Today was the annual Round Barn Jubilee. All in all, it was a fun day, although the weather was uncooperative; the humidity level was over 80%, the temperature was over 80 degrees, and the wind was rather strong. Also, given the heavy rains we've had, the ground was pretty waterlogged. But despite that, there were some interesting things going on.
First, I had to participate in the spelling bee, thanks to my mother's insistence. I have a poor track record with spelling bees; while I went to the regional spelling bee in both sixth and eighth grades, I went out without placing (the first time on 'duchy', the second time on 'politicize'). Even worse, at the state FBLA convention, I went out unexpectedly early on 'glimpse', which I spelled 'glimpce' because I was going too fast and misspoke. So I was hoping to redeem myself, and failed -- I came in 4th (which sounds good, until you find out there were 5 participants). And the word I misspelled was 'tumultuous'!! Which is a classic romance novel-type word. Ugh. I spelled it 'tumultous' because I second-guessed myself in mid-spell. I lost to my Uncle Mark (3rd), an elderly woman from town (2nd), and some out-of-towner (1st) whose daughter participated in the kids' spelling bee earlier. The daughter didn't do so well, but my cousin Andrew came in 2nd in the kids' division, so congrats to him.
They had the spelling bee partially to feature/make use of the one-room country schoolhouse on the site. In the Round Barn itself, they had a quilt show, and there were some v. lovely quilts; my favorite one looked like a modern stained glass window, and I'll post a picture of it when I upload the pics from my camera. And in the old church that they've moved to the site, they had a choir sing (I skipped that to play a little Wii with Andrew), as well as a guy who sings Civil War-era songs. I saw part of his performance; he would tell *extremely* corny jokes, little vignettes about the Civil War, and play songs while accompanying himself with either the guitar or the banjo. He was quite good, and it was nice to listen to him, particularly since I abandoned my fascination for the Civil War a long time ago to move on to an obsession with WWII -- just to give you a hint of how bad my fascination was, in sixth grade I read some 700-page book about the Civil War, and made a Civil War boardgame, and went obsessively overboard with the 'Civil War Journal' project in my sixth-grade English class (I found the journal while I was packing my stuff to move to the new house, and saved it so my kids can copy it someday). All of this should explain why my early adolescent years were heavy on ridicule and short on friends.
Anyway, moving on, I went into town for supper (another part of the Round Barn Jubilee) and had a smoked pork sandwich, baked beans, and potato salad at the Centennial Building. I sat with my parents and two other entertaining people -- Ralph and Shirley. Ralph is what we would call a 'character', or alternatively a 'hoot', and could also be characterized as 'ornery'. Yes, I've reverted to southern Iowa slang.
Ralph took it upon himself to try to give me a life lesson over supper. His general sentiment was that men are downtrodden by their wives and that wives get even more domineering as they get older -- and yet simultaneously he was encouraging me to find a way to trap a husband. He asked my mom how she had trapped my father, and when she replied that he had been chasing her for nine months before she gave in, he thought this was a perfect example of playing hard-to-get. Then he told about his son, who worked for a mechanic while going to college, and how it took several months for him to catch on to the hints of some girl who kept bringing in her car for service. Ralph described the moment that the son asked her out on a date as his 'downfall', and that their subsequent marriage led directly to the son having to sell the Corvette he had bought himself as a reward for making it home from Vietnam. So I'm not sure what to take from this other than to play hard-to-get until I've trapped a guy well enough that I can then ruin his life -- sounds like a plan to me!
I had no desire to watch the musical entertainment (an old-time country band), so I came home, checked out my schedule for the next couple of months, and played some Wii. Now I should really go to bed -- I need to start working on the second draft of my book soon, especially since I now have less than two months before I have to go back to work :( Goodnight!
No comments:
Post a Comment