Category: wisdom

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If I Truly Wanted A Motorcycle

Floppy-looking wood Bow Tie o’ the Day isn’t the most comfortable bow tie critter I own. In fact, it’s downright heavy. Consequently, I wear it only if I’m going to be out of the house for an extremely short period of time. My new Hat o’ the Day is welcome to go anywhere with me for however long I’m tasking out in the world: ketchup goes with pretty much everything, at least according to what I observed of my dad’s eating habits. Ketchup is now newly memorable to me for its political significance as well.

As far as the topic of motorcycles goes, the truth is this: if it was important to me to own a motorcycle, I’d get a motorcycle. Suzanne couldn’t stop me, no matter how much she’d worry about my safety. I don’t need her permission to buy one, but I do factor in her feelings about the prospect of my riding around in civilization on a motorcycle. Suzanne is my ride-or-die, and I take it seriously that she’d prefer I ride inside a vehicle as opposed to on top of one. Besides, when we met in the early 80’s, I already had a motorcycle. She had no problem with my riding my red Kawasaki all over Utah back then. And I do not recall her ever saying NO to me when I said, “Hop on back and let’s go!” I guess I could say I’ve been there, and I’ve done that.

Of course, I owned a motorcycle at a time in our lives when we had no significant responsibilities on the planet. We had no pets. We didn’t own a house. Our careers had barely begun. There was no Rowan yet either. We could easily take risks because we didn’t really see them as risks. We were so young that we still felt naively invincible. Danger was theoretical: it didn’t seem like a realistic possibility. At this stage of our lives, we both have people, critters, and careers that depend on us. We also have this improbable “we” we’ve made with each other.

When Suzanne and I were together in the 80’s, we barely knew each other yet, and it is difficult to know the value someone holds for you when you aren’t even aware of your own intrinsic value. But now, after all these decades, we both know exactly what we will lose when one of us is the first to go. I’m not being morbid. I’m being practical. I will never play it so safe that I can’t continue to have amazing adventures, but I’m quite content to be more cautious now with what’s important to me. I know Suzanne and I have constructed something rare with each other, and I want it to endure on this plane—and on the plane that follows—as long as it possibly can, which I hope is forever. I am proudly and passionately protective of Suzanne, and I am also more careful with myself than I used to be. Old things, like bones and long relationships, can sometimes be more brittle than they appear. Rapt attention and continual care are where the lasting strength of weathered things resides. Tenderness is the forgiving muscle that will hold it all together.

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Skitter’s Ear Hurts

In the late 80’s, there was a television show called “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.” It starred Blair Brown as a divorced woman living in NYC. The show was literate, surprising, and engagingly quirky—so, of course, it didn’t last long on network television. Even as I mention the show, I imagine I’m getting nothing but crickets of recognition from most of y’all. Trust me—the show was good. Anyhoo… I loosely recall a particular quote from the show that I have thought of often in my life, when I’ve planned to do one thing, but end up having to do something entirely different. It goes simply like this: “My life keeps getting in the way of my future.” I thought of it again this morning when I planned to create a kind of elaborate new TIE O’ THE DAY post, but then Skitter lost her balance while shaking her ear as she walked. The deep “black mold” she had in her left ear in 2020 has recently come back again. We already have a vet appointment scheduled, but this morning, her stinky red ear is especially angry. She is extra uncomfortable and wants me right where she can see and touch me. So this is all the TO’TD post I can create for now—stuck as I am to the loveseat, held captive by my dog’s misery. Just as it should be.

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Me? Climb The Delta Water Tower When I Was A Kid? No Comment.

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[This is a repeat of a post from July 2020. The garbage disposal has been colicky since Sunday, so my day is about to be all plumber-y. It reminded me of this post. ]

Red and white Tie o’ the Day dresses up as the Delta Water Tower, with the aid of our water heater. The red “D” reigns, no matter what town I take off my cowboy boots in.

We’ve lived in our Centerville house eight years. It was new when we moved in. Guess what time it is? Time for the house and whatever came with it to need some little tweaks. Last week, the ice maker in the fridge simply stopped making ice. No smoke, no sputtering, no subtle dying creaks. It made ice, then it didn’t. Enter, the refrigerator repairman. He tinkered around in the guts of the freezer door, but he could find nothing wrong. Exit, the repairman and his fee. He must have done something though, because the ice maker is making ice now. It must have just wanted some attention from someone who understood it. Go figure.

And then there’s the plumbing. When the master bath shower is first turned on, there is a growing rumbling o’ the pipes throughout the house. I was outside on the morning of the 4th of July, and I could hear the pipes grumble when Suzanne got in the shower. The outside world should not have to hear our pipes. Also, the water pressure in the shower is almost zero. Lately when I shower, I feel like I’m standing under a rain cloud that drops rain one raindrop at a time. Dribble, dribble.

So I spent most of Wednesday watching the plumber do whatever he needed to do. A bigly bill later, and the pipes haven’t grumbled again. The water pressure in the shower is now restored. Victory! Almost. There are still a couple of water issues Suzanne’s not satisfied with, so I’ll be hosting the plumber again soon. I am a writer by trade. But I know my real job is to keep Suzanne happy—even with the plumbing.

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Warning: Reading Leads To Thinking

TIE O’ THE DAY is proud to present some memes about reading and libraries. I’m not usually a meme-poster, but every time the culture chatter starts up about banning a certain book from a school library or a public library, I make it a point to read the book. I want to see for myself what all the hubbub is about. Often, the people who want a book banished, haven’t even read the book. They’ve just “heard about” it from someone else who likely hasn’t read it either. It’s my book-reading opinion that “hearing about” a book, and the rumored dangers of its ideas, does not qualify anyone to call for its banishment from public availability. If you haven’t read a book in its entirety, I think you cannot possibly have anything close to a valid, informed opinion of it. You cannot engage in an honest discussion about its merits without knowing the full context of any book’s alleged offending word, sentence, paragraph, chapter, or ideas.

Personally, I like to be reading at least one banned book at any given time. With the probably hundreds of banned-somewhere books I have read in my life, I have yet to meet one that I agree should be metaphorically put to death. Oh, I’ve read plenty of books nobody has sought to ban that I think have nothing to add to a library, due to being badly written or manipulative or presenting lies as factual, etc. But I still think they have a right to exist. I do take pity on those books’ readers, though.

Before I die, I intend to start a book club called something along the lines of the Banned Book-of-the-Month Club, where people who’ve read the book can discuss exactly what it is about the book that might make somebody think it is too dangerous for potential readers’ minds, and why they feel so threatened by the words on a page. And I don’t doubt we will also discuss what makes some people think they are the bossy arbiters of the planet’s literature. 📚

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Awake. Woke. Enlightened. And Proud To Be.

I have always been a fan of the audacious, the eloquent, the visionary—the extraordinary and unexpected stuff of the world. But I also have an abiding love of the routine, the ritual, and the everyday. Most of us build lives out of both what makes us comfortable and what challenges us—by what we understand and by what makes us wonder. Our tendency is to vividly remember—and to talk about—the surprises that we encounter, but be all ho-hum about the bulk of our everyday living. Last night as I got ready for bed, for some unexplicable reason, I reveled in the routine litany of bedtime tasks to do before turning off the light. I felt almost gleeful about going through the ritual formalities of preparing to simply go to sleep. Every bedtime to-do seemed almost magical. I was paying attention to the customary, and it felt anything but dull. The very sound of Suzanne brushing her teeth in the bathroom brought me an important peace. And as I pulled a clean t-shirt over my shoulders before I crawled into bed, I realized that putting on a fresh t-shirt is one of the most amazing everyday feelings a person can enjoy. It requires only the act of paying grateful attention to what you’re doing.

During the night, a bold rain began to fall. We were sleeping with the windows open, and I listened intently as the rain pelted the deck for twenty minutes, then abruptly ceased. I smelled the petrichor. I felt the change in humidity on my skin. I counted what seemed like one solitary minutes-long flash of lightning. It was all normal, regular summer stuff I could have just as easily slept through. Most of the time, I do. But I woke up for it and paid attention to it. And that has made all the difference. I can already tell that it has made all the difference in this regular day I am just now beginning. A regular day I am spending in yet another clean t-shirt, with yet another magnetized t-shirt Bow Tie o’ the Day. How fabulous is this routine?!

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The Buck Stops With Free Agency

Here at TIE O’ THE DAY, thanks to recent SCOTUS decisions, we’ve been feeling like my gun has more Constitutional rights and protections than my body does. Nevertheless, I believe that a woman has the right to determine what her body will and will not do—especially when it comes to what happens inside her body. She is not an incubator. The ultimate choice in matters of potential childbearing should be made by the one person who will bear all the health risks, most of the practical responsibilities, and all of the physical, emotional, and moral consequences of her decision. A right is not a freebie. Every right we exercise comes at a huge cost. It seems to me that the one who will pay the price with their very body is the one who gets to decide what to do with it. I side with free agency and its complicated consequences.

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This Is A TIE O’ THE DAY Piece O’ Wisdom

Years ago, Suzanne handed me a copy of a meme she’d printed out. It said, “You can’t please everyone. You are not a taco.” I still have it somewhere in my piles of files. I like running onto it occasionally, because it’s a smart reminder. When I saw this t-shirt, it made me muse about the meme yet again. My own life’s experience has taught me, over and over again, that pretending to be what you are not might seem to work for a while. But it will inevitably end up hurting all who are involved when the truth finally seeps through the facade and shows itself. And—trust me on this—the truth will ALWAYS show itself in the end, despite any meticulous planning you might do. Remember: you are not a taco.

I don’t know why other people’s opinions of us often carry so much weight. Why do we so often feel the need to be what other people want us to be, instead of being content to be the mysterious and fabulous person we really are? It makes no bloody sense. I don’t know how it works with you, but I have found that I am the only one who has to live with me every minute of every day and night—which means I’m ultimately the main human whose opinion of me matters. Think about it: you are the main character in your autobiography. Your life is your story, and your story is about you. Your opinion of yourself as you live your unique life matters, so you probably ought to get comfortable with being the real you. Make your authentic self someone you can stand to live with. If you do that, you’ll likely find that you naturally make the people who matter to you oh-so very, very happy—without even trying. 😃 🌮

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What I Did On My Lent Vacation

Popcorn Tie o’ the Day is here to signal that Lent is over. Trust me—there’s already ice cream in the freezer. I managed to stick to my Lent goal most days, but not all. I chose sugar over my goal on a few occasions. I give myself a failing grade on my Lent behavior this year.

In general, I can do anything I set my mind to do. I make a decision, and I have follow-through. I do whatever it takes to endure. I stick. Except, apparently, when it comes to giving up sugary, salty, junky food for Lent. Oh, I was perfect about it for the first week. Not eating non-nutritional food was no bigly deal for me. But then it was my birthday, so I gave myself a day off to eat birthday desert when Suzanne took me out to dinner. I know myself well, and I could have told you from the outset that would be disastrous for my Lent sacrifice success.

Seriously, if I can rationalize one acceptable reason to excuse myself from my stated goal—like “it’s ok, it’s just for my birthday”—I can find a million other reasons to alter my course. The “rules” of Lent don’t help either. Yup, I blame Lent for my weak-ass failure. Why? Because during Lent, according to Lent’s own rules, all Sundays are free days. You heard me: during the six weeks of Lent, on Sundays you are free to give up giving up. The Sabbath is always a day of celebration, whether it’s Lent or not. Who am I to argue with a day off doing something I don’t want to do anyway?

But that’s a cop-out. The truth is I messed up and rationalized my way into failure, knowing exactly what I was doing all along the way. I allowed myself to become a walking rationalization. I put myself before the idea of sacrifice. We sacrifice because sometimes it’s the thing we’re asked to do, regardless of how convenient or inconvenient it is to do so. I was content to be a happy asterisk during Lent 2022. I hope I will utilize a different, more positive, approach to Lent next year. I am a person who is striving to be better than an asterisk.

We all have to look at ourselves. We have to be self-reflective and turn a critical eye to who and what we are. Indeed, we have to judge ourselves at times. I don’t know about you, but my worst enemy has always shown up in whatever mirror I look into. The trick for each of us is to figure out how to live in such a way that we can reconcile the soul we are with the image we cast in the mirrors we pass. Oh, it sounds so simple.

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WARNING! BAD STUFF CAN HAPPEN IF YOU DON’T READ LABELS CAREFULLY!

[This is a pre-Gracie re-post from 2019.]

Tiny Bow Tie o’ the Day believes, like I do, that one of the fantastic things about having a bigly extended family and a gaggle of friends is that there is almost always a baby soon to be born. We’ve got infants on the way from all directions right now.

For the brand spankin’ new babies and their parents, we always put together pretty much the same gift cornucopia to present to the new bambino. It’s stuff they will need. Suzanne’s special contribution to our diapers-and-wipes-and-bibs-filled offering is a pile of baby blankets she’s created. She does not believe a baby needs only one of her blankets. And she is right. Any baby who receives many Suzanne-made blankets is guaranteed to be a happy baby, and a happy baby translates into happy parents.

My special contribution to the baby’s gift bundle is buying the diaper rash-slaying Boudreaux’s Butt Paste. With a baby product name like that, you know it’s exactly the kind of thing my eccentric self must give a newborn. Diaper rash is not pleasant, and Butt Paste is effective at soothing the pain and solving the problem itself. At least as far as Butt Paste’s name goes, any baby’s diaper-changer gets a minor giggle out of using it.

But I am here to caution you: Do not confuse Boudreaux’s Butt Paste with Rub Some Butt bbq seasoning. Do not mistakenly put the Rub Some Butt in the baby’s room, while also mistakenly putting the Boudreaux’s Butt Paste in the pantry. That would be a tragedy. Look at the labels closely, folks. Like the RIF television ads told us in the 70’s, Reading is Fundamental.