Firsts

Last weekend was a weekend of firsts for my little family and me.

We started things off with our first show at the BOK Center.

Yes, I know it's been open since September. Yes, I know there have been dozens of A-list musical acts in and out of there since then. And yes, I know that it's silly that a blogger who writes about things to do in Tulsa just went to her first show in the six-month-old, newest addition to Tulsa's famous skyline.

I know. Okay? It's just that, I'm a SAHM (I like the explanation of that acronym by Dooce's Heather Armstrong better than any other) who writes for these people and these people part time, and though my husband works very hard all day long, he's still in college. So, not only do we have to spend our free time wisely, we like to do the same with our money, too.

Thus, our outing to the BOK Center to see the Sesame Street Live show, Elmo's Green Thumb. When I was a kid, my parents to took me to see all of those "Live" and "On Ice" shows that came to Tulsa. Despite my generally low tolerance for pain, I've been interested in carrying on the tradition - maybe not the part where the parents spend $100 on dolls and light sabers and balloons at the little booth in the lobby, but the rest is still good.

Our little guy loved the show. He tried to run away a couple of times, but that's just because he's really getting his sea legs and likes to run around screaming and laughing and being a general ray of sunshine. Mostly, he sat in my husband's lap and stared at the giant fuzzy things dancing around on stage. He even clapped and waved bye-bye at the end of the show.

We spent the rest of Saturday grocery shopping and eating Wal-Mart pizza and drinking Stella Artois (weird combination, I know - and no, Baby didn't have any, so hang up the phone. While you're at it, just take DHS off speed dial).

Sunday morning we woke up hungry, and I mean hungry. It was cold and windy, but by golly, we were willing to brave the elements to try a Tulsa breakfast treasure, Tally's Good Food Cafe, on historic Route 66 at 11th and Yale.

Remember my search for Tulsa's best chiles rellenos? I started it before I began writing this blog and there's not much of a record here, but I have a thing about quests for the best stuff in Tulsa. I hosted Natalie's quest for Tulsa's best pizza here on this blog; lately, I've been in search for a new breakfast meet-up for my family, which has been displaced from its usual Sand Springs diner by cooks who hide the side of the pancakes they burnt by stacking them black sides together, overcook eggs and, for some reason, suddenly developed really awful service. Oh, and I found a smudge of lipstick on my coffee cup not once, but twice, and it sure as heck wasn't my shade.

Tally's wasn't such a great source for a story I just wrote for Tulsa Business Journal on where Tulsa's up-and-comers like to do business over the breakfast table (check it out in the April 13th issue - the story turned out to be a great example of how useful Twitter can be to a reporter), but the folks there sure know how to please a girl who's looking not just for a down-home diner, but for food that's so good that I'm forced to curl up under the table and suck my thumb for 45 minutes.

I love it when waitresses call me and my baby boy but NOT my husband "hon," "sug" and "babe" - that was my first indication we'd landed in a good, homegrown spot. Second, at about 8 in the morning, the place was absolutely packed. A few barstools and a booth or two were all that was available.

Then, the waitress brought me three perfect pancakes - light and fluffy, not dense and gummy, and huge - platter-sized, even. Hubs ordered something called The Smart Bomb, which came from the kitchen looking like a cow-pig-chicken had eaten two kinds of peppers and a whole bunch of onions and tomatoes, laid a few eggs and promptly exploded all over his plate. It wasn't pretty, but sometimes the best food isn't.

Great part was, we got out of there for about $18. That's tough to do when a family of three goes out for lunch or dinner.

Needless to say, I made a formal recommendation of Tally's later that day to the matriarchs of my family who so need some breakfast relief. To show her appreciation, my grandmother cut my baby's hair off.

Actually, I told her to, but she couldn't. I don't blame her. Who could whack all of those crazy blond curls? Instead, she just trimmed the wings that had formed above his ears and tamed the mullet forming on the nape of his neck.

The mullet genes are not, ahem, from my side of the family. Ask hubs, who hails from southern Arkansas. Who cares if he can hardly grow hair for himself? He will claim the mullet genes, or he will eat nothing but beans this week. Not that he would complain. Because he never does.

I don't know if it's unusual in other parts of the country for four generations of one family to be in the same room on a regular basis, but around here, it's the norm. Not only do I know several families that have parts (or all!) of three or four generations still in town, but I'm a member of two of them. There's something very southern and Oklahoman about that to me.

It's just one more reason why I love to live here.