Lisa Carnley is managing editor of the Lampasas Dispatch Record. Thank goodness another stock show weekend is over.

While I appreciate and acknowledge the hard work and dedication that goes into the annual Lampasas County Youth Livestock Show by exhibitors, parents, board members and volunteers, I dread the event.

Each year several of us at the newspaper have to take a shift to snap photographs of the stock show winners in various divisions. I’ve been doing it for a number of years, and I don’t like it any more now than I did my first year. In fact, I think I like it less because I know ahead of time what’s coming up.

I’m a city girl. I didn’t grow up around farm animals. I don’t like the smells or the noises, and I don’t like having to scrape the bottom of my shoes.

My shift is usually when the pigs (or market hogs, to be more precise) are in the show ring.

To get the required photos, I have to kneel on the sand-covered ground in the picture-taking area to be eye-level with the beast, because the only way to get a photo of a pig is to try to entice it to stand still by shoving a trough full of food or a bucket of water under its nose.

And after I stand up, my knees are usually covered with ... well ... you know.

If you look around, you can see dozens of people with knees covered in the stuff, and I seem to be the only one bothered by it.

The bleachers are filled with parents, grandparents, siblings and friends of exhibitors. They spend an entire day at the show barn watching the event and rooting for their favorites.

But how anyone can sit in the arena and eat a sausage wrap while the pigs are in the show ring is beyond me. That kills my appetite for the entire day.

The first few years after my shift ended, I would go home to bathe and change clothes. But over the past few years, I’ve gotten to where I just don’t care anymore. If my coworkers don’t like the smell of me, they can go to the other end of the building. It’s not worth the effort to go home and completely change clothes for a couple more hours of work. If I can (and have to) live with it, so can they. It’s not like I’m going to spoil my own appetite.

I know. I’m being selfish. I should go home and change. But I won’t.

Also piling insult to injury this year is the fact that my shift fell on one of the coldest stock show Fridays in decades. And that’s the truth. I know it is because I have been covering the shows for several decades. And this one was definitely the coldest.

I wore a heavy sweater and a pair of boots, but nothing could cut the cold. The barn doors are always open. Yes, most of the kids were raised in a barn (or near one, rather), and it just didn’t seem to bother them.

But me? I suffer in the cold. So it was a double-whammy. Not only did I smell like a pig, I froze my hamhocks off in the 12-degree arctic weather that one doesn’t expect in Texas.

Here it is a few weeks after the event, and I don’t believe I’ve warmed up or been able to wash away the smells yet.

The one bright spot is that it will be another year before I have to do it again.

Maybe next year I can con someone else into taking the photos. Or I could call in sick and say I’ve got the swine flu. That might be stretching the truth just a little, but working with the pigs does make me feel ill.