Road Trip!!! a Draw and some Musings on Hogs

Well!  Labor Day Weekend is upon us, so prepare for a Lame-o post.  It’s time for the Hog Days Parade – I don’t know if I wrote about this last year but, after nearly a decade of Never Going to Hog Days I got thrown in the deep end of the fryer, courtesy of my gal pals who grew up in Kewanee (at one time it was Hog Capital of the World, so it is said) .

They are huge local boosters so do All the Stuff, with Hog Days being #1. They spend weeeeks building a float, the theme of which is kept secret until we all meet up at the warehouse.  It’s absolutely charming.   The whole town pretty much shuts down, even the places not affected by the fair – everybody turns out.  Lots of funnel cake and beer and I go because I love these gals – because ew: stale grease, beer, flip flops, flop sweat and tipsy girls sitting on the curb in shorts, crying.  But it’s One Day – Saturday – in the blazing sun, on a float (yes.  you read that right.  A Float.  I’m desperately hoping that one year they make me wear a silk robe because That Look?  I can channel my Inner Blanche and sashay the living hell out of it. Maybe they’ll give me a tiara and a scepter. Or an eye mask.   A gal can dream.

– whatever it is, it sure beats wearing the pig costume their cousin wears Every Damb Year.  Omg.  90F and you’re on a float, in the sun, in a fleece pig costume  – complete with Giant Plastic Head)

92F at the parade. NINETY TWO!

Interestingly – Hog Days Hog Chow?   They only sell pork burgers.  I was salivating at the thought of interesting cuts of pork – or even a Rib Contest.  I mean… it’s HOG DAYS!    Alas, no.  Very weird – then again, this is not about the actual pork.  It’s the Parade, the Fair (with those rides (and the ropy guys with no teeth who set them up and the girls mooning over them because they don’t already have enough guys with no teeth around there)  Those rides terrify my OSHA soul.  Last year I was chided for checking out the rides’ components – ‘You are sucking all the fun out of it!’ – yeah, well, getting flung off the Ferris Wheel and landing on the railroad tracks is really gonna suck the fun (and the life) out of it.

Get off my lawn!  And my Ferris Wheel.

Sunday M. Jacques and I get up a o’dark-thirty (light is changing NOT IN MY FAVOR and it’s getting more difficult to get going and all I want to do is cry) – we’re on our way to Kentucky!  I can smell the stables already – oh, wait.  That’s the Sale Barn, here, a block away.  Kentucky thoroughbreds Do Not Smell.

Sweet hay, uber-pricey horse sweat, gorgeous, pristine stables that are worth more than this entire town …that’s a gorgeous scent blend.   I am not bringing any perfume because it’s early September in Kentucky! I’ll smell like Hawaiian Tropic SPF 30, in all its coconutty, suntanny goodness.  (sidenote:  guys LOVE that smell. Gals, too!  go figure).  I’ll be in the pool.  Or in my sister’s closet (which is why I’m going down – she’s wanting the place organized before she brings in an organizer.   Huh.  I’d probably be the same way.)

Dunno when we’ll head back – sometime next week.  It’s all part of my Calm the Hell Down project – no real reason to plan this like the Normandy Invasion, so I’mo just let it perk along until I start to smell like a fish.  Then we’ll hightail it back on the road.

Whazzup with you?  Any Labor Day plans (if you don’t celebrate, let M. Jacques know what your weekend was like.  He’ll pull a WIN !!

See???  Toldja it was a lame-o post!  Love you all, hope you had a great weekend!