Author: hannah.ananas

Tonight, we attended the rodeo carnival. My husband and I went in with my brother and his wife, because a friend gave us some carnival packs he never ended up using or reselling. Plus, we had a few free ride tickets from the volunteer appreciation brunch the rodeo had this year (which was quite cool, by the way).

I think we all went into it a little tired, but game. And I think we all ended up having actually a really good time. We walked around a bit to get an idea of pricing and availability, and then we rode the gondola across first (after I got a corn dog with the food card we had). It was actually quite neat, but also slightly terrifying. Something about it just felt kind of janky, when compared to ski gondolas, and we had this paranoid feeling that our phones were going to plummet at any second, and our hats would go flying, forever lost to us. It also stopped twice, though briefly. That didn’t make it feel any better. But it was still cool, and I’m glad we did it. Definitely a fun view to have of the whole complex.

Then we all needed a bathroom break, so we went over to Center to use real bathrooms and to see the youth agricultural mechanics contest. My committeemen who told me about this contest were not wrong: these kids make aMAZing things. We talked with one girl who is a senior in high school, and she presented her project to us. It was an automated washer and dryer for sheep, goats, and cattle (they do this for showing constantly, and it is actually kind of hilarious to watch folks struggle to clean and dry these animals by hand). It was immensely sophisticated, it boxed up neatly for transport, and it took her over a thousand hours of labor, which she did by herself, and cost $24,000 in materials. She plans to patent it in the very near future, her siblings will use it for their show animals this next year, and she hopes to get it contracted for production and sale at about $80,000 a pop. Oh, and she also demonstrated its functionality for us with life-sized stuffed animals. That was both awesome and adorable.

Pretty neat, huh?

Then we wandered back to the carnival to use up our tickets. Should have done it earlier, we quickly discovered, because the place was packed and the lines were long now.

Nonetheless, they rode a swing ride, a spinning ride with almost no line, and another flipping-spinning ride that went super high up and, somehow, had an almost-zero line as we walked up to it (which didn’t last).

We spent the final tickets on a game we had seen and called unfairly priced early on, where you get to throw baseballs at overturned beer bottles and try to break them. But you only get two balls per turn and have to break two bottles. (So, if you miss the first, why bother throwing the second? Exactly.) However, we had tickets to spare and no one wanted to wait in any lines for rides anymore, so we went for it.

The boys enjoyed it and did not succeed in breaking the bottles. They did, however, succeed in getting tiny bits of glass all over their hands from the used baseballs that had been falling on the piles of broken bottles all day (and all rodeo, most likely). So, that sucked. After they washed their hands, it was immensely better, but not all the glass was gone, apparently. I’m just hoping it’ll be fully clear from my husband’s hands during his shower, so he can come to bed with fully clean and safe hands. I’m too sensitive for stuff like that, and probably would freak out for weeks if any ended up in the bed.

Anyway, we then went to the club we enjoy, partly just to use he tickets my mom had given us, but also so my brother and sister-in-law could try the awesome frozen (think frostie-style) Jack & Coke and the awesome Milk Punch (also called Rodeo Punch), a milky drink with nutmeg that is like horchata, but not. On the way, a girl from one of my committees was clearly leaving and she could tell we were going up to the club, so she handed me a handful of drink tickets she was not going to be using before tomorrow night. (Not like we needed those, but more to share! And we did both sue them and share them, which was great.) We still ended up with three drink tickets leaving in my hat, but those had been a gift in the first place, so no monetary loss on our family’s end, anyway, and more money for the kids (scholarship money).

We finally left to go home at eleven o’clock, all of us wiped. But the highways were actually open tonight, free from construction shut-downs, so it was a quick drive home for once. (Yippee!)

So, yes, another night both out and up late for me. And I had a very nice time with my family, doing something we don’t usually get to do. So, that was fun, and so am grateful.

Thank you, God, for such a nice time with my family and for keeping us safe. I love you. Amen.

Post-a-day 2024