Cowgirl Up

Gee it's too bad if you don't have a rodeo where you live. What fun it is to play "let's pretend". Let's pretend we're on vacation/cowboys and cowgirls/on the ranch or the farm/not on diets. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is a crazy, wonderful thing because Houston is not a "cow town". Oil and gas is our bread and butter. But for three weeks in March we can all play the part of being Texans.

The rest of the year if I ever see a cowboy hat I do a double-take. If you go to the rodeo you just gotta strut your stuff, and it's a sight to see. Unlike Halloween, dressing the part for rodeo is a sign of appreciation— for farmers who earn their livelihood raising animals, for the performers (athletes really) who hone their skills and destroy their bodies on the rodeo circuit, for traditions that have been nurtured in our amazing country (a place we sometimes take for granted). It's pretty hard not to get a lump in your throat when you see that young woman charging across the arena, hair flying, at the conclusion of the "Star Spangled Banner".

Your own cowboy is the best accessory

So I do my best. I put on my beat-up cowboy hat from Target (worn in the garden most of the year), a ten-year-old western shirt from the Gap, whatever jeans happen to fit. I will usually fish out a pair of gold cowboy boots found at TJ Maxx, but this year— alas— I had to resort to sneakers. So I was cowgirl from the ankles up. Even my makeshift gear is enough to take me to that other place—you know— where the stars at night are big and bright, and the prairie sky is high and wide— deep in the heart of Texas.