Life with Dee

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Weekend in the City

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I just realized I haven’t posted anything since last Monday. I’ll bet you’re thinking that I’ve been so busy actually doing everything I wrote on my schedule that I didn’t have time to blog, right? Well, not exactly.

I did quite well on Monday and Tuesday but then I started coming down with a cold. I had taken a very long walk outdoors on Tuesday and began sneezing. At first I thought it was just allergies, and I do think that played a role, but within a few hours I realized it was a cold. Darn it. I immediately began taking what I refer to as “Voodoo Meds” (if you want the recipe, leave me a comment and I’ll share it). I didn’t run fever or have a sore throat, just an annoyingly stuffy nose and some fatigue. Since David and I had weekend plans I decided to focus solely on getting well. I took my “meds” every few hours, drank lots of fluids – especially hot tea, and just rested. And it worked. Just a couple of days of stuffiness and I was pretty well over it. Except…

Stupid asthma. On Friday morning I decided I should call my doctor and ask him to prescribe a round of steroids for me to take with us to the city “just in case”. Well, it was a good thing. By the time we were ready to leave Friday afternoon I was already experiencing asthma symptoms. We picked up the steroids on our way out of town and I took the first dose. Fortunately since I had gotten on it right away my breathing was better by the time we got to the city. Nipped it in the bud, so to speak. I’ve got three more day’s worth of steroids to take and I feel pretty sure that’s going to take care of it. I promised myself back in November when it took two rounds and several weeks to recover that I wouldn’t put off starting steroids the next time. I cannot remember the last time I had a cold which didn’t go into asthma and require steroids. Might as well face it and just start them immediately. See? You can teach an old dog…

We spent Friday and Saturday nights at the Skirvin Hotel in Oklahoma City. I don’t think we had been there since my birthday back in August so we were both really looking forward to it. These past few weeks have been rather hectic and David was in desperate need of a break. He even turned off his phone each night, something he NEVER does. He gave his assistant my phone number in case of a true work emergency but otherwise he was unavailable to employees who are notorious for calling for the least little thing at any hour of the day or night.

We arrived around 7 p.m. and found this in our room:

I guess being a diamond club member has its privileges. #Skirvin #OKC #Hilton
The upside of David having to travel so much is that he is now a Diamond Club member with Hilton. As they say, membership has its privileges. 
As soon as we got settled we went down to the Red Piano Lounge. David had already warned Amy, our bartender (via Facebook), that he fully intended to leave behind the stresses of his job and was counting on her assistance. We hadn’t been sitting at the bar very long before we heard, “David?”. Turns out guy who used to be a salesman for a company David buys from was sitting at the other end of the bar. He moved down to join us and we all spent the next few hours chatting. 
Instead of going somewhere for dinner we ate at the bar. They have wonderful food. They now serve meats and poultry which are all natural and have no antibiotics or hormones. I ordered the salt-seared chicken and asparagus; David had the citrus balsamic chicken served over mushroom and blueberry risotto. I am allergic to mushrooms so I couldn’t taste his but David said it was really good. The salt-seared chicken might very well have been the best chicken I’ve ever had, other than the fried chicken at Willie Mae’s in New Orleans. 
We ate and drank and chatted with everyone around us, including some guys who bought me a shot of Crown along with theirs. They offered David one, too, but by that point in the evening he didn’t need one. 😉 I think it was around 1 a.m. when we finally went to our room. We slept in the next morning and ordered room service for lunch. 
The main reason for this little get-away was my cousin’s daughter’s wedding. I’m so glad we were able to be there. What a lovely wedding, it was! Christina looked beautiful in one of the prettiest wedding dresses I’ve seen recently. The sister of the bride sang “Be Thou My Vision”. It’s one of my favorite hymns but I had never heard it at a wedding. It was a perfect choice and Chelsea sang it beautifully. We then stayed at the reception for a couple of hours visiting with family. It was a truly wonderful occasion. 
We couldn’t get dinner reservations at The Mantel until 8:30 so we went to the Red Piano Lounge in the hotel for about an hour and a half until, Mike, our limo driver picked us up. We enjoyed steaks, mashed potatoes and asparagus for dinner. There was a little mix-up with David’s entree so our waitress insisted on giving us free desserts. David had crème brûlée and I had chocolate bread pudding. She also comped my glass of wine. 
After dinner we went back to the Red Piano Lounge for perhaps an hour but it had been a long day so we called it a night around midnight. You know how I mentioned those Diamond Club privileges? Well, one of those includes a 2 p.m. checkout. Ah…so nice not to have to rush out by noon. We did a little shopping and had a late lunch on our way home. And then we decided to do something productive. We got all our tax information together so David could take it to our accountant. While we were gathering the documents (most of which I already had together) we spent about an hour sorting through at least a year’s worth of paperwork, old catalogs, etc. What I’ve discovered is that if you ignore it long enough you can just get rid of almost all of it. We now have a big box full of paper to start our bonfire for Happyland Music Fest, plus a bunch of magazines and catalogs to recycle. It felt good to get all that taken care of. We then finished off our weekend with a few episodes of Dr. Who which we’ve been watching via Netflix. 
It was such a nice weekend and a much-needed respite from our recent busy-ness. It’s all too easy to get wrapped up in everything we have to do and forget to make time for each other. That’s a mistake we made years ago and are determined to avoid now. In order for a relationship to thrive it requires nurturing. We both make an effort to keep our priorities in order and spend quality time together. Weekend getaways help keep the romance alive. 🙂

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Comments

  2. Terri Cheney says

    Sounds lovely! John and I are planning a get away in a about a month…We're looking for something new and a little different than our usual but there's always that if we can't find anything interesting!

    Reply

    • Deanna Piercy says

      "New and different" is good but sometimes "the usual" is just right. There's something relaxing about going somewhere you're used to. I hope you and John find just the right place for this particular getaway.

      Reply

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