Category: wisdom

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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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Sabbath Stuff

First of all, that isn’t dandruff you can see in my hair. I’m liking the slicked-back hair look right now, but I cannot find a gel that doesn’t become flakey throughout the day. If anyone can suggest a product to help me out on this, please let me know. Flaking hair gel is not the look I’m trying to achieve. (I’ve tried pomades, but they’re too greasy and don’t hold my hair in place.)

I went to Provo yesterday to attend Bishop Travis’ ward. He’s always been a swell nephew. Travis is a superb speaker, and a listener can’t help but learn a lesson or eight from him, whether they want to or not. Whenever we visit Bishop Travis’ ward, I and my SWWTRN sit by his wife, Bishopette Collette. Collette always notices and comments on my bow ties and/or cufflinks, which makes me get a swelled head and causes me to feel way cooler than I really I am.

The reason I chose to wear my Skittles Bow Tie o’ the Day to church is because everybody knows you have to be prepared with a stash of little treats in Sacrament Meeting. Treats must be strategically parceled out to keep the antsy small children quiet. I’m a bigly kid and don’t need to snack at church, but I still like having the idea of candy. Just wearing the representation of candy is enough to keep me under control.

Eating mints helps shut me up and keeps me from bawling and running down the aisles too. I like to suck on mints during church meetings. I don’t know why. It’s just a habit. Mints aren’t treats though. I have proof: Kids know treats and if you give a kid an Altoid, it gets spit out almost immediately. Thus, mints are not treats.

My Rubik’s Cube Cufflinks o’ the Day are also appropriate to wear to church. Church is one of the places you can go to figure out answers to your existential questions: Why am I here? What’s the point of everything? How can I make my life have meaning? etc..

These questions and their answers are a kind of puzzle, and we have to shuffle ideas around in our heads and hearts, in order to put existential concepts together in a way that makes sense to us. As we go through difficult experiences and changes in our lives, the puzzle can get shuffled around. We find ourselves having to take it apart, make adjustments, then put it back together to make sense of it again. If we’re honest with ourselves, we can admit that we have to re-do our puzzle work to some degree many times. That’s called being a mortal human being.

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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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Lazin’ Around

It’s early in the day, but I don’t have any intention to declare a Pajama Day for us. Got errands? We do. For a few hours this morning though, I’m gonna remain in my pj’s doing nothing. I’m just sitting here in the recliner with the Loch Ness Monster Tie o’ the Day. I believe!

Okay. I don’t believe in the Loch Ness Monster. Nor do I believe in Sasquatch. But I understand why some people chase these mythical creatures. First, they want a little mysterious stuff in their lives. They want to believe the impossible is possible. Personally, I have enough mysterious stuff in my own life. If you’re alive, and if you examine your life and what goes on around you, you’ll see plenty of things that have no explanation.

Second, we want to believe in things. There are so many fundamentally perplexing things going on all across the planet that our foundations can seem to be shifting beneath our feet– sometimes in dangerous ways. Things we were sure of when we were young now feel shaky. We’re not sure how that transformation happened. Believing in ideas helps us move along our paths.

Personally, I do not think things here or elsewhere in the world have generally changed. I think we have just matured as we’ve grown older, and now we have a clearer picture of “reality.” And part of discerning “reality” is that thanks to technology, we are able to see events in real time as they happen, no matter where they happen. In that way, our picture of the world is more enlightened. Unfortunately, it also amps up our fear, and makes our thinking a bit cloudy with the sense of doom that sometimes overwhelms us

But the events we have front row seats to viewing– which is everything– have always existed. There has never been a time in human existence when wars have not been going on somewhere. There has never been a time when rulers have not taken advantage of their subjects. There has always been poverty. Sexual predators have always existed. There have always been bigots who feel they are superior to some race, religion, or culture. And on and on. As we find in Ecclesiastes, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

It might seem to us like there’s more of the crap, because we can see more of it than past generations. But there’s a positive flip-side to this. Technology has also made it possible to do good beyond our own cities, states, and country. We have the ability to do good works and save lives across the globe. We can do a lot of it right from our computers.

We don’t have to believe in that. It isn’t mythological. It is a reality, a fact. We can see it and participate in it. We can turn our compassion into something knowable and concrete– into actions. We can transform belief into “reality.”

Except for the Loch Ness Monster and Sasquatch. We can’t believe those characters into a reality. And who would want to? It’s fun to contemplate those wild creatures, mysteriously out there somewhere doing their own thing.

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Wrestling With A Dilemma

Bow Tie o’ the Day adorns Mom as she poses in front of THE PORCH, in 1948. Momo and Popo’s porch was a huge part of my life as a kid, as well as Mom’s and my life after they were gone and I bought their house. After Dad died, Mom spent time on my porch two or three times a day, when weather permitted. She occupied the porch alone, or with me when I was in town. During the last year of Peggy’s life, Peggy joined us at least once almost every day. We watched the comings and goings of the neighborhood, and we solved all the problems of the world. If only the world listened to our brilliant ideas.

I mentioned in my last post that I have decided to post fewer (and maybe zero) new photos of Mom doing TIE O’ THE DAY. It’s recently become a concern I’ve been cogitating about.

Although I began TIE O’ THE DAY around four years ago, I’ve posted interesting pictures of Mom on Facebook for at least a decade. I started after Dad died. After some of the humorous photo posts starring Mom, my brother, Ron, left a message on my phone. He had seen one of the silly photos of Mom and he asked me if Mom knew I was posting them. He wondered if I might be being disrespectful to her by doing it.

When I called him back, I assured him that I okayed every post with Mom before posting it. In fact, I told him, the reason I didn’t answer his call– the reason he had to leave me a voicemail– was because Mom and I were sitting on the porch when he called, busy reading the funny and loving comments left below one of her posted photos by friends and family. Mom had been laughing so hard at some of the responses that she began laugh-crying. Mom loved the comments, and she loved reading the names of those who LIKEd the post. Some people who responded were people she hadn’t seen or thought about in years. When I told Ron the whole thing, I think he understood.

But here I am now, finally having my own reservations, based on Mom’s current situation. Let me be clear: I am so pleased with the photos taken by the staff at MCR, which are then posted to their Facebook page. I like being able to see Mom and knowing what activities she’s participating in. I’m glad MCR does it. Following their Facebook page lets me check in on Mom from 145 miles away.

But what I do is different. I usually use the photos I take of Mom as part of posting sarcastic, snarky, sometimes irreverent things here on TIE O’ THE DAY. Before taking the photos, I sometimes give Mom a bow tie or silly hat to wear, and she’s always been a sport about it. In fact, there have been times when I’ve visited her or she’s stayed with us when she’s excitedly said things like “When do I get my tie? When are we going to take our picture?” or “Are you going to take our tie picture? Do I need a hat?” And, of course, after I’d post a “tie picture,” I made sure to read her the Facebook responses and the list of folks who sent their LIKE’s. She has always found the whole process quite joyous.

Here’s my quandary. At this point, Mom sometimes doesn’t quite have her bearings. Her mind is sometimes confused. She forgets. Recently, I pulled out a tie for her to wear for our “tie picture” and she asked me, “Now what am I doing with this tie? Why are we doing this?” Mom is not a prop. I know you all like seeing photos of her. Posts with her photos always get the most Facebook LIKE’s. But I refuse to take or post a picture of Mom if she doesn’t know why I’m doing it, and hasn’t okayed it– in her all-there mind. I won’t do it without her permission. And I know y’all wouldn’t want me to.

On the other hand, what do I do if Mom brings it up, and asks to do it? Can I trust her “permission” now, even in those moments when she seems completely in charge of her faculties. I suppose I will have to decide on a case-by-case basis.

What I do still feel entirely comfortable doing is posting old pictures of Mom, taken throughout her life. I can write posts that reflect them. I am equally sure Mom is/would be amused with how I put ties and bow ties on the photos. She would not find that disrespectful. Mom had and still has her sense of humor.

Most of you are Mom’s friends. Some of you have been friends with Mom before you became friends with me. I’m sure some of you have recently had my same concerns. Just know that if I do post a more current picture or two of Mom, be assured that I spent time thinking about whether it would truly be ok with her for me to do so. Ultimately, that judgment falls on me, and I don’t take that responsibility lightly.

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And Now, Back To Our Regular Programming

Wood Bow Tie o’ the Day brings us back to the realm of routine days without celebratory hoopla. The Christmas break is officially over. If the neckwear says it’s over, it’s over.

As I was putting the holiday ties into their storage boxes last night– where they will hibernate until November– I found myself in a sort of meditative state. As I curled each one into another and laid them in the bin, I felt Zen-y. I was so into the regular procedure, I lost myself in peacefulness. It was weird.

Of course, I only knew this weird thing had happened when I came back to myself. When I awoke from my nap of the mind, I was astonished about how the calm that came into in my crazy head was all because I was carefully laying ties into their hibernation. It’s a yearly routine, and it requires touching each tie and making the exact same movements to place it in its box, over 200 times. There is a rhythm to it. It doesn’t require thinking. It requires simply being.

It got me cogitating about how people lose themselves, for example, in gardening. The planting, the pruning, and etc. need to be done over and over and over. There’s a routine and a rhythm in working in a garden, and it can be relaxing.

Routine household chores can be like that. They are work, but they can be calming. Doing them can make you Zen-y. You can get in a zone that makes you let go of all the crap you need to let go of. (Of course, household chores are not as elegant as gardening.) We perform a zillion other routines that cause the same peaceful effect. Hobbies, especially, can do that. Religious rituals can function like that.

But there is a negative effect that can come of the regular, the routine, the same-old-same-old. The negative is that we can fall from peaceful dreaminess too far into only ourselves. That kind of thing can make us forget we are here to care about others. We can also get tunnel vision and forget to discover the unfound and to try new things. We can forget there are things out there that we haven’t yet imagined. You can’t feel joy if you’ve lost your imagination.

BTW I’m putting away the holiday bow ties this evening. If I get as Zen-y about it as I did with the neckties. I’ll let you know.


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And Heeeeeere’s Side 2 Of The Wintry Cape

Ties o’ Last Night are ecstatic to present the wintry cape’s flip-side, which you haven’t yet seen in all its fabulosity. Both sides of this shimmering cape drop glitter wherever the cape travels. Suzanne be the Cape-maker to the Ties. And to me.

I chose to display these ties together as a way to sort of illustrate something I think about occasionally– especially at this time of year when everybody’s talking about making resolutions: What kind of person am I, and is that the sort of person I want to be?

Am I Scrooge, holding my little candle, and saying BAH HUMBUG as I move through life? Am I an elf, happily completing whatever project or errand I’m assigned to do, without doing much bigly thinking? Am I a jolly ol’ gal who gives much and expects nothing in return? Am I just a cold blob with one goal: don’t melt? Am I a HO?

Of course, all of those traits are angles of our personalities. Any given person is a spectrum of human thinking and emotions and roles. I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying, “Well, YOU might be a HO, but I most certainly am not!”

After much reflection, I do believe that although I am all these ties, I am a HO most of all. And I think it’s a good thing. It’s certainly a much-needed aspect of all emotionally healthy human beings to sometimes HO around. Of course, I mean it in the HO HO HO way. The greetings-to-all way. The laughter way. The explosion-of-wonder way.

Being a HO is my go-to. It’s how I make sense of a sometimes out o’ control planet. If I can’t laugh about difficult things I can’t change, I try to HO HO HO my way through it. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s a way to maintain sanity. We all need some HO in us.

I have tried to make HO-ing a skill. I hone my HO-ness to the point I think it’s worth passing along in these posts, in the HOpe it will touch the HO in you enough that you can pass along some of your HO HO HO to others. It can be a confusing and tough life at times, so embrace your inner HO. HO’s are for sharing.

HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 98 Bow ties. 181 Neckties.

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A Night Not At The Opera

Bow Tie o’ Last Night spread its Christmas cheer at a new-to-us restaurant find in SLC. In the past few months, I’ve had out-loud conversations with myself about wanting to dine at CURRENT. I’ve googled CURRENT’s menu, and I’ve relayed to Suzanne my enthusiasm about wanting to try the place. So yesterday, when Suzanne said she’d made a reservation for dinner, I was hoping this would be the place. It was. And it is. It is a keeper (pun intended). CURRENT belongs to the same ownership group as my old go-to, STANZA, so I figured I’d be happy with the atmosphere and fare. We were not disappointed.

Golly, my sake-marinated salmon was a culinary pleasure. Suzanne surprised me by ordering the cod instead of scallops. If scallops are on the menu, Suzanne and scallops are the match. But not last night. Personally, I believe making a not-scallops decision was Suzanne’s way of spicing up the relationship. You know, you gotta change it up to keep it alive. You  have to keep your person guessing about you a bit. This was a bigly change-up for Suzanne. Subtlety is her mode.

Anyhoo… Dinner was a definite dessert-deserving meal. Two desserts, to be precise. And I wanted to bring a third one home, but I realized that would’ve been out-and-out sugar gluttony. I’ve been accused of worse. But I decided moderation was a wise course of action for once. (Since my surgery, I have been hungry, 24/7.)

In the photo, notice the background wall’s design of waves and fish. Hence, the place’s name: CURRRENT. It is attached to a bar called UNDERCURRENT.

I planned to get another photo outside the restaurant, which would have shown you my wint’ry cape, but the photographer fell through. Suzanne, it seems, forgot about the required TIE O’ THE DAY outside-the-eatery photo, and she immediately walked off to fetch the car– leaving me striking sexy poses in my cape, under the CURRENT sign, without being photographed while doing it. Silly Suzanne, forgetting a TOTD photo protocol. But the car was warm by the time she picked me up in the street, so that was good.

It’s a total mystery: I’ve tried a number of times to present the totality of my new cape here, but it seems to stay under wraps (pun intended) for some reason I can’t fathom. The cape’s glory doesn’t seem to want to unfurl itself when a photo can be snapped. My other capes threw themselves into the TIE O’ THE DAY spotlight as soon as they were born. But it’s as if this wint’ry cape is trying to remain hidden, like some sort of caped……crusader?

Is this particular cape super speshul? Is this particular cape full o’ superpowers it doesn’t want to call attention to? Is my cape trying desperately to retain its anonymity in order to successfully fight crime and boredom and blandness and whatever else it fights? Does wearing my cape turn me into some kind of superhero, and if so what is my superpower? Time will tell. Time will show. And I can’t wait.

HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 40 Bow ties. 89 Neckties.

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Another Bow Tie Convert

This morning we are pleased to present the TIE O’ THE DAY debut of our guest star, Lucky McGill. Lucky hails from Texas, and is part of Diana Clark McGill’s family. Check out Lucky’s suave look. A tartan Bow Tie o’ the Day sets the ambiance for any day or evening of the holiday season.

As the fashion consultant that I am, I do see one detail that, if added, could blow the top off Lucky’s hot-ness. I rarely suggest the fashion option I’m about to ask Lucky to consider. It is THAT remarkable. It cannot be worn flatteringly by most creatures on earth. I myself have never yet felt like I could pull it off, so it simply lurks in the bottom of my fashion accessories quiver until I feel worthy. Just what accessory do I think Lucky could pull off? What added touch is it that I wish for Lucky to rock? A cummerbund. It doesn’t matter if it matches or not, although I have a feeling Lucky is one of those “matchers.” But I can definitely tell that Lucky is a cummerbund pup, of elegant fashion breeding. That is the rarest of rare.

Woofy Christmas, Lucky. Drop by any time you want.

HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 36 Bow ties. 89 Neckties.