Monday, June 29, 2009

But the Concert was GREAT......

Okay, so I suppose you're wondering what these four images have in common. Well, let me tell ya! A couple of weeks ago, Mark and I had a belated 15th Anniversary trip planned. We had tickets to the Keith Urban/Sugarland concert in Memphis. With much anticipation and excitement, we ventured on our trip on a Friday afternoon. Kids were in place at grandparent's house, work was wrapped up for the weekend with Mark, the dog was at a friend's house, and we were foot-loose and fancy-free!!!! UNTIL.....

We head to Memphis and get there in plenty of time to get our hotel room before the concert, planning to relax a few minutes, freshen up a tad, and head out for supper beforehand. That was before the TORNADO hit, of course!! That's right - 5 minutes into entering our hotel room, the sirens were going off, along with the electricity, and we were sittin' in the tub in our room (not before the "Einstein" hotel host who barely spoke English offered to let us sit in the lobby for safety - WHAT?!). Anyway, we stayed safe (no thanks to the guy behind the counter), and the storm blew over. So, in the dark, we gather our things and head out for the concert, still in high hopes that it is all a "go". Trees were down, traffic lights were out, and it was a mess! We made it to the concert in time, and the forum had electricity! Things are looking up. We didn't have time to eat supper on the way, so we were stuck eating a $26 supper at the concert which consisted of 3 tiny chicken strips, a few fries, and a coke without a lid because they only have lids for the $5 drinks, not the $3 ones.......After a pretty long wait, because we thought the concert started at 7 instead of 7:30, the concert began. Our new motto in life now, by the way, is "But the concert was great!!!" (thus the title of the post, because the story doesn't end here.....)

During the concert (which was great, by the way), Mark had to go to the bathroom for a routine visit. When he returned, he was quite pale, and his eyes were as big as yo-yos. Among the cheers of the crowd and the music from the concert, I heard him say/read his lips to say that he thinks he had passed a kidney stone!!!!!! What?! I didn't even know he had one - neither did he, obviously!!! Anyway, all was well after a while, and the concert trecked on.....

The concert (awesome) lasted until about 11:30 and off we went. As we headed back to our hotel exit, we noticed that the electricity was back on. EXCEPT for our exit, of course! That's right - still no electricity in our hotel and it was HOT!!! So, we enter the lobby and the guy (that helped us so much earlier) popped up (literally) from behind the counter and about scared us to death! He said (I think) that they didn't know when the lights would be back on, but we were welcome to sleep with our window open. What?! No thanks - we're in Memphis. We decided we needed to leave, and without the offer of a flashlight, used our cell phone lights to feel our way down the hall, gather our things, and get out! We were not able to receive a refund - the computer was out, of course. We would deal with that tomorrow..... We headed to the Wolfchase area and paid WAY too much for a second hotel room, but were just glad to be somewhere with lights and air conditioning!!! The rest of the night (what was left of it) went well and we slept great (much like the concert, remember).

***I know this is long, but if you've made it this far, please continue!!! It's worth it!!***

The next morning, we had a full day of kid-free shopping planned. HOWEVER, when I woke up, my stomach just didn't feel quite right......I ignored it (sort of) and we went down the hall to eat breakfast. I still wasn't just feeling great, but we loaded up anyway. We hit a couple of stores, but the fact that my stomach felt like the tornado from the previous day had taken up shop in there kind of kept me from really getting into it. We head to Target to "look around" and I eventually ended up sitting on the bench in the front of the store, people-watching, trying to hang onto what I had eaten for breakfast. I called Mark in the store on my cell phone, told him to take his time, I was in the front, but sitting down. He soon showed up (kind of puts a damper on your time to browse when you know your wife is sitting on a bench, just moments away from decorating the floor and causing a scene)...Well, I did NOT decorate the floor, thank you very much, I at least waited until I got to the grassy knoll in the parking lot outside. That's enough of that part....I'll leave the rest up to your imagination.

We had to leave. That's all there was to it. No more shopping for this chick! So, we trek to Mississippi to my parents' house. We had been defeated. It was over. We get to their house, I popped a Dramamine, and I slept for almost 7 hours!!!! I woke up, still not feeling great (like the concert), but some better. HOWEVER, Parker was running a fever. What?! After much deliberation, we decided (at about 9:00 that night ) that we had to get out of Dodge! We didn't want to get my parents sick (they did not sign up for that), and I think we just wanted to be at our own house, in our own beds, with our own toilets (if you know what I mean). So, that's what we did. We made it home safely, all slept until almost 11:00 the next morning, and were all as good as new. Phew!!! I know that was long, but oh, so true!

I will say this, all joking aside, we were very thankful that we were able to take the trip in the first place, didn't get blown away by the tornado, drove safely wherever we went that weekend, that noone else got whatever "bug" I had, and that the concert was GREAT!!!!

4 comments:

Arika said...

I'm glad you were not blown away! And glad that amongst all the mishaps you were still able to enjoy a GREAT concert. Is it a little weird that even with all that happened to you guys I'm still a little jealous that I didn't get to see the concert? :)

Wendi said...

WOW!! At least the concert was great!!! LOL!!! And you were together making hilarious memories:):)

Sandy said...

Glad you are feeling better and that the tornado did not get you! And I'm glad the concert was GREAT!!

Sasha said...

Wow!! Talk about eventful! Your anniversary mishaps definitely top mine and Jared's!

I'm glad you all are feeling better and that you enjoyed the concert!