in all honesty, it's been one of the best weekends i've had in quite a while.
no alcohol, no craziness, just friends and fun.
saturday morning i got up and met a friend for brunch at one of our favorite local brunch restaurants, brookside by day. i tried a great new dish that i had never had before and it was delicious. of course, BBD tends to have this running tradition (no pun intended) of upsetting the stomach, but regardless it is always good. after brunch we did a little milling around the mall. i got some cute new purchases from aerie and then decided that was enough for the afternoon. besides, i was ready and itching to go on the hike we'd been planning for a week. tulsa is surprisingly beautiful when it isn't pouring down rain, or dumping snow, or melting you with 115 degree heat, or sucking you up in twisters or most recently, shaking you to pieces in back to back earthquakes. we have some great scenery, especially around this time of year. the leaves are finally turning beautiful shades of oranges and yellows and reds and we wanted to be in those trees so we decided to hike turkey mountain. turkey mountain isn't really a mountain, moreso just the highest elevation in tulsa and one big massive rock formation but it offers beautiful views of the arkansas river and awesome hiking and biking trails in the middle of the woods. it's definitely one of my favorite natural spots in tulsa. so my friend and i picked the yellow trail to follow, as it seemed to be a pretty reasonable distance for foot travel. somehow, we got off the yellow trail and onto some random marked but unmarked trail and went north then south then ended up north again then west then basically zig-zagged all over the place for three hours! we made it out of the woods just as it was getting dark and we were exhausted! it was so tiring, but so worth it. we had a blast.
afterwards, we hit up peiwei and cherryberry to make up for all that energy we expended on our "three hour tour" and then caught up on the wonderful LSU game, which ended so victoriously...geaux tigers! and we also had to root for her team...go pokes :) loooong day, but such a great day. being in nature without technology and just taking in all of the beauty was exactly what i needed to clear my mind and get out of my head for a little while. i could do it everyday...but that probably wouldn't be the wisest idea, as i need to listen to my body's needs right now.
today i met up with her at chocs, the coffee house, and studied/filled out more nursing apps for a few hours and had lunch. i was so exhausted from saturday that my brain just wasn't absorbing much so we called it quits and decided to go to utica and hit up loft. good idea. they had some great sales and i got a few cute sweaters for 50% off :) then we went to tulsa hills to the grand opening of dick's sporting goods and got some new north face jackets, which i had been needing for a while. after exhausting ourselves and our debit cards we decided to cook dinner. i had a bag of quinoa that needed to be cooked, so we decided to test our a butternut squash quinoa chili recipe. though it took way more time to prep than the recipe called for, it turned out wonderfully and was the perfect fall dish. healthy, filling, and gluten free :) i'm going to try cooking a spaghetti squash tomorrow night. i'm on a winter squash kick now. yum.
anyway, the weekend was great.
i've had a lot of energy this weekend and i'm hoping that maybe my spirits are lifting and it's not just some weird mood fluke thing. i'm hopeful. i'm trying to remain optimistic that things can, and will eventually be, different.
the hiking adventure reminded me a lot of recovery, too. i started out on a clearly marked path to recovery and get off track from time to time and end up going every which way...it gets tiring going forward and backward and forward and backward but eventually, i have faith, i will make it out. alive. and before daylight turns to dark.
and here are some photos from this fab weekend :)
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