saraewood.com

My kids are relatively well-behaved on planes. They don’t so much as drop a raisin without picking it up. They don’t spill their juice. They don’t scream and cry. They basically sit and either color in coloring books or watch Diego on the portable dvd player. So why do I have to listen to assholes complain about kids on planes every time I fly? That includes at least 2 flight attendants on the last flight. Are people generally misanthropes? Because I agree, people do suck.

Some people just don’t like children, or, more specifically, don’t like sitting near them on planes. They like to complain about them loudly so that the poor parent has to hear their pathetic muttering. If you are one of those, I have news for you, you suck worse.

A parent, having just had to deal with transporting luggage for three persons with no extra hands but needing to hold the hands of two small ones, ticketing counters, security checkpoints (all staffed by seeming misanthropes) where backpacks are rifled through, dvd players taken out, tiny shoes taken off and put back on, hurrying through crowded terminals with slow walkers (or carrying one, 3 backpacks and holding the hand of the other), much less trying to take a bathroom pit stop with two kids running in different directions (including unlocking the stall door and running out through the terminal), does not need to hear you snort loudly or glare over your newspaper every time the kids gets excited at the sight of a blue airplane (wook mama, bue airpame!) on the tarmac or the fact that the seat belt sign just lit up. God forbid something happens to make the kid CRY.

Just because I have two of them doesn’t mean I enjoy the sound of small kids whining, crying and screaming either. But your snide remarks and evil glares don’t encourage me to do anything about it. You are more insufferable than they are because you, presumably, can control your behavior. Kids are people too, last I checked, and if you don’t like people, stay off airplanes. Jerk.

I had the good fortune to be invited to my fabulous and glamorous friend Silvia’s twenty-fifth (plus or minus) birthday which took place in Wapiti, Wyoming on the uXu Ranch. The ranch, run by a friendly cowboy named Tuff, his father Curly, daughter Tara and a couple of nice cowboys Matthew and Jon, is on the eastern entrance of Yellowstone National Park.

Ten of us went for a weekend of horseback riding, shooting guns, fly fishing - but mostly sitting around in a gorgeous place drinking and gossiping and talking about how fabulous and glamorous our friend Silvia is. Oh, and there was that one night of drunken charades by the bonfire - which I think scared our cowhands a bit.

And despite my cabin - the Moonlight - having two mice smushed dead in traps, the place was exceptionally nice for a rustic dude ranch on the eastern entrance to Yellowstone.

My horse, Kilowatt, lugged me around those mountains for three days without a wimper. And every few minutes we’d hear our city-slicker birthday girl refer to her stirrups as pedals or foot rests and her horse alternately as a cat, dog, friend or airplane (as in “when I got off the plane today”).

For the record - for those naysayers - people there really DO wear cowboy hats, belts and boots. And now, so do my kids… (but THIS is what Caleb and Tobias were up to while I was gone).

See the photographic evidence of our attempts to ride a horse here or here (gisela’s flickr) (or slideshow here).

• Sara’s photos: Wyoming
• Gisela’s photos: Wild Wild West