Yearly Archives for 2012

I’m going to New York City for a blogging conference in August. I’ve been practicing saying that in the mirror like it’s NBD and super normal, but it still comes out all high-pitched and twitchy.

It’s not that I’m really nervous… Well, that’s not totally true. OK, yes, it’s exactly that I’m really super nervous. I’m utterly terrified for about 84 different reasons. Starting with:

1.    I’ve never been to New York. I actually don’t really travel much at all, and certainly not often without a large support system and someone else in charge. Luckily, my mother has decided to join me on this pilgrimage to the Mecca of blogging conferences, BlogHer. I’m pretty sure she’s coming 25% because she thinks the conference will be interesting, 50% because she just wants an excuse to go to New York and 25% because she’s afraid if I go alone I will get killed or lost or join a cult.

One summer in college I decided randomly to apply to be a camp counselor in Maine as my summer job. I got the job as a swim counselor, but the closer it got to the time I needed to leave, the more I realized I’m not that girl. I don’t just pick up and leave everyone I know to go have an adventure by myself for 8 weeks. I like my people and my state and I’m kind of afraid of swimming in lakes. Of course by the time I realized what a terrible idea this was it was way too late to back out. I cried for 24 hours before leaving and the entire plane ride to Maine. I was 21. You could probably say I’m slightly sheltered.

Yes, I’m going to be a 34 year old mother of three who brings her mommy with her to a professional conference because she didn’t want to go alone.

2.    I don’t actually know any other bloggers who are going. According to Twitter, various message boards and a Facebook page dedicated to people who are going to BlogHer12, everyone who is going has at least eight best friends who are also going and they’re all going to hang out together and probably shoot spitballs at the back of my head when I’m not looking. Or at the very least make fun of me for bringing my mommy with me.

3.    One of my goals for this conference is to promote this blog so that more than 10 or 12 people will actually read it. Bloggers are also usually hardcore blog readers, so if I could just get my little bloggypants blog here noticed, maybe, just maybe, I could propel my traffic up a level or two. Of course the plan for this to work will involve talking to people I don’t know. And not just one girl who looks friendly and also lonely and then calling it a day. I’m going to have to network my butt off. Or maybe I could just tattoo my web address on my chest and walk around topless. Might be easier and less stressful. Hmm…

4.    Another of my goals is to obtain sponsors or ads for my other blog, Wine and a Spoon. That shouldn’t be difficult at all, right? “Hi, you work for Kitchenaid? Would you like to advertise on my blog? I often write about how my children are repulsed by my cooking, which will totally help you sell cooking products. Swear. You’re probably going to want to write me a check now.”

5.    There are apparently private parties like all the time during this conference you have to get special invites to. I don’t even know what happens at these parties or what I’d do since I don’t know anyone and will be with my mother, but just the knowledge that there’s a party I’m not invited to is making me feel sad and inferior. This is a quick trip down a short flight of stairs to, “My blog is terrible and unpopular and no one will like it and my hair is limp and my thighs touch when my feet aren’t even all the way together and I’m not funny and no one will like me and I should just stay home.”

6.    I’m not even sure if this is where I should be. Is this my kind of conference? What if they’re all those ‘product review’ bloggers or they all believe in Jesus and attachment parenting and I just don’t fit in at all? Or what if the ‘My Blog as a Book Proposal’ seminar is just 3 hours of a publishing house editor standing at the front of the room laughing her ass off and saying things like, “You think you can get a book deal by blogging about how the police were called on you for leaving your kids in the car while you’re in Target? Do you know how many people want a book deal? 99.8% of the population does, it’s a statistical fact! I can’t get a book deal and I work for a publishing company! Three people read your blog! Do sparkly red unicorns exist in your universe, too? Is that your mom sitting next to you?” Then I’ll have gone all the way to New York for nothing.

7.    My husband was super gung-ho and supportive of me going to this conference until literally 5 minutes after I booked my plane flight and bought my ticket. Then he said, “So wait, how long are you going to be gone? And who will watch the kids, because I’m not going to have any days off by then what with family vacay and my sister’s wedding…”

So… yeah. I’m going to a blogging conference in New York City in August. I’m super excited and it’s going to be real real fun! (How did that sound? Better? I’m gonna keep practicing.)

I’m babysitting my nephew, Colby, today. He’s my sister’s kid and today when I collected him from his dad I was struck by just how much he looks like my sister did when she was this age. Like I remember her looking like this (except with crooked pigtails and a dent in her forehead from where she used to run into walls):

Colby is a super mellow and an easy kid. My sister is pregnant with her second right now and I’m not sure she comprehends the level of chaos that is about to descend upon her house. Because you know; everyone gets an equal amount of devil in their children. The less Colby has, the more baby #2 is bound to encapsulate. It’s just the natural order of the universe.

Colby does have one slightly messy and obnoxious trait. It’s not anything bad enough that I’d want to trade him in or anything (Jonas has at least four of those), but it’s not ideal in public situations. Colby does not decide that he’s full, or no longer thirsty until he actually has food or drink in his mouth. So you can be feeding him mac and cheese for lunch and he will continue to open his mouth like a little bird and accept food until he abruptly decides he will not swallow one single more bite of food, at which time he will open his mouth back up and let food fall out of it. He also does this with his drinks. Today at Paradise Bakery for lunch he took a big drink of water from his sippy cup, swished it around, determined he was no longer thirsty and opened his mouth to let the cloudy water splash down his front and on to the floor. *SIGH*

He’s a fun little bugger, though. The first time I had him at my house without his parents I set him on the floor in the living room with a basket of age-appropriate toys and stepped the 20 feet to the fridge to put away his yogurt, leaving him unmonitored for 8.3 seconds. When I turned back around he had a AA battery in his mouth like a tootise roll.

I’m not sure why his parents let him come back, but I promise he hasn’t ingested anything toxic this time. Yet… I should go check on him.

*Edited to add this picture my dad just sent me of me and my sister so you know I’m not making it up. They could be twins:

Saturday Night at the Newlin House

Jason and I were making dinner. Jonas came downstairs, climbed up in his chair at the breakfast bar, grabbed the nearby bottle of olive oil and laid it on its side to watch the oil slosh back and forth.

Jason - Jonas! Don’t tip that bottle like that! Your mom doesn’t always put lids on very tight and it might spill!

Jonas set the bottle upright.

Me – Wait, what? ‘Your mom’ doesn’t put lids on tight? Since when? And how is this my fault?

Jason – I didn’t say it was your fault…

Me – Uh, good try. You didn’t say ‘people don’t put lids on tight’ or even just ‘the lids aren’t tight enough to prevent spillage’. You called me out as a loose-lidder. Like I’m specifically the problem in this situation.

Jason – I’ve told you a million times I don’t think you put the tops on tight enough.

Me (eyebrows scraping the ceiling) – If by ‘a million times’ you mean ‘we’ve never once in the 10 years we’ve been married discussed any unhappiness you have with my lid attaching abilities and this is the very first I’ve heard of it’, then yes, a million times.

Jason – You watch me spill things all the time because I go to pick something up and you haven’t put the lid on tight enough.

Me – Number one, I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about. Number two, maybe if I didn’t put the cap on completely it was because I WASN’T FINISHED USING WHATEVER WAS OUT, and you were putting it away prematurely. Number three, the fact that as far as you’re concerned, my observing you spill something and sigh in irritation without making eye contact with me or actually saying any words, equates to us having a conversation where you’ve asked me a million times to put lids on more tightly is EXACTLY WHY being married to you has given me a permanent eye twitch.

Jason – I think you’re overreacting slightly.

Me – I am NOT overreacting!!! This is exactly the root of all of our communication problems!! Which is to say, all of the communicating from your side is going on inside your head!

Jonas – Mom, Gray put gum in my hair.

Jason and Me – WHAT?!

Three minutes later I was holding down a sobbing four year old while Jason carefully used creamy peanut butter to coax the wad of gum out of Jonas’s hair.

Jonas – I’M ALLERGIC TO PEANUTS!!! YOU CAN’T DO THIS!!

Jason – We’re not feeding it to you, just putting it in your hair to get out the gum. I’m not even touching your scalp.

Me – Jo, it’s this or shave your head. And if you hadn’t spit the gum at your brother, he wouldn’t have smashed it into your hair. You have no one to blame but yourself.

Jonas – I’M SCARED OF PEANUT BUTTER!!!

Me to Jason – I think we’ve done a good job making sure he’s careful about his nut allergy…

Jason – OK, I think I’ve got the gum out. I’m going to take him up and shower him.

Jason picked Jonas up and carried him up the stairs. I stood up from the couch to head back to the kitchen to finish making dinner and spotted the jar of peanut butter still sitting next to the couch. I reached down to grab it by the top and put it away. As I lifted the peanut butter by the lid, the jar came off and went bouncing across the carpet splattering peanut butter as it went.

Me – AUGH!!!! SEE! I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE IN THIS HOUSE WHO DOESN’T SCREW LIDS ON TIGHT ENOUGH!

Ten minutes later Jason and Jonas came down the stairs. Jonas was covered head-to-toe in hives.

Jason – Apparently he doesn’t have to ingest the peanuts for them to be a problem.

Jonas – I told you I was scared of the peanut butter.

Me – What we’ve learned here tonight is daddy is always wrong. And if you don’t want your parents to force an allergic reaction on you, you should keep gum in your mouth where it belongs.

I woke up this morning to a chorus of “TGIF!!!1″s on the twitter and immediately wanted to punch multiple people in the face. I spent my time in the shower brainstorming a post that was to be titled: 10 Reasons TGIF Does Not Apply to Realtors or Mothers. (I’ll boil it down for you: children’s birthday parties and 15 houses to show in Maricopa, are the big soul-sucking reasons.)

But then something amazing happened that changed my day.

Twice this week a little slip had appeared on my door about a package some company was trying to deliver. I had finally called them and let them know I would be home most of Friday morning so they could try again. The delivery-scheduling chick told me someone would appear between 8am and noon.

That was all well and good, except of course, for one tiny, 15 minute time-slot. Jonas’s Montessori drop-off time is 8:30am. I would be gone for exactly 15 minutes in that four hour window to shuttle him to school. I’m no mathematician, but odds should have been in my favor, right? Like he only had a one in 16 chance of showing up while I was gone (look at that, maybe I am a mathematician – suck it, mathy people!).

Ah, but I’m no dummy. I know how this goes. Just because lightening isn’t real likely to strike me, doesn’t mean I’m going to stand outside during a rainstorm waiving a golf club around. I left a note taped to my front door explaining that I would be gone briefly to drop off my kid and that if he was there while I was gone, the deliveryman was welcome to sign for me and drop the package at the door.

Well, of course the guy showed up exactly while I was gone. Fabulously, even though this sticker was on the top of the box:

apparently the dude either decided my note was written by a pathetically elderly and sober person and I was thus trustworthy or he was just as tired of playing ‘drop off the package’ tag as I was, because he totally left it at my door.

If that wasn’t amazing enough already, this is what I unearthed when I cut open the box:

Yep, I got a ‘wine and swine’ gift package from a past client. I’m not sure I could love anything more. Jonas is cute, but does he come in a box claiming ‘meat candy’ and 13% alcohol? I think not. I’m fairly certain this gift box is an excuse, nay, an obligation, to drink red wine with breakfast. I mean, right?

So feel free to TGIF away, people. You’ll avoid bodily harm by my hand, today. I’m too busy TGFWASing (thank god for wine and swine) to exact any revenge.

So much ridiculousness and so little time here at Real Estate Tangent. I’m just going to give you a few little snippets of my current insanity for today (feel free to assume I’m super busy with important real estate things and not obsessively watching every single episode of Interior Therapy with Jeff Lewis in sequential order and wishing Jeff was my best frenemy):

1.    I went to the Arizona Blogger Conference 2012 (or ABC12) this weekend. I found out about it on Twitter from one of the adorable (young) bloggers I’ve been following, Kara. I should have probably guessed that because she is an attractive, early 20s, style/lifestyle blogger and the other organizers of the event appeared equally so, most of the attendees would be too, but for some reason I was unprepared to be the old lady in a way too normal outfit. I mean, for chrissake, I didn’t even have a headdress. It was sort of humiliating. I should have worn my tennisy-running skirt with the pasta spoon attachment. Then at least I would have fit in a little better. Jeans and a dark grey sweater-top with ballet flats? What the hell was I thinking?

The conference was fun, though. There were amazing goodie bags, great speakers and even fun vendor tables to peruse. One vendor was a hair salon in Scottsdale. The hair ladies were doing samples of a new product for everyone at the event. The product was a sort of ‘hair shadow’ that produces a temporary colored streak effect. It’s basically a packed powder (like an eye shadow) you rub on a section of hair to get a pink, orange or purple streak that washes out. Everyone at the conference was walking around with awesome hair streaks.

Of course I was in love with this product. I’ve always wanted to go super edgy and get like a sleeve tattoo or my eyebrow pierced or dye my hair navy blue or something, but I’ve never felt quite committed enough. I just sort of want to try on a full sleeve tattoo and see if I can pull it off. Can’t I just see if I like it for awhile? No?

Because I’m a total wannabe and I loved how the purple streak was subtle, but awesome in my dark hair, I bought a container of this stuff.

The morning after the conference, Jason, the kids and I got up early to make the two hour drive to Tucson to have brunch with the kids’ Grandma Linda, who was in town for a wedding. The plan was to hang out with Grandma Linda for awhile, drive back to Mesa and have family dinner at my parents’ house for my brother-in-law’s birthday. I was wearing a scarf with a little bit of purple in it and I wanted to show my sister this hair stuff I bought (and let’s face it, I’m an eight year old who got something new and wants to wear it RIGHT NOW), so I put a purple streak in my hair before we left.

Two hours later, we got down to Tucson, walked in to the lobby of a nice hotel and spotted Grandma Linda with a group of her cousins also in town for the wedding. The Newlin family trooped over and was greeted warmly and introduced all around. After introductions, Linda leaned in to hug me and say hello, and pressed her cheek against the side of my head in a friendly southern hug (she’s from Dallas).

As Linda pulled away and smiled at me, I realized, with horror that my obnoxious purple hair streak had transferred directly to the side of her lovely face. I kid you not, it looked like this:

I was faced with no choice but to explain to her and the rest of the group of 50-65 year old women I’d met 13 seconds earlier why my hair had just rubbed off on her face.

Please don’t let me pierce anything. Things would inevitably get embarrassing AND dangerous.

2.    When we were finally on our way home last night after being out for most of the day, Jonas announced fairly urgently he had to go pee. We were only about three miles from home and he’s four and a half years old, well past the potty-training stage, so we told him to hold it and we’d be home in just a second.

This resulted in a fairly passionate second attempt on his part to get us to… stop on the side of the road, I guess? But we really were just so close, and we figured he was being tired and dramatic, so we renewed our assertions that he cross his legs and think of something else for 45 seconds and we’d be home.

We should have known there was a problem when he quieted right down, but we are stupid, stupid parents. We really had hope that for once, he’d just decided to stop arguing and do what he was told. It’s like we’ve never even met Jonas.

No, he just decided then and there he was going to pee himself, his car seat and the seat underneath and that was that. He didn’t bother to announce it, and he didn’t sob with remorse or embarrassment like other children might. He quietly, calculatingly, spitefully relieved himself all over the inside of the GOV and got out like nothing had happened. It wasn’t until Gray touched Jonas’s car seat while getting out that anyone was alerted to the disgusting mess.

I know Jonas thought for a minute there that he had us by the balls. We’d made him live in discomfort for 78 seconds longer than he wanted to, so he was going to punish us but good. The kid’s smart enough to know I would have to clean up his urine-soaked chair and that I wasn’t going to enjoy it. I’m pretty sure he regrets it now, though. It’s only been about 15 hours since the incident, but I think the fact that I’ve answered every question he’s asked me for the last 15 hours with, “NO YOU CANNOT BECAUSE YOU PEED IN THE CAR AND I HAD TO CLEAN IT UP,” has already gotten a little old. And you can believe I’m going to continue answering in that manner until he’s an adult and buys his own car and I’m an old lady with a weak bladder and we go on a road trip together and I drink 5 Snapples in a row (because I’m sure by that point Diet Coke will have been outlawed as toxic for human consumption) and ‘just can’t hold it to the next rest stop’. Then we’ll be even and I’ll forgive him.

3.    I was emailing today with a friend who’s frustrated with her boyfriend. He’s a certain type of man I am quite familiar with because I’m married to one. I kind of want to write a book on marriage and communication and call it, Tell Me I’m Pretty Right Now and Make Me Believe It. But the problem is I’d have to tell the story about how I dumped a pitcher of cold water on my husband one time while he was sleeping as a method of communication and as soon as people read that one I’d probably lose my credibility in the self-help industry. So I guess I won’t.

Yesterday I showed a house that was listed For Sale By Owner. In the biz we call that a ‘fizz-bow’(FSBO) because we are so very fond of our acronyms and have basically all decided if we just universally adopt our own language with enough confidence people will stop laughing at us. Once I even decided just to make some up and see if anyone called me on it.

Me: Listen, I need you to get me the AQH for this deal. The buyer is using FMO financing, so it’s really important that we get this done FTSB.

The agent I was on the phone with was too intimidated to ask about the first two, but I think by the last one she was starting to get suspicious.

Cross Agent: What does FTSB stand for?

Me: *SIGH indicating rookieness of my competition* Faster Than a Speeding Bullet, obviously.

Cross Agent: Oh, right. I haven’t had my coffee yet today. I knew that.

The key to being a really stellar real estate agent is never letting on you don’t have a clue what’s going on around you.

But I digress.

I have a new client who’s looking for a house in one of the older neighborhoods right around ASU. Because our market is already dry as a bone and additionally the subject area is really limited, we’ve taken to calling FSBOs to see if they’d be willing to work with a buyer’s agent. I say ‘we’ like it was my idea, but actually, my client sent me a picture of the for sale sign she saw while out driving around and wanted to know if I could set up an appointment to view it. Of course I told her I would, but I have to confess, FSBOs make me itch. They’ve already announced by the sign in the yard, I don’t need your help. Your job is pretty pointless. I can do it by self. (That last sentence is what I regularly told my parents when I was two or three because I was a willful and obnoxious child. Apparently I have no one to blame for Jonas but myself.)

But desperate times call for desperate measures, so I called up the number on the FSBO sign and introduced myself as an agent with a potential buyer.

The first conversation with the FSBO seller had its pros and cons.

Pro – She was willing to pay a buyer’s agent.

Con – She was not willing to let us see the property any time in the next week. She had taxes to do and no time at all to clean up until at least next week. She was evasive about even when she could let us in at all.

Pro – She was friendly and had lots of information about the house.

Con – She mentioned ‘feral cats’ she feeds several times, while wondering if my potential buyers would potentially be willing to continue feeding them if they purchased the house. Yes, kindly seller, I’m sure my buyers, who haven’t even seen your house, much less the monsters themselves, would be willing to swear they will keep alive the homeless, probably disease/kitten/yowley voice bearing cats you currently lay claim to. Can we please come see the house now? PLEASE?

When we finally got around to agreeing on a specific day and time to view the property, I was expecting a crazy scene. She’d told me more than once that things were ‘cluttered’, which, in Realtor-speak translates to ‘a hoarder lives here’. Plus, over the three times I spoke with her, she was increasingly difficult to get off the phone with. The last time I had to actually pull a sitcomy “Oh, my other line is ringing, I need to go!” to get her to stop talking. It was either that or “You’re breaking up! *Crumbling paper into the receiver*”.

I warned my clients of the possible atrocities we might witness. The house could be a biohazard site. It was probably riddled with termites. She might have 88 cats. There could even be a zombie infestation. You can never tell. We designated a code phrase that meant ‘Let’s get the eff out of here NOW.’ I wanted to use ‘pineapple’ but my clients thought it might be hard to bring up in conversation. We ended up with ‘interest rates’, which I thought was boring, but hey, I’m not the client. That’s the benefit of working with me; you get to pick the code phrases.

So you can imagine our shock when we entered an immaculate, completely uninfested by termites or zombies, almost adorable home on Sunday afternoon. It was actually sort of anticlimactic. We didn’t even get to meet the feral cats or use the code phrase.

We were, however, introduced to a mommy, daddy and baby pigeon who had nested in the back patio eves. The seller (an elderly Asian woman) had filled the rest of the eves with Kleenex boxes, pigeon spikes and tacked up newspapers to deter other pigeons from following suit, but explained that this little family was smart and had knocked the boxes out of the area and made a nest before she could replace them. She was left with no other choice but to house the poor dears and work harder at keeping others away.

It was after this story I figured out the seller on this house. She wasn’t completely insane. She was just attached, in an arguably over-the-top manner, to living creatures, small or large, feral or rodent of the sky. It was actually sort of sweet. She was doing her best to keep the porch clear of the inevitable pigeon waste. She had plastic sheeting down underneath the nest that she proclaimed to change regularly. She just couldn’t bring herself to evict the damn birds. And while I was peeking at the youngster in the nest from the dining room window, it was hard to blame her.

So, of course, I had to make up for the lack of drama in the FSBO cat-lady house in the next home. It’s my responsibility, as the agent, to keep things exciting.

The next house was a 1950’s ranch home with an almost entirely original interior. The listing agent had explained it included a key-activated alarm system I was to ‘unlock’ before entering and then relock upon leaving. He did not, however, warn me not to push the button above one of the light switches in the living room that looked like a doorbell. In hindsight, I’m probably lucky that it was just a panic button that set off an alarm on the exterior of the house and caused half the neighborhood to come running to see what was wrong. It could have been some kind of electrocution button meant to exterminate dummies who push things just to see what they do. Or it could have been the button to drop the bomb on Russia the President has in all those 80s movies.

In summary, the lessons of the week are:

1.    Don’t judge old ladies who like to chat your ear off as hoarders without meeting them. They may just be sweet, neat and tidy animal lovers.

2.    IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT A BUTTON WILL TRIGGER, DON’T PUSH IT. I had to shout that one because some of us are apparently five year olds. ->Me<-

I have two half written posts about a ballet class I took this week, but I just can’t get out whatever it is I’m trying to say. I think the sentiment is too genuine. I’m much better with sarcasm and irony.

So instead, want to hear about the rap concert Jason and I went to Wednesday night? You bet your sweet patootie, you do.

Way back in December while frantically searching for the perfect Christmas gift I bought Jason tickets to see the black guy from Community in concert (it’s not racist to identify him as such if he’s literally the only black guy on the show, right? I mean I could have said I bought him tickets to see Troy on Community in concert, but even if you’d seen the show like 5 times you’d say, ‘Which one is he? The arrogant main guy, the guy with Asperger’s, Chevy Chase as a sad, old man, or the black guy?’ He’s hilarious on the show, but a little side-kickish).

And because Jason likes it when I get all stressed out and yell at him for leaving things until the last minute he informed me three days before the concert he wanted me to attend with him. I know it sounds like a nice thing that he wanted me to come, but since it involved finding a last minute sitter on a school night plus being out in public after 8pm listening to rap music, it was obviously his passive-aggressive way of punishing me for regularly dirtying every pan in the house when I cook dinner.

Once I secured a sitter for the night, my biggest dilemma was what to wear. As the last hiphop/rap concert I attended was the Boys 2 Men show my BFF dragged me to when I was 14 and she was dating the token white guy in an R&B church group, I was at a loss for appropriate attire. I polled my friends and got the following suggestions:

Lots of eyeliner
A hoodie over an Ed Hardy shirt
Overalls, because Eminem wears them
Prominently displayed boobs

It seemed like a low-cut Ed Hardy shirt under overalls with a hoodie and a smoky eye was a lot of look for me to pull off, so I headed to Forever21 to find something appropriate. If you haven’t been to Forever21, it’s sort of like the Disneyland of cheap, trashy clothing. But instead of Frontierland and Tomorrowland, it’s zoned into areas like ‘Ironic Native American Clothing’, ‘Ironic 1980s Madonna-esque Outfits’ and ‘Things We Imagine People Wear in England’. Disappointingly, there was no obvious section for ‘30-Somethings Going to a Rap Concert in Scottsdale’. I tried on 80 different things and finally settled on a flowy shirt that seemed urban-ish and jeans with obvious stitching and rhinestones on the buttons. That’s what the kids are wearing now, right?

And because I’m ridiculous and over-think 99.4% of the things in my life, I tried on my Rap Concert Costume and took pictures to send to my girlfriends:

I know it looks like something I might also wear to parent/teacher conferences, but I’m wearing way more dark eye shadow than I normally do. Do you think I should top it with a sideways baseball cap?

The other thing I did to prepare for this concert was download the most recent album of Childish Gambio, AKA: Troy from Community, AKA: Donald Glover (whose real name is the most confusing to me because it sounds like Danny Glover, that actor who’s been in like a billion things who I used to get mixed up with another black actor and for awhile Jason would make fun of me every time any black actor came on scene in a movie by saying, “Look, it’s Danny Glover!” But seriously, I also have trouble telling Amy Adams and Isla Fischer apart. I think I might have that disease where you can’t recognize faces. That guy named Tarzan on Survivor has it this season. Not to be confused with the guy on Survivor this season whose name is Troyzan. Whew. That tangent even exhausted me).

I listened to the album during my run the day before the show. It wasn’t really my style, but I found it moderately entertaining. I can’t say I totally relate to being a black guy who gets made fun of for talking white and has no street cred, but he did reference the tragedy of the premature cancellation of Freaks and Geeks, so we could probably be friends. That is, as long as he doesn’t bring up his obsessions with Asian chicks and blowjows as often in real life as he does in his music.

Basically, I went into that show as prepared as a mother of three who doesn’t go to concerts or even bars and whose cultural background can only be accurately described as sub-urban could be. By the end of the night, this is what I learned:

1.    If a show ‘starts’ at 7pm this really means the opening act will go on from 8-9:30 and the act you’re there to see will actually begin about 9:45pm.

2.    Adorable sandal heels are completely inappropriate for such an event. They will give you blisters on the pads of your feet until you finally just take them off and stand in a dirty parking lot barefoot because it’s the more appealing option.

3.    I could have worn my ballet outfit with a dead chicken as a hat and I would not have been the weirdest dressed person there by far. Apparently the people who attend comedic rap shows in Scottsdale are less like the people you see on rap videos and more early-20s hipster. There was a couple dressed to go to an ironic hoedown, I shit-you-not. We also saw many a high-waisted short-short. That’s one trend I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

4.    Even if a show is sold-out for months ahead of time, apparently the people at The Venue are not prepared to actually let that many people through the doors in a timely fashion. We waited in line for 55 minutes before we finally made it in.

5.    You cannot sneak tiny bottles of wine in to concerts like you can into movies. They search you and your purse and even if you confess, red-faced, before they find your mini Sutter Home Chardonnays, the girl searching you will not be particularly amused.

6.    You cannot take tiny bottles of contact solution into concerts in your purse, either. Although, the girl may just have been punishing me extra for trying to sneak in my old lady beverages.

7.    The crowd at a Childish Gambino show is surprisingly friendly and courteous. I had a guy offer to switch places with me so I could see better and another apologize for accidentally cutting in front of me to order a drink. It’s possible I reminded them of their mothers so they felt obliged to be overly polite.

8.    Donald Glover’s music is actually super clever and kind of addictive. I could really get into the one word titles and lots of the sentiments are heartfelt and tell an interesting story. He’s kind of a brilliant guy, I think.

So, OK, I’m glad my husband, the procrastinator, couldn’t think of a friend he wanted to bring to this concert more than me. It was an experience I won’t forget. Feel free to invite me another concert, People, I will totally know what to wear this time.

This is how last night went -

Me to Jonas who had just come downstairs in jammies with wet hair: Hey Jo, did you wash your hair really good?

Jo: Well, no. I didn’t take a shower.

Me: So… why is your hair wet?

Jo: Oh, because Gray and I had a wet blanket fight when he was in the shower.

Me: Wait, what? A ‘wet-blanket fight’? What does that mean? Am I like really drunk right now? That didn’t make any sense.

Jason: It made sense, but it didn’t make me happy. GRAY!!

Gray coming down the stairs also with wet hair and jammies: What?

Jason: What happened upstairs?

Gray: Jonas threw a blanket in the shower while I was in there and then put it in the toilet and then on his head.

Jonas: *Nods in agreement*

Jason and Me: WHAT??? Why didn’t you tell us???

Gray: Well that would be tattling.

Me: Nope, I’m not drunk enough.

And because he’s worked late every night this week and I was over the children Jason had to go upstairs and find the sopping wet blankets on the carpet in the boys’ room. You’d think it would be the other way around and that because he’d worked late I would say, “It’s ok, sweetheart, you sip your highball and relax. I’ll go upstairs and deal with the children,” but it’s not 1953 and mama’s got a finite amount of patience. Plus the lazy teachers took another day off and I have them home all day today.

I know, I know, you’re glad you’re not married to me.