How did you all like that catchy title? I just like making my dad wonder.
After the trip from Vancouver Island I came back and finally started the new jingle truck writing project. It was just as rough a start as I thought it was going to be.
The big event was the banquet thrown in my honor for my 41st birthday party and book signing event at the Big Haus in Moscow Idaho . All things considered it was a big success. The books arrived on time and everyone who went to the banquet had a really good time. I am very fortunate to have such great friends that they would take the trouble and expense to throw such an event for me.
Some where in the midst of the past month I was invited up to Spokane by a wonderful lady who has been a wonderful inspiration in my life. Tina Sipp invited me up and took me out to a wonderful dining experience, not just a restaurant. There are many old buildings in Spokane from the former hayday. One of them has been maintained by a former men’s fraternal organization called the order of the odd fellows. They wore funny hats and they maintained an old building to impeccable standards. The restaurant has good food no doubt, but what makes this an experience and not a meal is the air of the old building, good live jazz music and the old black and white silent films that are projected onto the FOX theater building next door. There you are, enjoying your meal listening to some really good local jazz and reading the subtitles to old classic films from the twenties. It was amazing.
We walked around downtown Spokane after the meal. It was beautiful and we had so much fun. We stopped into the Davenport hotel to see what it was like. It was beyond belief. The most incredible hotel I have ever been in is now the Davenport of Spokane. The fancy hotels of Europe, don’t compare and neither does the Empress Hotel of Victoria ; not for interior opulence. The Broadmore of Colorado and the Balmoral of Edinburgh don’t even come close. This was incredible. We had so much fun walking around and taking pictures. We later wondered down to the Irish Pub O’Leary’s on the river front there in Spokane and had a pint just to say we’d done it. Did I mention that I drove the Lincoln continental up for the occasion? Had to get the ol’ classic out on the road and burn off the carbon soot.
The next big event was the first National Guard drill back after coming back from Afghanistan . I had some of the most intense pre-drill anxiety I’ve ever had. I was able to take it easy and just turn in much of the Army camping gear I have acquired over the last four call-ups, three deployments and two tours of duty into two different theaters. I had three Kevlar helmets, three sleeping bags, two backpacks and a myriad of other things. I was able to turn about two thirds of all my gear in just to get it out of my hair. After spending the gasoline money to drive over to the Ft. Lewis area, I decided to visit my sister Linda again as our only visit in two years was way too short. It was great. She lives in Bellingham in a nice new trophy home that her husband built for them. It is really beautiful.
After spending all that money to drive over and being so closed to Vancouver B.C., I decided to just go up and visit the city for the first time. It was not nearly as nice a trip as the one to Vancouver Island , but I’m glad I did it. I had no idea that Vancouver city was so big. There is a lot of money in Vancouver . I was amazed.
I left the next day and decided to take the scenic route home. I went over the cascades through Manning National Park . It was beautiful. The sun followed me the whole way. I came down HW 97 through Oreville where I stopped for dinner. The waitress talked me into taking a smaller road that wasn’t on the map that crossed over the mountains into Kettle Falls River area. It was really beautiful. I headed south into Spokane .
I wanted to spend the night in Spokane because I had business to take care of in Spokane the next day, but I was too tired to think logically. I didn’t want to go home to sleep in my own bed and then turn around and drive right back up to the “Queen of the Inland Empire .” There are two homes that I am welcome to stay at anytime and I didn’t think of either one of them so I pushed on to Pullman . The scary thing about that last leg of the trip was that I couldn’t remember any of it. When I got home I could only remember a few points along the way. I am getting too old to be driving long in any one day like that. When my friend Tina who is one of the two living in Spokane found out she gave me a good chewing out for it.
The next day I had to drive right back up to Spokane to take care three big errands.
The driving force behind the trip was that I needed a woman’s feminine touch on my part of the house that I have been redoing the interior decorations on all by myself. Now think of a little three year old boy who comes out of his room and says, “Look Mommy, I dressed myself.” We have all witnessed this and we all know how well the little tot does at dressing himself for the first time. Now picture ol’ Uncle Tim coming out of my part of the house and saying, “Hay look everybody, I decorated my room all by myself.” Got the picture. Dad you can start wondering where this is going.Several people have commented on how masculine the room is, “what a guy’s room,” was what one lady said. I realized before I left for the National Guard that I had gone way overboard and needed a woman’s touch for the room to counter all the dark wood furniture, dark tiled floors, hardwood floors, and the soon to be arriving dark leather chairs.
There is was one problem; there isn’t any feminine touch in my life. So what was I to do? I had to dig down and find that feminine side deep down inside of myself some where. I found it and after conferring with this feminine side for a while, we decided that artificial flowers would be the way to go to liven up the room and give it a certain “Balanced” look to all this sheer manliness.
While looking for the perfect manly chair for myself I came across a furniture showroom that had magnificent floral arrangements. After inquiring I found that the owner, a Vietnamese woman was the artist who had put them all together and the salesmen insisted that she was the very best at that sort of thing. Tammy was in Asia at the time so I left two of my black (manly) vases at the store. She came back, but didn’t want to start a project without knowing what it was that I wanted.
While I was on the road I sent her an email detailing what I wanted. I used phrases like “bright and cheery” and followed by “springy, but not too springy.” I knew that last phrase didn’t make any sense at all to me, but I reasoned that maybe my feminine side could communicate to women, even better than I can do my normal self. No such luck. Tammy replied that she couldn’t understand what I wanted and that she wanted me there to show her what I wanted, or at least what my feminine side wanted. It was obvious to me that I had reached down and gotten a hold my feminine side only to find out that it was confused. Here I am a bachelor in Pullman , Washington in my forties finding out for the first time that I have a confused feminine side that makes no sense at all. No wonder dear ol’ dad wonders so much.
I arrived at the store front the next day to find that Tammy had the vases out and stacks of artificial flowers to put in them. She had already completed the small vase that I wanted the “wilted flower” look to it. She used white roses that had been died to appear as if they were passed their prime and were about to be thrown out. I had asked for purple and deep red colors, but Tammy being a pro at femininity, chose wilting white roses on a black vase. It was stunning. What could I say. I loved it. So far so good.I then had to explain what I meant when I wrote, “bright and cheery and springy, but not too springy” in the e-mail. I told her that I wanted reds, purples and blues with less whites and yellows. I wanted the flowers to look natural in times other than spring. She looked at me and treated me as if I were sane, which is much more than I deserved at the time. Evidently my confused feminine side was just as incoherent in person as it was in writing.
I left Tammy there with my manly monolithic black marble vases and went to the Spokane Armory where my tuff box had arrived from Afghanistan . In it I found another marble vase along with yet another hand made Persian wool rug that I literally found the week I was leaving Afghanistan . I brought the vase back to the store with me. Tammy was completing the second vase when I arrived back at her store. The second one was absolutely beautiful. She really did a great job at getting the “springy, but not too springy” look that I had so incompetently conveyed to her. She looked at the third vase that I was holding and with an anguished look in her face, she asked me what I wanted to do with that one. I told her that I knew exactly what I wanted to do with, but I just couldn’t describe it to her. She again looked at me as if she was politely trying to treat as if I were a sane man for the sake of making a profit off of me. I love paying people to be nice to me. It’s so much better than going to church where they tell me things about myself I never wanted to know.
I went through the back the store where there was an incredibly display of artificial flowers from all over Asia . It was photogenic heaven for me. You would think you were in an amazing florists shop and everything was real. These artificial flowers were just amazing. It was absolutely beautiful.
Tammy followed behind me. I waved my hands over one section of her amazing inventory and said, “I want this floral arrangement to be like this” meaning the colors, but I didn’t say colors. She looked at that section of the store and then looked up at me with much less politeness in her eyes, and said, “well I can put some of those flowers into an arrangement for you.” We grabbed flowers from this pot and some from that bin and some from the ceiling that were hanging down. It was really fun. I felt the full measure of my confused feminine side as I went through the length of the corridor saying I want some of those, and some of these and those over there. Feeling feminine was fun. When all was said and done Tammy had a pile of flowers up by the newly arrived vase. She began jamming flowers here and there and soon it was absolutely beautiful. There wasn’t a single flower from that original section of the store that I had first waved my hands over.
I could hear the voice coming from the mother of the little boy who had just dressed himself for the first time, “that’s a wonderful Johnny. Now lets go get you dressed a little better before we go outside and play.” I was not crushed. My feminine side is confused and clueless, but by the grace of God, I have found a true woman artisan who can overcome my bewildered and perplexed inward femininity with competence and experience.I paid an outrageous sum of money for the floral arrangements. I am embarrassed to say and so I wont. As we packed the florals into boxes to protect them it became obvious that each artificial bouquet had flowers in the back of the arrangement that would go up against the wall or window. I asked them why I was paying for flowers that I’ll never see. They responded with, “all you men always say the same thing. You need those flowers back there.” They didn’t say why I needed to have flowers in the arrangement that I’ll never see, but I was a bit insulted, or at least my feminine side was insulted at this. I didn’t say anything else, but to this day I still wonder why they always put flowers in the back of the arrangement when you never get to see them.
The story gets gooder at this point. I doubt dad is wondering any more. He is probably signing the legal papers disowning me by now.I took the floral arrangements home and set them exactly as I had imagined. The wilting flowered vase went on the bed stand in the corner of the room. The last vase was now in the window and the “springy, but not too springy” vase was now sitting on top of my filing cabinet next to another window.
I liked what I saw. I had to run and take care of other errands. Later that night I came back home to see them with a fresh set of eyes. “Oh my Gawd. That is soooo Gay.” Was my response. I was wondering about myself at this point.
It just looked way to feminine. I was taken aback and wondering what I should do. I had gone way overboard first with manliness and then with femininity. The whole collage just screamed “turn down the contrast knob.” After assessing the situation I realized that I had put the two big vases too closed together and the small vase at one end of the room by itself. “WHAT WAS I THINKING!!!” That was just too gay. So I moved the “springy, but not too springy vase to the opposite side of the room about half way in between the other two vases and my little world on the Palouse was now balanced. All was right with the world.
Karen arrived home and I asked her to tell me if the room just looked too gay with the floral arrangements. Her reply was not helpful, “No Tim not at all. I have gay guy friends who have a lot more flowers than this and gay guy friends who have a lot less flowers than this. You’re sort of in the middle.” That’s the last time I ever ask Karen for her opinion.
I wonder how many relatives I am still going to have after this email. How bout them Cougs anyway!!
Before all is said and done I have one more event to talk about. I was asked to photograph the graduation at a local private Christian school in Moscow Idaho . The graduation class boasted five seniors and the ceremony took place in the Nazarene church commonly referred to as the Nazi-Dome. I should spell that one out phonetically as the N-aa-zee- Dome (a as in apple). It was the first time I have ever attempted to do senior pictures type photography. Nothing went right during the reconnaissance and nothing went right during the rehearsal, but the lessons learned paid off in dividends and everything went just right during the final shoot. Some photos are included, but understand I was shooting in a dark church without any flash equipment. I am thrilled with the outcome.Hope you like the pictures and the stories.
God Bless
