The Bow Belle

Don't worry, I'm not going to start rambling about music again (Mods and Rockers and all that).  It's International Body Piercing Day! Actually, now that I think of it none of my piercings bled...take that back.  My lower lip did, but only because I sucked on it.  Don't do that to a fresh lip piercing, kids.  It's really dumb.  Anyway, my father was uber-conservative about the way my sister and I looked, and he was 100% against body piercings, even to the point of having more than one piercing in our ears.  After he died, though...oh, Mama lifted that ban in a heartbeat.  Imagine my shock when my sister came traipsing into my college dorm room sporting both a nose piercing AND a navel piercing!  Daddy would've had a stroke, LOL.  Both Mama and Sister admitted that getting both done at the same time was a huge mistake; one piercing tends to send the body into a type of shock due to...well, due to tissue damage and pain.  The body doesn't ...

Time to drag out the Sith bow again.  This one hasn't seen the light of day since LAST May 4th , which is sad.  I could wear this bow with just about anything I want.  Etsy shop is PreciousWonderland . Another year has gone by without me watching the Star Wars films.  As I've said in the past I have absolutely nothing against it, but I still couldn't tell Tattoine from Skaro...yeah, probably I could.  Skaro is crawling with Daleks and they're impossible to miss.   Sweeping change of subject, the Kentucky Derby is being held today, so my prayers are with the jockeys and the horses.  Despite what PETA might tell you, those horses get treated better than a lot of humans do.  But...accidents happen, like they did with Barbaro and Ruffian and goodness knows who else, so I always pray for the well-being of those horses. Love, RagingMoon1987

The first Wednesday in May is the Great American Grump-Out.  I chose my black satin bow for the occasion. Back in high school I didn't need an excuse to be a bitch, LOL.  On this particular Great American Grump-Out I've got the PERFECT excuse.  My bosses are coming, as are a passle of kindergarteners.  As I said yesterday, I prefer my children fricasseed.  THIS might keep 'em at bay! My new bracelet is made of rosary peas, and when properly chewed a single pea kills you slowly and painfully.  Not that I plan on feeding these to the kids...but they don't know that.  Bwa-ha-ha! Grumps, RagingMoon1987

It's 4/20 Day, but blah-blah-blah, I said that last year.  It's also National Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Day again, so I'll...actually, I can't remember if I've ever worn this one. Certainly is a busy little number, isn't it!  Kinda reminds me of Lady G, a Tonner doll that one of my favorite doll bloggers reviewed many years ago .  She had a short but busy skirt that incorporated stripes and polka dots and just about everything. There are times when I tell Mama, "Oh, you know my taste:  tacky!"  LOL, she swears up and down that my bow today isn't tacky, but I'm not convinced.  Oh well, I like stuff tacky sometimes; that's what makes it fun!  As for pineapple...hmmm, I think I've told y'all of my love-hate relationship with it.  I love it fresh thanks to my sister cramming a wedge of it in my mouth, but the canned stuff?  Forget it!  Despite my ambiguous feelings towards the fruit, I love wearing it as a hair bow or as a jewelry item...

Crap shoot day equals bow picked at random.  This one hasn't seen the light of day since last July ! It's kinda hard to go wrong with a bow that has this many colors on it.  Plus, this one is one that Mama surprised me with, so it's extra special.  Etsy shop is the defunct AdoraBowsStore. As doldrumy as the weather has been lately something bright is pretty fitting.  Monday was the only nice day we had this week, which suited me just fine since that was Eclipse Day.  Since then it's been a long void of clouds, wind, and rain, but that suits me just fine too because I love clouds and rain. That's all, y'all!  Not much to say today! Love, RagingMoon1987

Easter snuck up on me! I hate it when Easter comes early!  When it comes early it can often mean rain, cold weather, even snow.  When I was very, very little that meant either no Easter egg hunt at all or one inside.  Not that that wasn't fun, of course!  I distinctly remember Easter of 1994, which fell on April third and was wet and rainy.  I was already a tornado buff at the time and found it fitting that April third would be stormy , but I digress.  Mama and Daddy had hidden the plastic Easter eggs in the living room for my sister and me to find, and oh, what fun we had hiding and rehiding those eggs.  And of course there was the candy and toys in our baskets to make us good and hyper, and The Tale of the Bunny Picnic was on one of the kids' channels so there was that to enjoy.  LOL, I still like that opening song! As I grew older my family started going to church again, and Easter consisted of wearing a new outfit if the weather was nice enuf...

It's the Ides of March, AND Brutus Day.  I think it was LAST Ides of March that I wore the blood spatter bow and the scissors.  <pauses to look>  No, it was in May , LOL. The bow came from Nekollars , and the earrings came from EyesOnYouHandmade . Shakespeare is kinda ubiquitous in high school English class, and when I was in high school we got both Romeo and Juliet and Julius Cesar .  My teacher, who was a freakin' rockstar at teaching, informed us at the beginning of Julius Cesar that "This one is more of a guy's play.  Romeo and Juliet is more for girls."  I guess I think like a male, because I liked Julius Cesar better!  I couldn't help feeling sorry for poor dumb Brutus, who thought his cause was a noble one. On the other hand, Romeo and Juliet was the source of some comedy among my classmates.  The booklets we were using had the original Shakespearian text on the left, and then on the opposite page the corresponding modern English ...

< sings like Mr. Burns >  See my bow, see my bow, decorated with flakes of snow!  LOL, Etsy shop was AdoraBowsStore, one of the last Mama got from there. It hasn't snowed yet, nor do I want it to, but temperatures this week are decidedly more wintery.  Last week I spent every day in short sleeves and light shoes, but today I've got on a sweater and a pair of shoes that cover my feet.  No, it's not THAT cold, but it's cold enuff that my usual attire of a T-shirt and sandals would be uncomfortable.  We've also had some rain (and indeed, some wet snow that didn't stick). As versatile as this bow is, I plan on getting a lot of mileage out of it before springtime comes, snow or no.  So be prepared for a lot of repeats, LOL.  Besides, white goes with everything, fashion rules be damned. Frosty fun, RagingMoon1987

Today is, among other things, Pledge of Allegiance Day.  So I trotted out my favorite patriotic hair bow. <places hand over heart> I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation UNDER GOD, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The Catholic school where Mama worked added "for the born and the unborn" to the end. Interestingly, the Pledge initially included a salute to the flag, one that looked hauntingly like the Nazi salute.  This salute was called the "Bellamy salute," after Francis Bellamy (no relation to handsome Matt Bellamy), who invented both the salute and the Pledge. Needless to say, said salute is not done anymore.  A simple hand over the heart was enforced during WWII, and the Bellamy Salute went the way of the dodo. Today a number of schools add other pledges in addition to (or flat-out in place of) the Pledge of Allegiance.  When I was a grade schooler I had to hold my h...

I'm a fan of Peanuts, and today is Charles Schulz's birthday.  Thus... ...I guess I should've titled this post "Good ol' Snoopy" since Snoopy's the one on the bow, but...well, oh well.  Peanuts has always been big with my family; during Halloween and Christmas we'd drop everything to watch the appropriate specials.  "I got a rock" and "YOU! ARE! COMMITTED!!!" are family catchphrases (the second one stems from the more obscure Snoopy's Getting Married ).  We had characters that we related to; my music-loving father liked Schroder the best, while my mother was the oldest of three kids and related most to Lucy.  She has always been very quick to defend Lucy's actions, unless they involved being mean to Snoopy, which Lucy sometimes was.  In Lucy's defense, Snoopy sometimes needed it; I never understood what crawled up his nose and died at the beginning of Snoopy Come Home , for example.  Snoopy picked a fight with both Lucy ...

Thirty-four years ago tonight my mother was bathing two-year-old me, and my daddy was preparing to watch the third game of the World Series.  If you're baseball fans or disaster buffs then y'all can probably see where this is going.  Mama heard Daddy go "Awww, man," as the feed from San Francisco cut out, followed immediately by "Oh, they've had an earthquake!"  I don't remember any of that, but I do remember what Mama and Daddy told me.  LOL, hopefully today we won't have any shakers; living on the New Madrid fault makes that a real possibility, but hopefully we won't.  My bow today does not pertain to earthquakes or to baseball, but rather (once again) to Halloween. Y'all know how I'm always talking about the Wrong Box ?  Well, this one came in the Right Box.  Mama ordered one with a Thanksgiving theme, one with a lemon theme, and this one, but she got a huge box with a ton of stuff for another little kid.  That particular shop, Ado...

Too bad I stopped being a child eighteen years ago.  Won't stop me from wearing the bow, though!  This one is another Wrong Box bow . I never have been a huge fan of animal print, but in this case I'll back down because it's got its place here.  But prints like that were fairly popular when I was a preteen, and I thought they were ugly as sin. Now plain old brown, I like a lot.  I was Malden High School's resident free spirit, and my wardrobe consisted of just about every color under the rainbow except gray (I had a complicated relationship with gray back then).  But for some weird reason, one of my favorite colors to wear was brown.  Brown complimented my hair (it's brown), it looked nice with my skin, and it went with everything.  I could wear any accessory I wanted, and when just my shirt was brown I could wear jeans or a skirt or what have you.  I thought brown was awesome, and apparently God agrees because a lot of the things here on Earth ar...

Today is Malden High School's homecoming football game (they've already lost their first two games), and for that I present this lovely gem of a hair bow.  The Etsy shop is another one that no longer exists, TheDepotLakeviewOhio. Green and gold satin for the Green Wave.  Yep, Malden totally ripped off Tulane University .  We ripped off Alabama too, as during games the crowd is encouraged to yell "ROLL WAVE!!!"  Oh well, I doubt either Tulane or Alabama would care if they knew.  Heck, they might even be flattered! It's ironic, but I have more school spirit now than I ever did in high school.  In high school I resented the adulation that the jocks (especially the football players) got.  They weren't bad guys like teen movies would have one believe; quite the contrary, they were nice guys and many of them were my friends.  But to me it seemed that the football team got everything, and everyone else had to make do with leftovers.  I was on the ac...

It's certainly a fine day for watermelon! This one came out of the Wrong Box, and I'm very glad it did or I wouldn't have had a watermelon bow for today...or at least not one that y'all haven't seen.  That would've been unacceptable since I'm fond of watermelon, especially the little ones with the dark rind, the so-called "black diamonds."  One year some bright yellow ones grew at Grandpa's farm, and those were what we had.  And I mean they were yellow!  On the outside they were normally colored, but once Daddy cut them open they were a lovely golden yellow inside.  That was one of the best watermelons I ever tasted, and the only one that I ever ate straight from the rind.  Y'all know how in cartoons and books people are usually depicted as eating watermelon from the rind ?  We didn't usually do that.  Mama would cut the rind open, chunk up the interior, and serve it to us that way.  The local colony of alley cats got the rind, which th...

Today's bow is one of my plainer ones, black satin with a big fake pearl in the center.  As usual, the story behind it makes it special.  Up until about a year ago, I had a friend named Karen.  Karen was a single mother and had worked as a janitor at the school, so she had no end of funny stories.  We enjoyed her company so much at the library that we'd pull a chair behind our workstations and let her sit.  There we'd talk and cut up until closing time.  If other patrons came in we'd invite them to join the fun.  Unprofessional?  Maybe, but we all enjoyed it. Karen was crafty and good in the kitchen, and every so often she'd surprise us with homemade cookies or a knickknack for the library or something like that.  One day she came in with this bow and another nice clip in her hands.  "My hair is too short for these, and I know you like hair do-dads," she said.  Oh, did I have a big smile on my face that day! Karen is sadly no longer...

A great many of my hair bows are gifts, usually from my mother and less often from someone at the library.  Today is one of those; my mom knows how I love polka dots and bright colors, so she got me this.  The Etsy shop is one we both love, AdoraBowsStore .  It has hidden rhinestones on the side, like a couple of my other bows do. The colors in the center remind me a little of a pearl necklace that I got Mama for Mother's Day one year.  She doesn't remember it, to my considerable surprise, but I do.  It was one of those pea pod necklaces that mamas get, with the "peas" being pearls in the colors of the children's birthstones.  The pea pod I selected had a blue one for my sister (September/sapphire), a pink one for myself (October/opal or tourmaline), and a yellow one for my brother-in-law (November/topaz).  Just like the pearls on this particular bow. To my chagrin, Mama has yet to wear the necklace.  I forget how many years ago that was, and she'...

With Fourth of July over, the next closest big event is...dare I say it?  Back to school time.  I think this one is from AdoraBowsStore , but I'm not for sure; as is often the case, my mom gave me this one. I included "rhinestones" in the tags, but they're carefully concealed.  Both of them are located in the little bows on the sides, like so. Yep, it's getting to be that time.  Just a long, dull stretch of hot weather with no holidays even remotely in sight.  My family always found ways to have fun, but it wasn't always easy because three of the four of us had school hanging over our heads.  Sometimes we had fun at school, believe it or not.  While Mama got her room ready my sister and I would roam the halls, exploring the unlocked classrooms, playing hide and seek in the cafeteria, chatting with any other teachers we ran into (Mama was friends with most of 'em).  Sister and I made a verbal agreement with each other:  no stealing, no making ...

Hmmm, sounds like something that Mattel would've named an old Barbie outfit, even though my bow doesn't really have satin on it.  Regardless, here's my bow for today, an oldie but a goodie from the defunct MyBubblyLittleBaby . This bow is one of my special ones, as it was the first patriotic bow my mom got for me.  I knew it wouldn't be the last since Independence Day is so special in my family, but it was my first.  Putting it in is a little fiddly because the pinchy part of the clip is on the left, I'm right-handed, and the left side of my body is weaker overall than my right.  I don't know why. Right now it is hot and dry in the Bootheel, with copious smoke in the air from forest fires far north.  The heat is not scheduled to break until Sunday, so Mama and I are camped out with Uncle Man-Child.  Last night he hid in his room and I didn't see or hear from him until midnight...when he woke up to have breakfast of all things.  I was up visiting the fa...

On this day in 1994 one of my favorite Disney movies was released.  For that, I present my sister's childhood friend, Simba. Oh, The Lion King is special to me for so many reasons.  It was the first movie that made me both laugh and cry, because who DOESN'T cry when Mufasa gets killed???  I was used to death and loss in Disney movies, having seen both Bambi and Dumbo , but one doesn't actually see Bambi's mother get killed, and Dumbo eventually gets reunited with his mother.  So that was a first for me.  Then there's the music, done by the one and only Sir Elton John, whose music I love.  Had no idea who the guy was when I was little, but when "Circle of Life" kicked in my attention was captured.  I loved the whole score, and I even waltzed around the playground more than once singing "Hakuna Matata" (I read once that Elton John HATED writing music for "Hakuna Matata"), but " Circle of Life " was and still is my favorite son...

You didn't give me my way without batting an eye and now I'm mad!!! Yesterday's bow was one of my biggest, and today's bow is one of my smallest, at three inches across.   Admit it, if you're reading this you're probably a bit of a Karen too.  All of us have it in us, but most of us keep it hidden until it's needed, and most of us probably don't go to the extremes that the Karens on rSlash do.  LOL, do any of y'all watch rSlash's "r/entitleparents" videos?  The voices that rSlash uses are hilarious, and some of the stories he reads are...well, they're both hilarious and infuriating, since some Karens are full-tilt ridiculous.  HERE is a link to rSlash's channel. If y'all have read my doll blog then you may have seen that I...actually kinda resent the "Karen" label a bit.  I agree that this breed of woman has to have a special name, but why couldn't it have been some old name that no one uses anymore, somethin...