An Evening in OKC

On a recent Friday night, AT announced her Friday spend-the-night plans too late in the evening for EM and me to go to dance lessons. We'd love to say, "Aren't you going somewhere tonight so we can go to dance class?" We also can make her go to class with us or she's old enough to stay at home by herself, but we made a policy to be relaxed this summer and just wait to see if she makes plans for herself. When we go to dance class, we head for the city at about 6:00 and AT's plans were announced at 6:30. Of course. We dropped her off to a girlfriend's for the night, then, what to do, what to do? It took us a little while to make a plan (after the evening was over, we thought of several things to do, of course).

 Often our evening plans center around putting some miles on the hot rod.  EM suggested we drive the hot rod to Oklahoma City and drive around downtown. We arrived about 9:00 PM. Those of us who are familiar with downtown OKC are amazed at the changes that have, and still are, taking place. Streets that have been one way for over 20 years are now two-way. Many landmarks are gone. At the center of these changes is the new Devon Energy Tower. It's 50 stories tall, by far the tallest building in OKC. It was the first time we had seen it at night. Each corner of the building had changing streaks of light. It is amazing. We did not stop, but we saw many people walking downtown and in the parks, even though it was dark. Unfortunately, I did not take a camera. The night lights were beautiful. We're going to have a repeat trip with a camera.

 Next, we moseyed up north through the Asian District to Whole Foods. All that area looks revived also, with no small part of the credit going to Chesapeake Energy. Instead of a tall building, Chesapeake has a campus, that goes on for blocks and blocks. Landmarks have disappeared from that area also. At Christmas, they decorate hundreds of trees, very beautiful. In years past, we would have been able to find our way around OKC expertly, but, due to all the new buildings, we had to search a bit to find Whole Foods. I've only been there twice and was excited about going there again. Never mind the organic and healthy, which I do appreciate, but I like to eat weird, ethnic foods (which is often healthy) and Whole Foods is the holy land for that. Unfortunately, we arrived at 10:00 PM and it closed at 10:00. Poo. Another identical evening must be planned, camera in hand.

 Today, a man asked EM if the car made it easy to pick up women. EM replied that the car usually carried around his wife, but that last night two women were taking our photos with their smart phones. That was a new one for us. So I guess we're somewhere on someone's Facebook page today. We (EM) often have people comment and ask us questions about the hot rod, as we drive through town. Once a guy leaned out his car window and said, "Isn't that car too heavy to be on the street?" He was serious. It's really fun.

Lazy Girl's Skinny Iced Coffee

It's been a very long time since I have posted a recipe on the blog.  There are so many recipes on the Internet that I rarely come up with something that hasn't already been done.  There are some delicious iced coffees on the Internet. There is International Delight Iced Coffee that already made for you, 150 calories in one cup.  There is another recipe made with sweetened condensed milk that sounds delicious, that I haven't tried.

This recipe below is my own, lazy and easy.  It only has 40 calories, not per cup, but per glass.  It uses instant coffee and if you are a serious coffee connoisseur (I am not),  you may not be interested in this recipe.  If you are interested few calories and ease of preparation, this recipe is for you.  Please tweak to please yourself.

Lazy Girl's Skinny Iced Coffee

Fill a tall glass about 1/3 full with water.
Microwave for 20 seconds.
Add 1/4 teaspoon Stevia and 1/3 teaspoon of instant coffee in the water.
Add the smallest drop of vanilla or orange extract.  Stir.
Add ice to the glass.
Fill the glass with skim milk.  Stir.

Yum!  Start to finish in under one minute.

History

My mom was raised on a farm that has been in her family since Civil War times.  She and her brother still own that farm.  By the time I came along, my grandparents lived on the farm in a house that was built in the 20s.  My grandfather was the youngest of eight children (I think).  My mom completed the family tree for the family in 1987.  After receiving her copy of the family tree, one of my grandfather’s nieces, by then an old woman, wrote this letter to my mom about her memories as a grandchild coming to her grandparents’ homeplace.  This house was on the same land where my mother grew up, although a newer house had been built in the 1920s.  The wood lot in the letter is the same one I played in when I was a child over 50 years later.  This kind of information is fascinating to me.  If I could write historical fiction, it would be bridging from family history like this.  But that will never happen.  Below are excerpts of that letter.

Dear _______.

The picture I have sent to you is the only one I have seen of the family.  You keep it and show it to the girls.  I have arthritis so bad in my feet and hands.  I do not care for such as this as I once did.

If we were together sometime I could tell you about the homeplace and the large wood lot.  The house was east of the house where your mother lives.  And a large wood lot between it and the road.  Maybe you have seen the old house.  There was a large pond in the south end of it and during the fall all the neighbors would take their hogs on the same day to the pen and kill them.  Make a scaffold and a fire and cut and dress them at the pond.  Had large vats to put them in hot water.

After the hogs were dressed and pieces cut off, the children had to turn the sausage mill as the women made sausage sacks and stuffed the sausage in the sacks.  Clean the heads and cook them in large black wash kettles.  Run them through the mill where the sausage was ground then pressed in large pans with large tops are pressed down.  That was how they made the souse.  The next day all the fat pieces of meat were cut, clean and put in a kettle and the children all had to stand by the large black kettles and keep the fire built up and the pieces of meat cooked.  Then the pieces were dipped out of the lard.  These were the cracklins used in making corn bread.  The lard was taken from the kettles and put in large lard stands.

The most fun the grandchildren had was the time of year when all of us had to go to the pasture north of the house where they had raised geese and chase them until every one of us had caught one each.,  We would take them to the buggy house (the garage today) where all the women would pick the feathers to make pillows and feathers beds.  That was used instead of mattresses.  

Uncle Onice [my grandfather] was the only child [an unmarried adult] at home and got all kinds of toys, tops, and other things for all of us to play with when we were there.  He enjoyed playing with them too.

When the wheat was ready to cut and thrashed in the wood lot by the pond, there would be a large pile of wheat straw left in the woods by the large pond.  All the women would work together and make new straw beds to use for the mattresses.  Under the feather beds, we got new mattresses each year when wheat was thrashed.

All the children in the neighborhood went to Tatumville to school.  The building was north of the church.  Elsie had a buggy and Ole Red.  She picked Vada, Parker and myself up and we rode to school with her.  The school was a 2 year high school.

Elsie and Babe got married and left school.  That left the three of us the last ones north of the school.

Pops started driving two mules to his wagon and taking us to school.  On the way down there was children standing out in front of their house waiting for the wagon.  When school was out in the afternoon, Pops was waiting in the wagon for all the crowd to crawl in.  When time came for him to go to work in the field, we all had to walk.  We took our lunch with us in a tin molasses bucket.

One day we had had a hard rain on top of frozen ground and the road was getting soft in places.  One morning Parker was leading the way and stepped in a soft place and went under to his knees.  It took all of us to pull him out.  Nada and I had to go back home with him after we had scrapped all the mud off that we could.

I was in 5th grade and Pops heard they were going to give exams in Newbern for a new rural mail carrier.  He said for fun he though he would go to town and take the exam.  It shocked him when he was notified he make the highest grade.

He sold his house and farm, traded his mules for two pretty horses, his wagon for a buggy and we moved to Newbern.

Fifty years later, I had my own “Uncle Onice” to play with at that same farm.  My Uncle John (who was Onice’s son) was not married when we were little and played tag, Old Maids, Authors, and Monopoly with us.  He chased us, and made us popcorn.  I got to ride on the tractor and the combine.  History does repeat itself, and probably much more than we realize.  

Heavenly Father, Help Us Remember

I am about to gear up to start school-school and to start church-school, i.e. Sunday School, i.e. Religious Education.  I teach fourth graders in RE and it is great fun.  This is a prayer that we prayed in RE last year and will pray again this year.  The prayer is not my original idea.  I heard such a prayer for RE teachers, loved it, and came home to copy the idea, adapting it for my fourth grade class.  At their age, their main areas for ministry are at home and in their classroom.  It is so easy to forget that the irritating, loud, not-so-smart, attention-seeking, or out-of-place child sitting in the next desk is a person, too, loved by God.  I guess it's easy for adults to forget, also.  

Here's the prayer...

Heavenly Father, help me to remember that the boy, who pushed me in line at lunch today, may be very hungry, because he does not have much food at his house and school lunch in the only time his stomach is full.

Heavenly Father, help me to remember that the girl who always gets in trouble in class for not paying attention, has a dad who yells at her every day.  She has a hard time thinking about school because she is worried about going home.

Heavenly Father, help me to remember that the girl whose paper you saw, the one with the F on it, that girl has no one at home to ask her what her grades are, no one to pay attention when the grades come in the mail at home.

Heavenly Father, help me to remember the girl in your class who cannot read does not have any books in her home.  No one snuggled with her at night and read to her when she was little before she fell sleep.   No one else can read in her home either.

Heavenly Father, help me to remember that the boy in class, who is so loud and so obnoxious, has no one paying attention in his life.  He sometimes feels invisible when he's not loud.

Heavenly Father, help us to remember that the boy in your class, who falls asleep almost every day in class, that he has teenage brothers who play loud music every night until 3 in the morning.  There is no one to remind them that their little brother needs his sleep.

Lord Jesus, help us to remember that the girl who cries anytime the teacher talks to her, that she has a little sister who is very sick.  Her parents needs to spend all their time with the little sister and she is feeling very scared and lonely now.

Holy Spirit, help us to remember that what we see is not the whole story.  You take care of everyone, but help us to remember that we must  be your arms, your voice, your legs.  

Help us remember.

Amen

That's My Girl

2:30 pm "I've decided to become a vegetarian. You'll have to take the chicken out of the chicken noodle soup."

 7:00 pm "Would you make me some pigs in a blanket?"

Once upon a time...

She moved into the apartment the weekend before the 4th of July.  It was a new job, a new town, a new salary, and, of course, a new apartment.  She had never lived in a town that large or lived in an apartment with a pool.  She'd hit the big time.  She had moved over 600 miles for this adventure, after searching the nation for a unique job that would excite her.  And she had found it, in this university town that would come to mean more to her than she could ever imagine.  

The first week of her work went well.  Then Saturday came.  New town, new adventures.  What to do, what to see?  First on the list was going to the apartment pool.  How fun to just run down to the pool with a towel!  The sign on the fence said pool should be open but it was locked.  Disappointing.  Well, on to plan B.

Back to the apartment to peruse the map.  She had just driven 600 miles so it would be no problem to drive to where ever.  She picked out a state park about 75 miles away. Maybe there would be a place to swim there.

As she dumped her towel and purse in her car in the apartment parking lot, a man passed her and said, "Too bad the pool is locked."  He walked on to his car. Who was he?  How did he know that she wanted to go to the pool?  She wondered about him all the way to the park.  Maybe she should have asked him to come with her.  That would have been interesting.  But you can't just meet a man in the parking lot and ask him to go some place with you.  Even though that would be bizarre and possibly dangerous, she thought about him off and on the rest of the day.

The next day was Sunday and the pool was open.  A day at the pool, and, guess what?  That  same man was at the pool.  He lived in the apartments.  Soon introductions were made.  He was a sun worshiper and, while she was not a fan of the sun, she certainly could stay out in the sun for the right reasons.  They spent much of the day together at the pool.  By the end of the day, he asked her to go to the Fourth of July party the next day at a local city park.  She accepted and they spend a second day together.  

Back to work the next week, another good week.  The next Friday evening came and she heard a knock on apartment door.  She looked through the peephole and there was her new friend.

Almost 30 years later, my friend is still here, sitting right now beside me.  We married over two years after we met.  He was the first "non-work" person I met at my new home, new town, new state.  Neither he or I were looking for romance at the time or, at least, neither of us would admit it.   I was entering an exciting time in my life and wasn't settled in enough to look around for dating.  While it was certainly "like" at first sight, neither of us admitted to anything such as "love" at first sight.  But when I retell this story, I realize maybe it was love at first sight.  We just didn't know it.   

Gaylord Texan - A Review

The view from our hotel room at the Gaylord Texan.  This is indoors!

This week, AT went off for her first camp, at age 13.  She had never been interested until this year.  So...what to do, what to do?  When the cat's away....

EM and I decided that we needed to go on an outing, maybe to the Dallas area.  We had never gone on a "vacation" without AT.  He came up with the great idea that we go to the Gaylord Texan for one night.  I had toured the hotel once before, but had never stayed the night.  EM had never been there.  Our interests of road trips, dancing, water play and food would be rolled into into one, fun-filled 24 hours.  Start your engine and hold the car door open!

We arrived at 11:00 AM with the possibility of an early check-in and immediately had a room.  The staff always seemed delighted to be able to assist.  There was no detail missed by a staff person.  It was like Disney World for adults.  EM was fascinated with how every detail  seemed to be perfect.  Who has that job of reviewing every corner? They were certainly doing a great job.  What a fascinating operation!  As an aside, I was intrigued with iPad sightings.  The concierge at the entrance had an iPad in hand.  An iPad was at the pool, at a restaurant, in the hands of the leader of the band.

EM waited until we were in the Grapevine area to purchase needed swim trunks.  I was about to pop with excitement about wanting to get quickly to the water park at the Gaylord, but I managed to keep myself calm.  He said, "But you said you wanted to shop at the mall."  Yes, I did, but that was when I thought we would have time to kill, before  I learned about early check-in!  He quickly found his burnt orange swim trunks (think Texas) and a Texas hat for his poor head in the pool, since he forgot his hat.  He is not a Texas fan, so I teased him about that, but he fit in well at the resort.  

By the time we were back at the Gaylord, we were hungry.  We entered the sports bar, Texas Station, which had a 52 foot long TV screen.  Interesting.  We ordered a monster burger to share and it was a monster, a Kobe burger with pulled pork piled on top.  We were glad we were sharing.  After our monster burger, we headed for the water park.  You put on your bathing suit, a cover up and take nothing else but your room key and get on the shuttle to go about a mile. We have been in bigger water parks.  This one just had a lazy river and water slide, but was still fun. We learned that Wednesday is a perfect day to hit a place like this.  There were not many people and we easily got lounge chairs (often a problem in resorts).

Our first time around the lazy river was the most fun.  EM and I "tied" up together with our inner tubes and he ended up (with my help) going under every waterfall.  Lots of laughter.  Twice down the water slide was plenty for us.  We found lounge chairs with the legs in the water.  After we tired of the sun, we took the shuttle back to hotel and went to the hotel pool, which appeared to be a more grownup up place. We had a total of about 4 hours total in the sun.  We did not get sunburned except each of us had a spot where we neglected to put sun screen on!  Good sunscreen.  

The fun continued.  When it came time for supper, we had to eat Italian, EM's favorite. EM had the spaghetti and a great Cesar salad.  I had the "jumbo crab cakes".  I love crab cakes.  It was an appetizer and I thought since it was "jumbo" it would be plenty.  The crab cakes were quite petite and fancy, with an artichoke spear, endive, and a olive, caper, pepper compote.   It was excellent and it was plenty, but about halfway through my meal, I had to laugh.  I realized the crab cakes were from a "jumbo crab", and were not supposed "big crab cakes".  I'm glad Mrs. Clampett didn't decide to complain about the "jumbo" part.

The waiters here wear their place of birth on their name tags, good way to start a conversation.

The final piece of our plan was to go dancing.  So we loaded up on the shuttle to go to the Glass Cactus, the resort's nightclub.  We are old and early people.  Nightclubs don't really get started until 10:00 for the young people.  We got there about about 7:30. There was a beautiful view of the sunset.  At 8:00, the band, Limelight, started. We had no idea who they were.  They are Dallas-area band.  Wow!  Did we ever luck up!  The band was a 10 piece band, playing everything - Chicago, Michael Jackson, oldies, Black Eyed Pea.  They were full of personality; it seemed like they were having a blast.  We immediately got up to dance (the only people on the dance floor - it didn't bother us). They played Michael Buble's, Sway, just for us because we were dancing.  The band had a 3 piece brass section and, with different songs, they would go out on the floor or next to the tables.  Every musician also took a turn as a lead vocalist.  At one point, we were the only dancers on the dance floor, with the band in a circle surrounding us!

After they played probably for a hour and a half, they took a break.  Most of that time we were dancing.   The DJ played mixed music and we did not dance to that.  When the band came back, I quickly found that my feet had blisters and were very sore.  So we danced a two more songs, listened for a while and shuttled back to the hotel.  

We then put our our hotel robes and sat in the dark on our balcony, watching the people below.  The next morning, we had breakfast at the restaurant by the riverwalk, then hit the road to be back home by 2:00.  

Mission accomplished.