Saturday, January 05, 2008

Happy New Year

I'm a bit muddled. I have a cold, and I'm probably still recovering from my half of the bottle of champagne Brent and I shared in Ogallala, Nebraska on New Year's Eve, and the road trip sort of did me in, although Puck went about it with characteristic charisma. Aptly named, my little road sprite, because that car does icy roads like nobody's business. Also there was a blizzard of goose guts, trucks flipping gravel at us, and snow blowing sideways over I-80 like water, and he handled those fine, too. He was a joy to drive long distance, what with cruise control, firm, comfortable seats with high and low heat settings, and four dazzling entertainment options (count 'em, four: FM stereo, satellite radio [including an all Frank Sinatra all the time station, boo ya!], CD player, and iPod jack), etc., etc., etc.

So, yeah, not a word did we hear or read about Lonesome Dove in Ogallala, sorry. Although the charming little municipality is not above flaunting its rich cow town history, they're not being specific, except for this weird obsession with authentic Bay Rum. They've gone so far as to do up a whole little strip mall with wooden sidewalks and a mannequin-manned replica of a mercantile, apothecary, and barber shop, but nothing says Lonesome Dove on it anywhere. We enjoyed our frozen stroll through their cute little downtown and we got pictures of the Lazy J liquor store


for the Johnsons, and the water tower painted to look like an alien spaceship


for a friend of Brent's, but I forgot to take one of the great little bar tucked under the bridge that spanned the railroad tracks, the Underpass. And, FYI, lovely, wide Lake McConaughy isn't a lake. It's a reservoir. We drove to the dam. Stop mislabeling your water storage, people.

Anyway, I'm wondering how my house became such a wasteland if I was hardly ever here to make it a mess over the holidays, and the cats are looking particularly innocent. Maybe they decided to try on everything in my closet and throw it on the floor when they were done. Also, they dirtied all the dishes and just left them spilling out of the sink. They opened all my mail and left it scattered on the kitchen table, took every cosmetic product out of the cabinet and arranged them all haphazardly around the bathroom sink, and stacked all the books I own in the middle of the bed after reading just the first chapters. Plausible, no? The ribbon all over the living room I can blame on them, although it's really my fault for leaving it out.

I'll pull myself together this week, perhaps, and then we'll hash it out about last year and this year and what it all means. Right now I'm drugging myself and going to bed, and I'll leave you with something so cute it'll make your teeth hurt. We might stop privately joking about how sick we make people now since Brent's cousin put it in writing.

Happy 2008, people, and here's to the holidays being over. I have a new year to conquer, dang it. [Sniffle. Cough. Whimper.]

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hello! Glad you enjoyed (I think) your visit to Ogallala! As the proprietor of Ogallala Bay Rum, I'd like to mention that we had nothing to do with the barber shop, etc at "Front Street"...but you gave me a heck of a good advertising idea! I suspect a sign in the window could be arranged. :)
I'm surprised you didn't point out one of our stangest products: Genuine Ogallala Bay Rum Wiener Wash. It's a shampoo for wiener dogs (and other dogs too)! What the heck did you THINK it was? We sell a bunch of that on the internet and some of the people who buy it even have dogs!

Glad you liked the water tower too. We do have our little quirks I guess. Enjoyed your post and we wish you a Happy New Year!

John Marquis
Ogallala, Nebraska

January 5, 2008 at 11:11 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Happy New Year! Hope you're feeling better today.

January 6, 2008 at 4:35 PM  
Blogger Mary said...

I totally believe that your cats made a wreck of your house, and not just with the ribbon--I swear mine raid my closet all the time! While they seem to enjoy leaving great stacks of clothes on the ironing board, I think they particularly like wearing my shoes and leaving them scattered hither and yon. I can't imagine who else would leave out so many pairs at once...

January 6, 2008 at 10:05 PM  
Blogger A said...

Hi, John, and thanks for that. We did enjoy Ogallala, and will probably be back simply because it's pretty much the halfway point between B. in Kansas City, KS and me in Evanston, WY. I'll look into some Wiener Wash for my sister's canine pack.

Happy New Year, Susanne. Glad to see you posting again.

Marymuses, OMG. I could totally blame the shoes on the cats, because the only pair I've had out in over a month are my gargantuan snow boots. I've been trying to keep them out of the closet since I had my black wool coat dry cleaned, but it's not working. They love it in there; why is that?

January 7, 2008 at 5:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry to ruin a perfectly good private joke. Thanks for another nauseating picture of the two of you. ;-)

January 12, 2008 at 3:56 PM  

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