In the 29+ years I have known Marty, he has never traveled alone. Ever. That includes when we lived in the Phoenix, driving to visit his family in Tucson.
Lately, he has been in desperate need of a special coffee only found at the Winco in Dallas. His My desire was one of his children would love the opportunity to hang out in Dallas, grocery shopping. I mean, if Marty likes grocery shopping 120 miles from home in a city with crazy traffic, genetically they should too. Right?
Unfortunately, neither young adult was available (stupid mid-terms*). To be fair, Marty said he would "understand" if I didn't want to go to Dallas. But, love conquers all, and I sucked it up.
A trip to Dallas does not merely consist of a "trip to Winco." Oh, no. It starts with the Special Call of the Beaver, where we stop at Buc'cees. To give you an idea of how awesome Buc'cees happens to be, we passed the Texarkana First Baptist Church van on Interstate 30 this morning. We caught up to them at the Buc'cees, where I ran into out my pal Teresa the Master Gardener. It turns out--I'm not making this up--she took a bunch of her Sunday School high school students to Dallas for the sole purpose of going to Buc'cees. When they were done there, they were getting back into the van and driving another two hours back to Texarkana.
Generally when I go to Buc'cees, Patrick ends up with a new Texas t-shirt. But, his mother is probably pleased to hear I didn't get him one today. The only reason why is I went to Shreveport yesterday and bought him something much cooler (more on that later). As an Auntie, I need to set an example and show moderation. Probably.
We found our way into hell Dallas where we bought out three-quarters of the Winco store. We then spent--and I'm not making this up either--40 minutes in line behind this young couple who obviously wear their bad choices on their sleeves. They also thought they were the first people in the universe to pass a bad check. If I hadn't been super-hangry, it might have been hilarious.
Lunch was a deceptive "Mexican" restaurant, which turned out to be blah Tex-mex with great salsa and a fabulous waiter.
After all that, we took a trip to Costco, which is where eighty-five percent of Dallas happened to be residing today. The highlights of Costco consisted of a summit in front of the refrigerator where the tri-tip was housed. And,--I'm not making this up--about ten of us stood around discussing the merits of Costco's tri-tip, the seasoning, best practices for cooking it and what could be done with the leftovers. By the time our summit ended, there were probably thirty of us.
In the cleaning-goods aisle, I made a Facebook friend named Jackie.
And, we brought home a pizza, which was dinner. Tri-tip tomorrow night (cooked in a 325 oven for 40 minutes). Perhaps I'll send my roasted okra recipe to Jackie.
After all that, we made one more stop at Buc-cees, for gas and iced tea. Marty said, "last chance to get Patrick a Buc-cees t-shirt." I pointed out it was my last chance today to get him one. There will be other trips. And perhaps someone else will accompany Marty next time he runs low on coffee.
*Texarkana College has changed their schedule and now has 8 week classes, because someone thought that was a great idea. They forgot to ask the faculty and students what they thought.
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