The Cutie Round-Up

We got back from the Pendleton Round-Up last Sunday with no major injuries or psychotic episodes - Success!! There were times in the past when beds were wet (by adults), mountings occurred ("and then he tried to mount me as we were chatting and I did a little roll maneuver to get away!"), adulterers took to Port-a-Potties ("mmm - what's that lovely scent you're wearing?" "I call it shit-cake"), and The Legend of Gretchen was born. It's more than a little disappointing to come away with no stories inspired by drunkenness, but I'm over 30 with two small children and my ass just don't buh-donka-donk the way it used to. I went dancing with my grampa (DaDa) at the Eagles Club, and even their drinks have mellowed. It used to be that their $1 rum-n-Cokes could have you applying lipstick to strangers (or putting a chew in a handicapped-guys profered lip). Now I can actually taste the Coke. Humph. The highlight of this trip was the pair of kittens that entertained three small children for three straight days. Kittens from heaven. Kittens that saved my sanity. I love kittens (when they belong to a neighbor of my DaDa and provide a constant source of amusement for my daughter and her two cousins and allow me to get the baby to fall asleep in a strangely-echoey old house).
My cousin, a constant fixture at Round-Up, is this handyman kind of guy of epic proportions. God of Handymans, thy name is Kevin. Kevin likes to wear tank-tops to show off his hairy handyman back and we all feel guilty around Kevin because he's constantly doing all the handyman shit at DaDa's house that we know we should be doing but it's all such a pain-in-the-ass and there's Round-Up. Kevin doesn't go to the rodeo and really has no chance of getting laid, but he's always there, as a constant cousin reminder of what bad grandkids we are on our side of the family. We're the grandkids that let our kids spill milkshakes all over the carpet and break the porch swing and wet the bed. But we're all cute! And if there's anything I've learned from having kids, cuteness gets you shit that homely never will. So DaDa, sorry I left that dirty diaper under the spare room bed and sorry our kids fed the kitties so much turkey that they barfed all over the front walk and now you'll never be free of the little wormy-freeloaders (the cats, not the grandkids), but remember when the baby sat on your lap?
And he smiled at you and cooed and batted at your glasses? You're getting veeerrry sleeepy...veeerrrry, veeeerrrry, sleeeeepy...

Biddy Bigot

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. … And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

-- Former first lady Barbara Bush about Katrina evacuees housed in the Houston Astrodome

AAACCH!!

Rove to Bush Sr.: Uh, sir, can you get her back on the bus please. Quick!
Rove to Aide: Who let the biddy out? I thought we had her in an institution somewhere!! What was the name of that place???
Aide to Rove: Umm, Texas?

(Pic and quote from BBC news online)

Katrina

Images from the disaster are burned into my brain. For the last 4 nights I've woken up in a panic about floods or thirst or being trapped. And then, when I close my eyes and try to snuggle close to my baby for some physical reassurance and to bathe in that healing baby smell of milk breath, the images come back as if I actually had some remote connection to the hurricane. I don't. I'm about as far away as you can get, geographically and socio-economically and racially. But then, I'm a mom, and as I read somewhere once, the ache of mothering is at once heart-wrenching and pure joy. So with these profound feelings constantly tugging at me, I see pictures of little ones, babies in diapers, who have been through such hell and I'm overwhelmed. I hate cliche psych terms, but I really am having a hard time processing. I've been sitting her for close to two hours cycling through the hundreds of pictures of the disaster trying to find something that will make me feel less bad. Mostly, I just can't believe what a pile of shit our government is for screwing this up in the most screw-uppy way imaginable. It makes me sick. Sick. I am now flipping off Bush, FEMA, Homeland Insecurity and Paris Hilton. A bunch of people -400?- that were staying at the Hyatt (they had food, water and comforts whilst waiting for the evactuation to occur) got to cut in line, in front of thousands of people that were starving and dying at the convention center, and get loaded on the buses to get out of New Orleans. I would like to blame that on Paris Hilton. Yeah, I know, but it makes about as much sense as Chertoff saying it was the city or state's fault that evacuation was screwed up.