Tigerlily Sandybanks of Frogmorton

We’re back!

Here’s a short…who am I kidding…long account of what went on in Oklahoma. Not super exciting, but a nice, relaxing trip for the most part anyway.

Day 1
I guess the first day starts when we actually got the go ahead from Ky’s work. First, it was going to be just Mark going. Then I offered to go. Then it was going to be Mark and Bethany. But finally, after much debate and thought, Ky talked to some people at his work and we both decided to go. Although we had never driven that far before, Ky was determined to do so for three main reasons: one, Ky needed to be back to work before Mark which meant that we needed to leave sooner than Mark wanted to. Two, we were going to bring some of Ada’s stuff back. And three, Ky, being the macho man that he is, wanted to say that he could drive the nine straight hours to Oklahoma.

So at about 9:30pm on Saturday night, I get a call from someone at Ky’s work. Since Ky wasn’t at home, I was assuming it was him. Sure enough. He was calling to say that he got work off for the next few days and we were going to Oklahoma with his dad, if that was okay with me. I am always excited to go on trips, so I was all for it. I just had to make sure that my brother could find an alternate babysitter for my nieces for the two days that I would miss. He could.

Day 2
Midnight rolls around and I’m freaking out, trying to hurry back home. I had to go to my brother’s to get some of the money he owed me for babysitting and then get the cash from my dad in order to use it on the trip. Since we had to leave home by 1am and I had only packed about half of my stuff, I was in a big hurry. Luckily, I got back in enough time to leave as scheduled.So we start. Ky is driving and I am usually sleeping at this point. Between my usual bedtime having already passed and being in a car usually puts me to sleep, I was out like a light pretty quickly. I also wanted to get some rest so that, in the event that Ky got too tired, I could take over. Fortunately for me, he made it all the way there without a problem.

Now, I am getting excited by the time we hit Enid. Although I’m still kind of out of it because I’m so tired and it’s almost noon Oklahoma time, I was looking forward to seeing not only Ada but the boyfriend I kept hearing rumors about. And then we finally reach the parking lot of the rest home.Ky and Mark are both pretty ready to get out and walk around, but since I had slept about eight and a half hours of the nine it took to get there, I was still rather sleepy. Ky and Mark get out and go straight in while I fumble around, looking for my shoes, my eyes still halfway shut. The afternoon sun was not my friend at that point.

But I finally find them and stumble my way to her room. When I get there, I immediately light up at the smile Ada has on her face after having seen us. After hugging her, she asks me if i had heard about her boyfriend, Louis. I tell her that I had heard some rumors about him and laugh. Everybody laughs, and I get up to shake Louis’ hand. I notice that his index finger from the last knuckle is missing on his right hand. Knowing that I will probably not find out what happened to it, I put it out of my mind. I wasn’t going to ask about it. I didn’t want to be rude. Maybe I’ll find out later…. I did find out later that he would tell his grandkids that he lost it picking his nose too much.

So we sit around and jaw for about fifteen minutes before heading down to dinner (dinner is at noon and supper is in the evening). And as a pleasant surprise, although I wasn’t super hungry, I was glad to know that we were having dinner there at the home with Ada instead of scouting out a restaurant to go to. If we hadn’t just spent nine hours in the cars, it would have been just fine. And the dinner we had was great. It was roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, and mixed veggies. I was only hungry enough to eat the potatoes, but boy were they good! Oklahoma eatin’ is always scrumtious.

After dinner, Ky and I decided to look for a hotel to stay at. We wanted a cheap place to crash that wasn’t going to be smokey nor bug-infested. So after calling around for a few minutes, we decided to head out to just see what would happen. We first stopped at a place called the Trail Motel. Although the staff spoke perfect English, was very kind and accomodating, and the room she showed us was spotless and smelled like fresh flowers in the spring, we decided that the $48 +tax was just not enough to spend on this luxurious, five-star motel. Please note: every word in the previous sentence was overflowing with sarcasm, in case you couldn’t tell.

After high-tailing it out of there as quickly as we could without being too rude, we headed farther south on Van Buren. Not too far down, we saw a motel that would be about as good as the Trail Motel. Despite the lingering taste in our mouth from the Trail, we decided to check it out anyway. When I walked into the office, I was a little nervous at the Chinese woman behind the desk. Luckily, she just looked Chinese and actually did speak perfect English. I was pretty satisfied with the fact that the rooms were only $50 a night plus tax, and I was incredibly happy to find out that they had wireless internet. After seeing that the bathroom might actually get us more clean as opposed to giving us diseases like the other motel, we decided to just take the room. We were tired and we didn’t think we would find a better deal for a better room.

Okay, I have to say here that since we had entered the state of Oklahoma, Ky had been going on about wanting Pizza Hut. Since we didn’t have Pizza Hut for dinner, we decided to have it for supper. We decided that once we got settled into our motel room, we would rest for a bit and then head back over to meet Mark and Ada for supper.

Well, of course, Ky promptly falls asleep. And despite my best efforts to stay awake, I open my eyes two hours later only to discover that Mark and Ada had tried to get ahold of us and had already left to eat. Oh well. We go back to sleep.

Day 3
Almost seventeen hours later, I wake up. It’s about 7am on Monday now. I really hate it, but for some stupid reason, if I fall asleep on pillows that aren’t the right softness or put the right amount of pressure on my head, I will inevitably wake up with a headache. And especially sleeping for as long as we did (as off and on as it was), I woke up with a massive headache. And it seems that if I’m really stressed out or I sleep longer than about ten hours, I’m pretty sure I clench my teeth in my sleep. So I literally had an entire headache. I felt so horrible when I woke up on Monday. Luckily, I packed some Tylenol for just such an occassion. And I was really happy because we were going to Cherokee that day, which was about an hour away. So I had an hour for the Tylenol to kick in.

As soon as we got to Cherokee, we headed over to the farm, where Mark’s brother, Gary, lives with his family. When we got there, we went out to the fields to find Gary. He got some new farm equipment after his old ones clunked out on him, so he and his son, Jacob, were out there testing out the new ones. They got a new chisel and a cutter. And although I have never lived on a farm, I know that a chisel is kind of like a giant tiller. It digs up the soil and turns it over so that the ground will be soft and moist. The cutter, on the other hand, is kind of like a lawn mower. It cuts the grass (or hay) and sucks it up into it then spits it out the back in a neat row to be twined together.

So after Ky took a spin on the cutter with Gary, everybody but Jacob went back to the house for dinner. Since the weather was right, they had to take advantage of it. Jacob just got the short straw, I guess. Although I don’t think he really minds it. Even likes it. I’m not really sure. Too bad, though. He missed out on a great dinner. We had country fried steak (which I had never had before), mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits, and corn. I have a tiny stomach, so I can’t eat that much. But I did manage to finish off an entire steak, a whole helping of mashed potatoes, most of the biscuit, and at least three helpings of corn. Ky, on the other hand, is somewhat of a bottomless pit. He had almost twice as much food on his plate than me and still finished off a second plate of just as much food. Don’t know where he puts it all. Props to Tamara, though, for cooking such good food!

After that, we just sat around jawin’ and watching Family Feud. Oh, and before dinner, Allison, Ky’s cousin, showed us pictures of the house after the tornado hit them about a month ago. There was some damage, but luckily the house survived. The only damage to the house I think was that the barbeque went through the living room window. I want to say that there was something else, but I can’t think of what right now.

Anyway, then we left the farm and went to Burlington, to the Apostolic Christian Cemetery to see Ada’s husband Hank’s grave. I got some pictures of some of his extended family’s headstones for genealogy purposes, which I was glad of. And then we went to see Frank and Annabelle, Ada’s brother and his wife. I got some information about Annabelle’s family for genealogy as well. I’m excited to talk to relatives about stuff like that. I’ve got about 1200 people in my family tree so far.

After being at Frank and Annabelle’s for an hour or so, we decided that it was time for supper. And after getting talked into a bowl of ice cream and a piece of cake, we finally headed back to town for some Pizza Hut (big surprise, right?).

Oh, and when we got to Pizza Hut, we saw a man by the name of Bob Wilson. We met him last time we went to Oklahoma, and he played a few funny tricks on me. He’s a really nice guy, and I’m super gullible, so it worked out really well for both of us. But apparently he had forgotten who I was and played the same tricks on me in Pizza Hut. He gave me a piece of paper with “NEW DOOR” on it and told me to spell one word with it. Actually, I should say he told me to spell “ONE WORD” with it. Funny, right? And although he didn’t do it this time, last time he had me write my initials on my fingertip and told me it was a monogramed hanky. Ha ha ha. I think he was flirting with me, really lol. Not like that, but you know.

Anyway, as fun as the day was, we knew that we had to head back and get some rest. So we did. Ky and I had to be out of the motel by 11am the next day, so we had to get to bed.

Day 4
Well, we got up about thirty minutes before we had to check out. I guess getting back to the motel in time to sleep in and still get up early didn’t work out. If I remember correctly, we were awake until about 2am. But we didn’t want to have to pay for another night that we wouldn’t use, so I made sure to take the key over to the office. And when I got there, I was afraid that they might pull something on us because nobody was in the office and even though I waited for about five minutes, nobody came. I was really starting to wonder if I would leave the office and come back only to be charged for another night because I wasn’t there before 11am, even though I was, wink wink. But when I went back, an oriental man who had been cleaning a room got the key from me (he didn’t speak any English, I found out).

Fortunately, we didn’t have to pay for another night, and we got all of our stuff packed up and in the truck without another hitch. We drove to Ada’s place and took some last pictures and video before heading out to dinner. Mark and Ada stayed at the home while Ky and I went to Pizza Hut…again. I’m not complaining, mind you. It’s really just to make a better story.

After we were all done with dinner, we said goodbye to Enid and headed back to Cherokee. Ada had some stuff in storage in Cherokee, where her old house was. It had been sold since she wasn’t living there anymore, and a lot of her stuff got sold with it. But some of it was salvaged and taken to the storage unit. Part of the reason we took the truck out was so that we could haul something back. Luckily, we managed to fit the top part of an old hutch in the back almost perfectly. It stuck up a little bit because we have a toolbox attached back there. But it worked out really nicely.

By the time we got it all strapped in and had said our teary-eyed goodbyes to Ada, it was about 4pm. We needed to head out. So we did. And we had a nice, long, wonderful trip back home. It was our first road trip together with just the two of us driving the car, so it was kind of exciting. Especially when we ran over the leg of a deer or something somewhere in Kansas. Ky said he had never seen so much blood on the road before. Luckily, I didn’t see it.

But we managed to get home safely and quickly, which I was very thankful for. As you might expect, we got all our stuff out of the truck and headed straight for bed.

And that, as they say, is that.