21. A New Year

It’s so trite to say that time has flown by, but, well….time has flown by. It’s been over two months since my last post, and frankly, I’m not quite sure how that happened. My mother used to say that time seems to go faster the older you get, but of course I didn’t believe her until I got “older,” whenever that happened. They say it’s due to some sort of complicated equation of your perception of the total length of your life vis-à-vis your age, whoever “they” are. In any case, it’s been an eventful couple of months. I’ll give you the abridged version. Well, sort of abridged, anyway…

November was the Parade of Visitors. First was my bestie Amy, who lives in Belgium, but drove up to see us as a side trip when visiting her mom in Dallas. True to form, Amy arrived with cheer and gifts, toting brochures and information about places we should visit. In her short trip to the Oklahoma visitor’s center, she had learned more about the state than I had in the 11 months since I found out we’d be living here. She had even scouted out what she’d be ordering on the menu for the Pioneer Woman’s restaurant and store, called The Mercantile. It snowed while she was here, and she got to see our little lot on Skyline under a lovely white blanket. Fortunately, the snow didn’t impede our jaunt to Pawhuska, and we not only explored the Mercantile, but discovered The Osage Museum, an unexpected little treasure. Pawhuska was surprisingly bilingual, with signs printed in English and Osage script, a phonemic alphabet established in 2006. My inner linguistics nerd was thrilled to the core.

A few days before Thanksgiving my friends Rey and Taidghin blew through town on their way to visit Rey’s family in Texas. They brought their two pups, and they played with Persimmon on a deliciously sunny morning; I showed them the lot and pond while the dogs romped.

They were also happy to find out that since there’s no mall here, Stillwater still has a thriving downtown, complete with old-timey drug store, hardware store, and department store. The department store, Murphy’s, was giving samples of meatballs with boozy barbecue sauce and tiny lattes made with an itty-bitty milk frother (don’t know if that’s the technical term or not). Murphy’s tempted me with bulk olive oil, flavored balsamic vinegars, kitchen gadgets, all the colors of Fiestaware (at crazy good prices!), and the newest colors of Kitchen Aid mixers. Though my pocketbook will be empty, I am grateful; had it not been for their visit, it probably would have been a long time before I’d have discovered Murphy’s on my own.

After a quiet but lovely Thanksgiving, we dropped Persimmon off at the kennel and headed for a weekend in Dallas. It was fun exploring, just the three of us, and the weather was pleasantly warm and sunny. We shopped, ate, saw the sights, experienced the Stockyards in Fort Worth, then headed home (of course with obligatory stops at Ikea and Trader Joe’s).

My husband tried to find me cowboy boots, because, well, Texas; but I think I convinced him they’re not my thing.

Barbecue, on the other hand, is right up my alley.

The last of our “parade” was our dear friend Nesrin, who drove over (up?) from Amarillo after finishing teaching her fall semester classes. Nesrin is one of the most vocal appreciators of my cooking, and always a willing guinea pig for new dishes, so I always have fun cooking for her. We enjoyed chatting and catching up (even though we’d just seen each other in October!). On Saturday we drove to Guthrie, a town about 40 minutes from Stillwater. Guthrie was the first capital of Oklahoma, and retains most of its late-1800s architecture, including an impressive Masonic Temple.

Before Christmas the downtown is beautifully decorated, and on a couple of weekends people dress up in period dress (or cowboy costumes from the era), and there are carolers and kids in knickers and caps selling roasted peanuts. Guthrie is filled with cute shops, antique stores, and some nice restaurants and cafés.

We mostly hit the antique stores. Nesrin bought a couple of gifts to take back with her to Turkey. I bought a tiny copper teapot with what looks like Arabic script in the design, and some sturdy wine glasses that match a pair I already have.

November had poured into December, and before I knew it, it was time to pack up and head back to Illinois to visit our family of friends. We got in early and crashed our friends’ dinner party; well, not exactly crashed, since we’d been invited, but had told them earlier we couldn’t come. It was a lovely evening, as always, and there was good food, good conversation, and even some singing of Christmas carols.

Our entire stay in Champaign was punctuated by spur-of-the-moment invitations, which was kind of magical. We limited our gift-giving to one trip to the Apple store in Indianapolis (and really, who needs more than that?), and one trip to the architectural salvage place in Peoria. (More on this in a later post.)

After a completely silly ordeal with trying to order a roof rack and cross bars from Amazon (wherein the post office got involved and forwarded it to Oklahoma; we rescued it just in time because the guy at the Neil Street station in charge of forwarding packages was on vacation!) and affix the roof rack (fail, since the damn thing was damaged and unusable) to get our acquired goods, humans, and dog back to OK, my husband managed to fit everything in our vehicle like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle. We arrived back home the very very end of the first day of 2019, grateful for all we have, the friends we adore near and far, and good mattresses.

A complicated and uncertain beginning for 2019. As per usual.