Head banging

When you are married to a jeweler, you get lots of jewelry for presents. It is great. No wait, it rocks! (No pun intended.) Husband has realized, that what also rocks, is taking your wife to a fabulous concert for her birthday. Huge rush. Wonderful feeling. We rocked!

Husband bought tickets to see Coldplay in Chicago at the United Center. Des Moines is too small for them to come here, and even though we think everyone should know who they are, many people don't. They would of course be living under a ROCK! In his quest to surprise me, he had to find a location that would be drivable distance, a place where we could find childcare for the two babies (one that is still on the breast) and then somewhere for us to rest our heads. We wouldn't have been able to afford the tickets plus a hotel. Chicago won, and it worked out great because we got to see family while we were there.

So if I couldn't have been more excited than when the new Coldplay album dropped on June17th, and I had been listening to the album on through some Internet website that had a release the week before...nothing could have prepared me for the moment I figured out that Husband was in deed bidding on tickets for another Coldplay concert! He took me for my birthday, the week after he proposed in September 2005, and it was by far the best birthday present in my history. Every piece of jewelry has always come with the "It still isn't as good as Coldplay," and I would try to convey to him how much I totally loved the piece of jewelry, but it could not compare to a Coldplay concert because it wasn't Coldplay. It was comparing apples to oranges.

(If no one understands my extreme enthusiasm for this band, let me liken it to the crazy wigs who wait outside of Barnes & Noble when a new Harry Potter book was released. Now of course I am not going to dress like Chris Martin, nor will I get a tattoo on my hand like Chris Martin, nor will I name my daughter Apple Martin, but I do love this group and I have been following them since Thanksgiving of 2000.)

Husband and I were like crazy teenagers driving in to a "questionable" part of Chicago to see one of our favorite bands perform and we had tickets on the floor in row 13. I couldn't have been more excited! The ticket said that the show started at 7:30, and we were so worried about not being there in time with the traffic and the parking, and then waiting in line for our tickets at will call. When we got into the stadium, very few people were sitting in their seats, and even fewer people were actually in the stadium! We were so excited we could hardly contain ourselves. It was very difficult for two parents of a 17 month old and an almost 4 month old who were not jailbirds from the confines of parenthood to contain their excitement. We waited.

We sat through a strange techno performance and then a terrible opening act, watching the clock to count down the minutes until they were scheduled to come on. We waited while people stepped over our seats, drenched in smoke, carrying cups of beer to their seats and then back up again for another round of beer that probably cost $10 per cup. We had been warned about this "questionable" neighborhood in Chicago, in fact our relatives had put the fear of the ghetto in our bodies, so we weren't talking to each other, and barely looking at anything except the stage waiting for any trace of a band member taking those first steps out to perform our favorite songs.

When they came out, I started to scream and yell and clap my hands for the first time out of 10,000 claps. The stadium was dark, and then the notes for the first song rang out, and I had goose bumps all over and shivers up and down my spine. I looked at husband and he was also screaming and excited. The tickets were worth every penny, and the show was amazing. They played all of my favorite songs, and they are such a good live performance, I couldn't come down off of this musical high. I felt 10 years younger, rocking out in my own little section of the stadium that was very well paid for and belted out the words to each song, stomping my feet and waving my arms in the air. The ear plugs we had used on the opening band were stuffed deep into my pockets, and I soaked in every beat and every melody they performed for me.

This present will be a hard act for husband to beat anytime in the near future. He will just have to wait until the next album release and the next tour. By that time our babies will have grown, and we will (most likely) have the funds to see them wherever we want. Let's just hope they keep on writing music and sending it out to us. Truly a great band, and I might as well just commit and say, my favorite.