Girls Night Out

As most of you are aware from my blog posts, I don't get out as much as I used to.  Let's just say that there were once a cubic megaton of wild oats sown, and leave it at that.  However, I still like to hang out with the girls.  Unfortunately, most of the 'girls' I know have children, and just like I do, tend to use every spare moment for sleeping. 

Except for last night.  Last night, we rodeo'd.   This does not mean what you think it means, of course.  THE rodeo is actually in San Antonio at this time, and Keith Urban happened to be the performer du jour.  So we all met up at the local Applebee's, had a few, and piled in the Mom-mobile(the designated driver's van) and headed to the stadium or whatever they call it this week. 

It is some weird sort of law that when the rodeo is in town we get extremely cold weather at least once, and this just happened to be the night.  Luckily, I brought my actual winter coat, so I wasn't completely frozen.  As we walked by a large number of cows parked outside the livestock barn, I wondered aloud if they meant to keep the cows outside for the night.  Yes, they did, I was told.  Poor cows!

We got inside and walked for miles until we found our seats.  This allowed me the opportunity to laugh privately at some of the fashion faux pas (Dude--a straw hat?  Before Easter?).   Yes, it was childish, but I kept it to myself.    Our seats were pretty high up; in fact, several birds flew by before they dimmed the lights.  I also noticed that we were almost eye level with the guy running the spotlight in the rafters.  Still, the view was unobstructed, and that is a pretty good deal for 10$. 

This is the 'rodeo' part of the rodeo--see the horse?

We first watched some guys try to stay on horses who did their best to throw them off. Next, we watched a bunch of kids chase some calves and try to rope them; the calves won that round.  There was barrel racing, where girls have to race their horses around three barrels as fast as possible without knocking any of the barrels over.  And then...bull riding. 

Yes.  I know that it seems to be counterproductive, trying to ride a bull. But it is true. Someone will pay good money to watch men try to stay on a bull for 8 seconds. I was happy to see that many of the idi--cowboys participating in this were wearing some form of protective head gear.  I was annoyed that all of the bulls had the pointy parts of their horn cut off.  Sure it looks safer, but it's not.  Only two guys were able to stay on their bull for the required time.  I thought that they both should have won, but they only give the money to one.   And then...

They drag the stage and all the extras onto the dirt with a tractor.

It was time for the main event...Keith Urban.  While I knew that Keith Urban is married to Nicole Kidman, and I knew that he was a performer, I was unfamiliar with his particular music.  I may have heard a couple of his songs before.  Maybe.  The music that I call country is stuff like Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, etc.  Oh, and I am required by state law to like George Strait.  However, I stopped listening to country music somewhere after Garth Brooks because it started to annoy me. Plus, it's just not a party without a mosh pit.

Never let it be said that I am averse to trying new things.

I did enjoy the concert, and not just because Keith Urban is sort of good looking.  Actually, the general consensus of the people in our section was that he was "hot"; one guy in front of us was especially complementary of Mr. Urban's hair.  He does have nice hair.  And Keith Urban did a couple of things that made me "squee" with the rest of the audience, like pulling some random girl from the audience and getting her to sing that she wanted to kiss a girl.  Also, it appeared that he gave some little girl a guitar.

GAH!!!  Who brought that Cabbage Patch Kid to a Keith Urban concert?

After the show, we walked miles and miles, past the now frozen cows contorted into various poses of misery, got into the Mom-mobile...and waited in line.  At one point, a jerk of a guy in a blue F-150 cut us off, and then mimicked shooting a gun at us.   I actually got out my phone to dial 911, since he was making shooting gestures at a van full of women, one of them a teenager.  That sort of shot the whole myth of the polite Texas cowboy all to hell, and lowered our general goodwill toward humanity.   Still, it was nice to get out of the house and be in female company for an evening. I hope that it's not another year before we get to do it again. In the meantime, I might even see if I can download some of Keith Urban's music to my phone.