The Bow Belle

After Independence Day there's NOTHING!!!  I didn't realize it until I started looking for reasons to wear this hair bow or that one.  So far July has been the driest month in terms of holidays, even niggling little ones that no one really celebrates.  So today we get yet another crap-shoot bow. It's already been a hard week.  The library board comes tomorrow and the three of us coworkers have been working hard to get the place clean.  That wouldn't sound like a big deal, but all three of us have arthritis and two of us are overweight!  Nevertheless I've done the heavy stuff that Mama and our coworker can't:  the vacuuming and the mopping.  I've STILL got mopping to do, in fact!  And it's supposed to rain tomorrow...and a certain relative of mine never wipes his damn feet. Dusty love, RagingMoon1987 

MmmmMay as well wear something to brighten the day. The board is visiting the library next Wednesday, and Boss Lady asked that the library be clean, so I've got a lot to do.  It's not a big deal, really, but I hate chores.  LOL, doesn't everybody??? Love, RagingMoon1987 

My dad's glory days always ran from June 14th to July 4th. Nothing new today.  It's been kinda a difficult week for me; I've slept poorly and my arthritis has been acting up.  I did, however, hear the season's first firecrackers...on the evening of the eleventh.  I didn't think folks were supposed to be messing and gomming with fireworks until today.  But then if that's the case then why on Earth did I see fireworks for sale at Wal-Mart during Memorial Day weekend???  I don't know who's weirder, Wal-Mart or the folks who buy from there (I'm lumping myself into that second category). Happy Flag Day, RagingMoon1987

Today's bow is big and silver for World Schizophrenia Awareness Day.  Etsy shop is PurelyGirlyBows . I don't have schizophrenia and I don't know anyone with schizophrenia, but I've always been fascinated by and terrified of the disorder.  Some folks with this scourge of an illness develop atrophy of the frontal lobe, and y'all can probably guess what that does to them.  You can't recover from that.  So if you've got schizophrenia or love someone with schizophrenia, this bow's for you.  Please know that you are loved. Love, RagingMoon1987

It's a hair early for me to be trotting out my patriotic bows...no, take that back.  It's NEVER too early or too late for patriotic hair bows.  On this day in 1897 "The Stars and Stripes Forever" was performed in public for the first time.  I freaking love that piece. This bow last saw daylight late last June .  It's a nice big bow, and a comfortable one, and it was a gift, so it's one of my favorites.  I just try to rotate the living snot out of all my bows, thus why this one doesn't often get worn, LOL.  Then again, it's raining here in the Bootheel today, so maybe one of my plastic bows would've been more fitting.  We've gotten a LOT of rain lately, and it's not letting up. Love, RagingMoon1987

It's both Cuddly Kitten Day AND National Puppy day!  For that I'm draggin' out the UGA bow , because those paw prints could belong to any critter! University of Georgia didn't make it into March Madness, and University of Kentucky got eliminated last Wednesday.  To my considerable amusement, University of Vermont made it into the tournament but sadly got eliminated last night.  That was the school my sister earned her doctorate at, but that's about all I can say that's positive about the place.  My sister and her husband reported that the folks (at least in and around Burlington) were rude as hell, and Sister's coworkers were ignorant as all get-out when tornado season rolled around.  Yeah...Sis doesn't have the fondest memories of her time in Vermont.  So seeing University of Vermont on the bracket makes me chuckle.   It's also Be Mad Day, and I'm...well, actually I have nothing to be mad about!  I guess I could be mad that University of Ken...

Yep, I'm finally celebrating the return of spring !  It's...well, today is actually quite beautiful.  Late March can be a mixed bag in the Bootheel, but today the weather is lovely.  There is a slight chance of rain, but I love rain.  All that said, it's time to trot out the flowers and the rainbows again, and today's bow is perfect for that.  I've been holding onto this beauty since mid-November.  Mama got it for me when things were kinda rough.  Etsy shop is perfectprincess . It's hard to pick between fall and spring as a favorite season, but for me I think spring will always eke fall out by just a hair.  It's a beautiful time, when the flowers and the trees are budding, when the winter wheat begins to look green and healthy, when the birds trill in the trees.  I love spring.   On the other hand, I do live on the edge of two large tornado hotbeds, so spring can be kinda dicey.  April and May are usually the worst months, but ...

It's Hufflepuff Pride Day!  My beloved Hufflepuff bow gets another spin.  Etsy shop is LittleLondonBowtique . It turns out that Hufflepuffs are often experts in Herbology, which is fitting for me because I want to start studying herbalism...and foraging too, since a lot of the stuff I'm after grows in the wild.  I'll discuss that further in another post; for now I'll just say that I'm thankful for dandelions and henbit.  I wonder if there's any medicinal uses for kudzu???  If there is I'll let y'all know! And if you're not a Hufflepuff, your days are coming.  I think tomorrow is...<pauses to look it up>...tomorrow is for Slytherin! Hufflepuff pride, RagingMoon1987

And the Moon Girl's favorite cookie as well.  It's Oreo Day, and I love me some Oreos!  Etsy shop is  RoxysBowtiqueShop , where I get many of my more original bows ( Bob Ross !). Mama and I have been known to polish off a whole pack of Double Stuf Oreos during a car ride, and I've never thought to ask my brother-in-law what he thinks of the cookies.  My sister inexplicably hates Oreos, particularly the stuff in the middle...in other words, the best part.  I'll never forget what Uncle From St. Louis cried when he learned Sister didn't like the cookies:  "You don't like OREOS???  That's un-American!!!"  LOL, I don't know what's so American about Oreos, but according to my uncle not liking Oreos is highly abnormal.  That said, I do see Sister's point, as too many of the darn things can give one a mondo sugar rush or worse, a stomachache.  As I've said before, Sister prefers her treats fruity or sour, which Oreos definitely are not. Int...

While the girls in N'awlins are traipsing around trading bare boobies for plastic beads, I'm rocking a big bow. I've actually got two of these, LOL.  Mama liked 'em, so she got one one year, and then the second another year.  They she'd glitter like mad, but they're comfortable.  As for Mardi Gras...well, I'm not a big partier, but I'd love to attend at least one festival, just to say I've done it.  Daddy told me once that Mobile, Alabama and Pensacola, Florida hold smaller festivals than the huge one in New Orleans.  I don't know if that's true, but if it IS true I wanna go.  Happy Fat Tuesday, RagingMoon1987

Not much to say about today's bow.  It's pretty and red. I need to fan out the right side. I love red.  Let's get that out of the way right now.  I love wearing red, my favorite small birds (cardinals, woodpeckers, and house finches) are either red or part-red, and this time of year the clouds are often red.  But this time of year red starts to wear a little thin.  Everyone wears red at least some of the time during Christmas, and then there's a month in between Christmas and Valentine's Day where more red gets trotted out.  By the time February is over I'm ready for some other color, and thus I'm pretty tickled when St. Patrick's Day rolls around.  It doesn't hurt that St. Pat's Day features my favorite color. That said, I do love red, and red does brighten up these bleak winter days.  My neck of the woods had a lot of rain last night, and it looks like it might rain some more Monday night.  As a result I'm always looking for cardinals or ho...

No, I never will be the biggest advocate of winter, and the mild temperatures from last week have given way to chilly days and downright cold nights. Quick, Clara!  Imagine them melting!  LOL, my Christmas was quiet but much more uplifting than Thanksgiving.  I didn't get the floor lamp I wanted, but I did get a full set of Percy Jackson books and three books about Joplin Missouri and the Butterfly People.  Yes, the Butterfly People.  There were multiple (and I mean MULTIPLE) cases of people, all under the age of twelve, who reported these gloriously beautiful people who protected them at a critical moment during the 2011 tornado.  Being of a religious bent, I'm positive that it was a fleet of angels.  Y'all can do with that what you like. Now the new year awaits!  I like New Year's Eve, but this new year I'm NOT looking forward to. Frosty love, RagingMoon1987 

And my favorite color, LOL.  Etsy shop is SpaceCatSupplyCo . I associate corduroy with comfort, warmth, and childhood.  When I was a little kid we had a brown corduroy recliner, and more often than not that's where Mama and I sat after dinner.  Our bellies would be full and usually I'd be fresh from a bath, I'd have a lapful of kiddie books, and Mama would hold me and read to me.  Our cat would sometimes add to the homey atmosphere by ricocheting off the back of the chair during a spell of zoomies.  One night I counted five times that she did that, LOL.  We were on the couch that night, but when we were sitting in that chair and the cat bounced off it, it sure made a heckuva noise! Some of my kiddie clothes were also made of corduroy.  I had a little vest that was made of the fabric, and it always chagrined me that I could only wear it during winter.  The vest was dark green, much darker than the bow I've got now, and I could zip it up "all by mys...

<pauses to look>  No, Clemson is orange.  They're tigers, so they WOULD be orange.  This looks more like University of Georgia.  Either way it's black, white, and red with paw prints. UGA for the win !  My family is intensely fond of bulldogs.  We've never owned one, but we HAVE owned several Boston terriers over the years.  While not the same as bulldogs, Boston terriers do have some similarities.  Oh yeah, and they're hilarious. Boston terriers are the funniest dogs on the planet in my book.  They've got delightful little personalities, and they're hyper enuff to play while still calm enuff to take a nap in the grass.  Some other breeds don't have an "off" switch (jack russell terriers), but Boston terriers are a lovely in-between.  The dog we had during my teens loved to play tug o'war with his rope toy, and if I held it out of his reach he'd jump for it!  Thus how we kept him from getting too fat, LOL. Regarding colle...

Today is Minnie Mouse's birthday.  Etsy shop is ThreeDoesBows . Minnie is the original Queen of the Bow, and she didn't even start wearing a hair bow until the 1940s, with the end of the pie-eyed era.  Before then she was a flapper type , with patched bloomers, ridiculously big shoes, and sometimes a hat.  I'm not really sure when the red polka-dotted dress and bow became her thing, but by the time I was around that was how I knew Minnie the best.  One of my college friends painted her nails red with white polka dots because she too associate the pattern with our beloved rodent girl, and I had another friend (a teacher and thus an older woman than me) who often wore a red dress with white polka dots to church.  She also had Minnie on her watch, and I loved that because it made me think of my dad (he had a watch with Daffy Duck on it).  That teacher didn't live to be very old; she sadly died of ALS when I was in college.  Her grave marker has a silhouet...

Well, actually this is a different pumpkin bow from the last one I wore . This is another one that my mom surprised me with, and believe you me, I've needed it!  I've been depressed since the beginning of the month, and I can't seem to shake it.  Both Mama's house and mine need renovations, and we're kinda, sorta, REALLY strapped for cash, and we've got a lot to do before we can even think about professional work, so I'm feeling overwhelmed.  It's nothing that can't be fixed, but I don't like it.  Not one little bit. Now pumpkins, I like.  I can take or leave pumpkin pie, but pumpkins in general I like.  They're such a bright, happy shade of orange, and they're very useful.  One can eat the seeds when they're roasted, and one can eat the rind in any number of ways.  There was even a scene in one of the Little House books where Caroline Ingalls cut up a green pumpkin and made a pie out of it.  Apparently when cooked and seasoned it ta...

Yep, I used to cheer that during March Madness.   Mama and I had a soft spot for University of Kentucky already, so imagine our delight when Sister announced she was going there for her masters studies.  Lexington, Kentucky is a good little jaunt from Malden, and we couldn't be there with Sister when their beloved pug suddenly died, or when she or Brother-in-Law were sick or lonely, but it was worth it.  Sister and BiL both loved it there, to the point that they hoped to return after Sister's doctoral studies were complete, but it didn't work out that way.  As I touched on in this post , Sister got a two-year gig with University of Arkansas, and while it's not Kentucky she and BiL do seem happy there.  Sister has spent the past two weeks helping birth calves in Batesville, by the way, and there's no end in sight as four cows are still pregnant.  Last night it was six, but two dropped overnight.  BiL says that one calf had complications and Sister ...

This one is a repeat; I first wore it on June 23rd .  Etsy shop is TincysCorner . Harvest season is beginning here in the Bootheel.  Most of the corn has already been gathered, but there's still plenty of cotton and plenty of soybeans, and undoubtedly some peanuts in the mix.  The fields are a beautiful sight to behold regardless of what's growing, but visually my favorite crop is cotton.  A healthy field of cotton looks like snowfall from a distance, especially when the bolls are opening up. Unfortunately with cotton comes the chemicals used to help the bolls open up.  We locals call it all "defoliant," but it's probably a cocktail of several chemicals.  Every year the air reeks of...y'all remember what bubble solution smells like?  If y'all are familiar with bubble solution then you know what I mean.  Defoliant smells like that, plus something else that makes my eyes and nose burn and my throat choke up.  The town is full of people who are ...

I find it interesting that both Clemson University and LSU are tigers, but the colors are drastically different.  Case in point. Okay, I don't know if this bow is specifically designed to be a Clemson bow, but it's got the right colors so I call it my Clemson bow anyway.  My sister considered Clemson for her doctoral studies, by the way, but Vermont gave her the better offer so that's where she ended up.  LOL, that girl's attended school pert near everywhere! Love, RagingMoon1987

Truth be told, the bow doesn't have anything to do with the gum.  But it's big, it's red, and it's got polka dots! The Etsy shop is SpaceCatSupplyCo .  Like yesterday's bow, this one was inspired by the brief Disney emphasis that was in last year's reading program.  This one was directly inspired by the one and only Minnie Mouse, who always wears a hair bow.  Oops, lemme clarify:  she almost always wears a POLKA DOT hair bow!  Some artwork exists where Minnie is wearing a solid bow, and during the pie-eyed era she wore a hat instead .  In the early short " Plane Crazy " she appears to have worn  no headgear at all , and instead of a full dress she just wore a skirt...and a pair of bloomers that ended up saving her life.  By contrast, Mickey (who apparently is a horrid pilot) has changed very little since the twenties; he's always rocked red shorts and yellow shoes, and nothing else except for special occasions.  Hey, if it ain't broke, d...