Delicious Mashed and a Cowboy Named Mike

this first part has nothing to do with the second, but this recipe was so delicioso i had to share:

mashed potatoes with scallions and parmesan  (my variation on a Chatelaine recipe)
8 yukon gold potatoes
1/2 cup half and half or buttermilk (i only had bmilk)
1 tsp dijon
2 Tbsp butter
4 scallions
1 cup freshly grated parmesan
sea salt to taste
when the taters are almost boiled soft, stir together and heat bmilk, butter and dijon.  mash taters, add heated liquid - combine.  stir in green onions (finely chopped) and parmesan.  i'm usually a gravy glutton, but i didn't even miss the lack thereof.  i love me some comfort food.

tonight we attended the annual bull riders exhibition with all four children in tow.  most of  you  (all five people that occasionally read my blog :) know  that even though i was raised primarily in wyoming, this is SO NOT MY THING.  while my classmates swooned over clint black and billy ray in the mid-nineties, i was vacillating between my goth/cure phase and the spirited (and predictably hairy) flower-child. despite my aversion to most things remotely akin to pointy-toed cowboy boots, un-tailored flannel shirts, snug wranglers, and the like, ryan had once again used his connections with the local radio station to score some free tickets.  his relationship via the family business with our local stations has been quite fortuitous for us, allowing us to see, gratis, barenaked ladies, blue man group, former olympians figure skating, our lady peace (whoever that is-seriously!), among others.  but i digress...
last year he took jacob, then 3, because we were only given 2 tickets.  well lucky us - this year it was 4! char and the baby were free due to age, which meant some lap-sitting was part and parcel of the process.  of course our seats were in the very center of the aisle, and my children managed to jostle, tread upon, become entangled in, and generally kick every last bodily appendage and accesory on the way to our seats.  as comfortable and roomy as our spots were (at least they had individual seats and backs), they were not very, errrrm, conducive to breast-feeding.  i'm confident the spectators behind me no longer needed to speculate about my cup-size after i attempted to console a rather tired and snotty baby h and latched him on.  the kindly, maternal, grandmother in front us made us feel exceedingly welcome by casting raised eye-brows and an ever-so loving "shhhh!" periodically throughout the performance.  nevermind the ear-splitting whistles, drunken whooping, and general cacaphony surrounding us.  my children, by acting like shrieking tyrannosaurases and pterodactyls (or some other menacing beasties) were only dutifully trying to follow the announcer's hint that "remember, lethbridge, the louder you cheer and holler, the more these bulls will throw these cowboys around - let's give the boys a chance to show ofs their skills!" his words, folks, not mine. who cares if  our kidlets stared in immediately after the previous din had already died down? sheesh.

each bullrider was properly introduced, including experience, age, hometown, etc., and we were instruced to give them "foreigners" a "warm, canadian welcome".  the oliver children began chanting "go canada, go canada, canada...canada...CANADA!" wildly as the subsequent american and australian riders were announced.  one name caught my attention for some reason i couldn't quite put my finger on.  the experienced mike moore, from chicago was up next...and then a close-up of his face, sans the wimpy protective head-gear i saw many of the younger cowboys clad in tonight flooded the monitor near us. "he looks SO familiar," i thought.  a millisecond later i knew why.

my freshman year of college was spent at the university of wyoming, a school known for partying, cowbell, an obsessive rivalry with byu (my graduating alma-mater),,  yellow and brown body-paint, rowdiness and bullriders or wannabes.  if i had a dime for every ranch-wear shod guy or gal i saw promenading around campus back in '94-'95...my roommate and i were the best of friends but polar opposites.  i grooved to g-love & special sauce, blind melon, dave mathews band, live, smashing pumpkins, etc.  she was in love with george strait, faith hill (bed of roses, baby!), reba, garth brooks, etc.  shockingly, we both dressed the part.  she had big hair, tight pants, ropers, and sparkly eye-shadow.  my hair, long and already naturally curly, approached dredlocks of its own accord most days.  i favored long flowing skirts with jingling bells attached, and applied mascara only when going to a "gig".  i was quite reticent around guys at this point, being only 17 years old and actually quite shy when it came to anything approaching flirting.  my fellow tie-dyed deadheads often tried to get me to play hackey-sack with them in the mall between classes, but they intimidated me by calling me "the girl with the long red hair".  so, we hung out with the boys on our floor -freshmen like us - and their friends.  they were nearly all cowboys and native wyoming specimen- and all in love with my roomie the skinny cowgirl with julia robertsesque lips. one dude, whom we thought was particularly cool, was mike moore from chicago.  he seemed a bit of a paradox to us because he was from the big city, black, and also a bullrider.  he also lived off-campus in his own trailer and was almost 25 years old back in '95, which made him both ultra-awesome and slightly intimidating because he was so, you know, OLD.

imagine my surprise, delight, and strange feeling of pride when his name was called tonight and i recognized his mug up on the big screen.  i actually exclaimed to the guy sitting next to me, who had already been toed in the elbow by my squirmy, nursing 7 month-old, "hey, i know him, i KNOW him!" he mumbled something like "great" and proceeded to ask me a question about the scoring which i knew nothing about but pretended to be well-versed in.  he was obviously trying to actually watch mike ride instead of bask in the glow of sitting next to the girl who knew him.  so i stage-whispered it to my husband, on the other end of our small team of children.  he didn't believe me and said so with his furry little eyebrows, so i blurted: "look, i have a picture of him in my dorm room at home - i'll show it to you." somehow that does not sound as innocent as it was.  and now i'm recalling the sign my molly roomie had above her bed (which also served as a couch for visitors, of course) that she had "borrowed" from a local diner, which happened to be the backdrop for said pictue of me and cowboy mike. it read: three or more please.