is one task we cannot possibly accomplish. But I’ve recently been trying to be un-me anyway, as I tried to do a couple of other times in my life. I’m sure you’ve tried to be un-you, too, at certain points in your existence. Yet here you are, right at this moment– you are most probably being inescapably you. Mr. Rogers and I are glad you are you. I’m trying to get back to being me, by creating this post. I’m pushing through it, but it’s tiring to be me.
Bottom line: I don’t think we need to change who we are, as much as we each need to continuously try to grow into a more glorious authentic self: a self that takes care of itself, in order to be strong enough to care for others without disappearing into exhaustion.
[Tune in tomorrow for PART TWO of this post, which will likely clarify what I’m trying to say.]
Bow Tie o’ the Day pays tribute to the police officers and firefighters of 9/11. They did monumental and incredible work. They did their jobs, and beyond.
As a parent, aunt, and teacher, I have been asked many times why a police officer or firefighter gets all kinds of attention when they die. Kids see them in the newspaper and on the tv news, becoming famous (to a kid). And to a kid, it’s like the fallen get a parade on the way to their burial. One young sprite asked me, “Why are cops and firefighters more special than anybody else who dies?”
My answer is always simple. Police officers and firefighters are not better or more important than anybody else. They are not perfect. Some of them are jerks– as in any profession. But they all belong to us because they serve our communities. We ask them daily to do dirty, dangerous work in our cities, counties, states, and country. When something catastrophic happens, we all take our frightened butts and scram as far away as we can and as swiftly as we can. While our scaredy-cat selves are leaving the scene of the crime, the goal of first responders is to run right into whatever deadly chaos we want to escape. Their aim is to do whatever needs to be done to keep us secure and alive. They aren’t superheroes, but they are probably the closest thing we have to superheroes.
Even kids understand that answer.
Tie o’ the Day invaded my office in the loft a few minutes ago. I was busily doing the hunt-and-peck thing at my keyboard–writing money-making poetry, which doesn’t really make much money. And then much to my amusement, the scoundrel hopped up on the printer/copier to do what we’ve all done during office parties where the holiday punch was purposely spiked. Like each of us once did, Tie o’ the Day made copies of its butt! Yup, I did that once. Oops! (At least I did it before the internet, so I probably don’t have to be afraid copies will show up anywhere in my future.)
Perhaps I haven’t always been the best example for my ties and bow ties. But heck, that was way back in the 80’s. I have repented many times since then, for many 80’s things. And for the 90’s things. And for the 2000’s and 2010’s stuff too. As evidence of my contrition, I can show you dozens of pairs of my jeans where the knees are completely worn out from my dropping to my knees to pray for forgiveness for my various missteps.
Gee, all that repenting makes me sound like a not-so-perfect person. I guess we are all in that same sailboat, huh? And I guess our imperfection is the reason we are supposed to help each other move through the choppy waves of life. That’s what people are for. I’m gonna repeat something I’ve preached often: Things are meant to be used. People are meant to be loved. We’re supposed to keep that straight.
Grace Anne Blackwelder stepped up her game with her fashion choices for the Ute v. Cougar rivalry game. Her bigly head Bow Tie o’ the Day put the blue BYU cherry on top of Her Highness’ noggin. Gracie knows how to dress for a Holy War– even though she’d never seen one until last night. She’s got kind of a flapper style in her, I think.
I wasn’t there to watch the game with Gracie and her family, but I imagine she cheered mightily in her Y-wear for the Cougars in their valiant, but losing, effort. I’m sure Bishop Travis and Bishopette Collette have indoctrinated her in BYU cheers and songs from Day 1. That’s part of their job as Cougar parents. I’m glad the U won, but I do feel bad Gracie had to experience a football loss.
I’m sure Gracie’s parents helped her get over the loss. I’m sure they put the whole thing into perspective for her. I can hear Bishop Travis and Bishopette Collette explain the up’s and down’s of life to our disappointed little Grace. They probably explained to her, through her overwrought wailing, that we can’t always win. And I am also confident Dad Trav regaled his wee girl with tales of BYU wins from past rivalry games. (He has a looooong memory, eh?)
I call the last photo in this bunch “Grace-ious In Defeat, Sort Of” or “Grace Is A Baby About Losing.” Her scrunched up face speaks volumes.
BTW Thanks to Bishopette Collette for keeping me in the Gracie loop, and for letting me re-post their Gracie pix when I run out of my own.
Camo Bow Tie o’ the Day is one of my faves. Its size is referred to by Beau Ties Ltd. of Vermont as “butterfly jumbo.” Here, I am waiting in line at DICK’S Pharmacy. Of course, as a fashion maven, I know my cactus-print shirt needs to be ironed, especially down the front. Suzanne is as picky about ironing as Mom and Peggy always were. That’s one of the Top 10 reasons they’ve always liked her. Those three gals were born Wrinkle Whisperers. All Suzanne will see when she looks at this photo is the bigly wrinkle by the buttons. I didn’t iron my shirt, but on purpose. Why?
Okay, so I’m in a minor snit at Suzanne today. Knowing how she feels about pressed shirts and ironing, I know this wrinkle biz will get under her skin mightily. It will bug her. This is how I’m being passive-aggressive in a way that is tiny, but irritating enough to get her attention. She’ll know exactly what I’m up to when she sees this photo’s shirt wrinkles, then she’ll think about what she could have done which might possibly be upsetting me. She’s smart, so she’ll figure it out and fix the wrong. I will then notice she fixed the problem, and I’ll say, “Hey, will you please iron a couple of shirts for me?” That will signal to her that she’s forgiven, and all’s right with us. The whole routine saves us a squabble over some crumb of an issue that amounts to nothing, without either of us ever having to bring up the topic.
Weird? Yes. It’s a kind of shorthand that let’s us both save face. If you’ve been attached to someone for a long period of time, you know darn well you do similar dances with each other about certain things. The dance’s strange footwork is part of what helps you stay with your person long-term. You have to choreograph your own “happy family” groove. Sometimes you both have to just shut up and dance a jig no one else in the galaxy could possibly understand.