Rodeos and/or Rubies

I don't live all that far from my folks. I am just a mere 1 and 3/4 hour drive away from my childhood home. A home that I try to visit often, especially in the summer. My parents and youngest brother, on the other hand, find it harder to get away from work and church responsibilities, so they only make it to my little town for visits a few times a year. For the last three years, one of those visits has been to attend my county's fair and attend the rodeo. My mom calls the quick 24-hour trip her official "summer vacation".
My sister (whose family has only visited me here once, although her little boys still ask me why my town smells like cow poop) recently went to visit her fabulous husbands family in California. I mention their trip in order to point out a fun contrast between the locations of my sister's summer vacation and my mother's: Here is one of the trolleys my sister's family rode around on their trip to Disneyland (her three boys are in red)... ...and here is the courtesy trolley at our fair (yes, it is a tractor pulling benches with wheels). That really doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the post. I just wanted to point out the differences in lifestyle.
This post is really about the rodeo. My parents, youngest brother Greg, and I went Friday night which was also "Tough Enough to Wear Pink" night. Everyone got into the spirit of the theme...including the 4-H pigs.
Speaking of 4-H, I ran into my friend Melissa who had spent most of the week helping with her sibling's 4-H steers. Melissa is an Ag-Business Major and a genius at all things farm and music related.

We also saw my friend Danielle, our county rodeo queen. She was kind enough to take some time out of her busy pre-rodeo schedule to take another photo with Greg.

I had never been to a rodeo before I moved to my cute little cow town. I went with my brother and his wife's family the first year I moved here and fell in love the whole rodeo experience...especially the Wranger part of that experience. My parents claim that they always WANTED to take my siblings to a rodeo, but couldn't because of my older sister's strong objections to a sport she considers to be near-criminal animal cruelty. Which brings us to yet another contrast...or shall we say "inconsistency". Please remember that my sister, let's call her "Jenny" (because that's her name) objects to rodeos on the basis that they are built on the principal of people having fun watching lesser creatures suffer. Got that? Ok. Now meet my sister's current youngest child. Let's call her Ruby. Cute, isn't she? And sort of fuzzy. And makes strange little noises instead of talking. She has to be fed and cleaned. Does any of this sound familiar? Especially to any of you former 4-H-er's? Well Ruby is also scared of things...many things...most things...things as unscary as cheese can send her into fits of terror. Now, I realize that her mother can't protect Ruby from every scary thing in life (like going through the car wash as in the photo below), but please notice that before comforting the panic-stricken toddler Jenny reached for her camera to capture the moment for her blog. A blog that people read for entertainment. Do you see where I'm going with this?
So Jenny has problems with this (the tied-up cow part, not that cowboy in blue jeans part. Jenny is as pro-boys-in-blue-jeans as any other red blooded American woman, she just prefers it when the person wearing those blue jeans is is eating tofu burgers or vegetarian lasagna) ...


...but she doesn't have a problem with this...putting her 18 month old on a Disney ride that is even scarier than the car wash, then having an accomplice snap photos for a future blog post (A wonderful future blog post, by the way. Really Jenny, it was one of your top ten).

One more time, just as a review:

According to Jenny, THIS is bad...

...but THIS is fine. Hummmmm..... does it make me a super bad person if I admit that I enjoy both? If I had a slide show screen saver made up of photos of both rodeo guys and photos of Ruby screaming in terror I might never turn my computer off.
Maybe someday Jenny will rethink her anti-rodeo stance and bring her kids up to the fair and rodeo to hang out with the "barbarians" in the family. Of course, she would also have to rethink her policy of feeding her kids tofu corn dogs. Things like that can get a mother locked up for child cruelty around these parts.

Oh, and if any of you were wondering why Greg isn't in the family photo below, it was because he was busy. You see, Greg found the new love of his life last night at the fair. No! Not Danielle! She's taken and her cowboy boyfriend could totally take Greg (sure, Greg's 6'2'', but he's a lover, not a fighter) . Greg is now in a committed relationship with the Fair's famous Maple Bars. And dagnabit, if a love like that is wrong, Greg doesn't want to be right.