Oh the boys of summer...

I had so much to get done today.

Instead, I lost myself in a book I bought a few weeks ago, courtesy of the first grade classroom I'd been visiting monthly for story time purposes. I found my morning, noontime, and afternoon devoured as I became a prohibition era débutante, parading and petitioning for the vote, all the while taking liberties with every available (and maybe not so available) man I came across in 1920 Louisiana. I think I was born in the wrong decade. The wrong century, even.

I went to the local rodeo last night with a friend, and her friend. It was the first time I had officially attended a rodeo, and I was ill-prepared for the event. I went straight from work, and so my city-silhouetted jeans and short cropped sweater over a hoodie just screamed "I don't belong here." I kind of wished I had at least worn my dancing pants, the ones that suck everything in in the right places and make it all deadly curvy. By the end of the night, and four PBR's later, I had flirted with too many boys that would still likely my students by the time I'm teaching next year, and needed to badly wash the dirt (and who knows what else) from between my sandaled toes. Before leaving (which was a difficult decision to make. Drunk cowboys can sometimes be a girls best friend, if not at least a good time for little trouble) my friends and I had made a pact to visit all of the local rodeos that will be coming through town this summer. I made a pact to wear different jeans.

I think now to how different, and really, how much the same things are. Belle (my heroine in the book) fought so hard for things that I now take for granted, and now that I have them...sometimes it seems I'm working only to change them back.