Wrangler Dani

It’s a giant Coke Zero at the Movie Tavern, refillable without leaving your seat, (what magic!) companionable because it’s with family, and it’s what Ashley and I both get, along with a shared bag of popcorn. It’s coffee in the morning, sweetened with everyone’s favorite flavored creamer and accompanied by holiday week indulgences like pigs in a blanket. It’s evening coffee in a worn reindeer mug that I remember fondly from the very first Thanksgiving I spent with the Nichols, and from-scratch homemade apple pie that made you want to sing Hallelujah and have another piece.

It’s craft beer in a hipster watering hole, laughter with an old friend, disbelief that we’ve really known each other that long. It’s getting my father-in-law to try craft beer, and the joy we have when he likes what we do. (Don’t judge, but he’s a Budweiser man.)

It’s fall sangria – a magical mix of oranges and cinnamon and apples and red wine – paired perfectly with Thanksgiving fare. It’s the sampler pack of Shiner Bock that Adam bought for our pork loin feast at my mother-in-law’s – a new adventure with an old favorite. It’s a purple plastic cup with holograms of “Fear the Frog” emblazoned on the side, filled with Diet Dr Pepper, drank in-between cheering loudly for TCU and jumping out of our stadium seats in excitement. It’s coffee with whipped cream on top in a fancy mug at a supposedly funny movie. (I cried at “Delivery Man”. I know, I know).

It’s a fishbowl of beer, served to me as I sat on a saddle barstool in the Stockyard Hotel bar, feeling swanky as could be. (The two gentlemen next to me were real rodeo cowboys, who stopped into the bar for college football updates. They were very chivalrous to me, and I think I impressed them with my “saddling up” abilities. (That’s a lie, they thought I was going to fall to my death off that barstool.) (So I’m clumsy.)).

It’s a flimsy plastic cup encrusted with salt and filled with a hastily concocted margarita, sipped while singing along to Texas Country at the World’s Largest Honky Tonk. It’s a salted caramel latte that greatly confused the Starbucks barista, much to Ashley’s and my merriment. It’s Diet Coke and shared queso. It’s “Dani and I will split this bottle of red wine!” at a dinner on the rooftop (we did finally decide to let Adam have a glass too).

It’s laughter and sharing and family and a week of Texas. Cheers and bottoms up.