Imma Belieber

We climbed stairs to reach the Upper Level of the huge Arena. This is what we have been waiting for. She asked to see my tickets and when I showed them to her, she pointed to the ceiling and said, "just keep goin' up." The seat in front of me had an A on it and with a quick glance at my ticket, I knew we were in trouble. Yellow crime tape that said Do Not Cross ran beside the small partial railing all four of us were white knuckling and the four of us kept saying, "Don't look down. DO NOT TOUCH ME!! Why are these steps so small?" We finally made it to the ceiling back and only one row sat higher than we did. We took our seats carefully and stared at each other knowing we would sit there for hours, without movement or breathing, and I was okay with that. We had to keep STILL. We put the kids on a no-liquid diet so their bladders would hold up all night because every time I looked around, I got dizzy...we were that high!

It took the full 45 minutes to catch my breath, but when the lights finally dimmed and the music came on...I still knew I was technically a hundred feet in the air and if everyone didn't stop yelling and jumping around this concrete slab would collapse and we would all die in a mass grave of dust, heavy pillars and blue plastic seats...

But they started the timer.....I looked up and it was counting down 7 minutes, 6 minutes, 5 minutes 4...until Justin Beiber will walk in the door!!! Girls were screaming non-words anytime someone moved behind the stage because they thought it was him, or someone that knew him, or someone that has seen him with their own eyeballs. I yawned and updated my Facebook status and wondered why I could still smell the Circus...they hadn't been here since last year...

When they finally reached the last few seconds...people went nuts! My child was screaming and looking around because she was about to be in the same room with him...but he didn't walk in...

...he flew in on huge silver wings made of guitars and other musical instruments, and they all screamed LOUDER. It was the craziest thing I've ever heard. He sang, he danced, he performed and everyone just screamed. A chair arose from the middle of the stage we all knew he was about to pick One Girl. He asked, "Who is gonna be my baby?" The arena exploded with crying girls wanting that prized position and as we sat near the ceiling my child started yelling, "Justin!!! Justin!!" But he didn't see her...

It was an amazing show and I honestly can say I'd love to go see him again sometime when I get three more jobs to pay for the tickets. I am likely the meanest mama in the world because after arriving back home just before 1 a.m., I woke her up at 7 a.m. for school...and this is all she had left to give...

We have finally recovered from our Bieber hangovers. This will be a night she will NEVER FORGET, EVER EVER EVER...

Toys R Us

My last outing with the kids in Birmingham...alone...with THEM was a little hectic with appointments and this that and the other...I even looked over once and saw the kids giggling to the man next to us at the red light...the man was giggling too (weird) so I lifted up the dry erase board and found this...

Could have been worse! Who knows how long they'd been holding that up as I drove along, singing/dancing and all along they are drawing lots of attention our way....gotta love 'em. This was a fun trip, we only had shopping to do...and lunch to eat. No appointments, except with Toys 'R Us and we had a great trip!!

 We bought Legos...

We ate at my brother and sister-in-laws' restaurant Brother Zeke's and it was fabulous! The corn bread muffins, the sweet potato fries and the squash caserole....I barely had room for the chicken but it was so yummy. They opened this new restaurant up a while back but we've never made it down until yesterday and mannnnnn, I wanna go back. One kid cleaned her plate and EVEN ATE THE BREAD. She doesn't eat bread! One kid took a to-go box home with him and will polish off his bbq stuffed potato today!

We stopped off at a Christian book store and bought some needful things and made it home in time for me to fall out (and doze off) on the sofa...I heard my husband's car door shut and I jumped up, wiped my eyes and pretended to have busy all along. He never knew I was asleep!

Top 5 Things I Learned From MTV

A high school student suggested I watch MTV in the early morning hours if I wanted to see videos. I was subbing for a class yesterday and somehow the subject of music came up and I stated my disappointment with MTV and how they rarely showed actual videos anymore...so at 6 a.m. I turned it on and this is the top 5 things I learned...

1. Some bars have baby pools instead of a dance floor filled with unknown substances (I am gagging) and fighting girls. I'm still not clear why the baby pool is actually needed...?
2. Even I need closed captioning for many rap songs...and I ALMOST have my degree in Rap!
3. Gold chains will never go out of style...I wish we had not taken my husband's old rope chain to the pawn shop that bought all of our gold years ago...he would still be so cool !
4. Lil Jon has a small vocabulary. In fact, other than "Yeah-a" and one or two other two-syllable words, he's pretty quiet. I would love work as his translator. I think it would be awesome...he could get crunk, pop bottles and all sorts of things while I translate to soccer moms what he's talking about. Pretty soon, we'd all be wearing dreads and constantly say "OK!" and "What!"
5. Women look awesome in swim suits and short yellow furs. Beyonce proves it in her latest video. I never knew a one piece swim suit paired with a fur of all things would look hot. Trust me, if you don't try this, you will not be hip with the latest fashion trend! I wonder if it will have the same effect if I wear a trench coat with mine?

Because I'm Pimpin'

I slide into the driver seat of the hot little family sedan I drive. It's cloudy outside but I slip on a pair of large lensed shades with fake diamonds on the side, because I'm pimpin'. I thump my way through the car line and soon I'm one kid down, the other still in tow.

As we make our way down that long road to the urban land, he's working hard on customizing his toy vehicles, while I'm pimpin'. I think to myself, I can't wait til he figures out how hydraulics work, then it's ON !!

I have one hand on the wheel, the other on my right leg so I can tap as needed with the music. It doesn't take long for me to run through Lady GaGa, Adele, and Miranda Lambert...all three of which sound EXACTLY like ME. I switch to one of my favorite hip hop stations where Ludacris is already slangin' some rhymes...and I join him. Before you know it, I'm bouncin' around singing My Chick Bad, My Chick Hood and for a second, I actually think I'm Ludacris, because I'm pimpin'. Is that normal? Most people don't know I bust domes and sit on chromes with some of the baddest rappers around! I lose a small sense of reality as we bump our way into Birmingham. My kid has ignored me the whole hour and a half as he's been in deep construction with his latest invention.

We finish our errands soon and head all the way back towards home and I slowly get back into character. With my son by my side, I beat my right leg til it throbbed so I then reached over and began slapping his leg to give mine a rest. The music was good and I had to keep with the beat somehow. The more he tried to convince me that I DO NOT SOUND LIKE BEYONCE, the more I tried to sound like Beyonce "sucks to be you right now"...

I tried a little Ram Jam "Black Betty", I tried REO Speedwagon, AC/DC and Joe Walsh, even the Zac Brown Band and they all ended the same...a pimpin' white mom who thinks she's cool with oversized shades in a car full of toys and booster seats...ugh, if I only had those hydraulics!!

...coming soon to a car near you! And yes, I have been busted by friends in Birmingham before who pulled up beside me during one of my performances, called me on the phone, and we sat there laughing at a red light...

Fluent in Rap

During my last spin class at The Gym, I sat next to a lady who frequents the place and is often found inside the spin room. She has all the proper gear for cycling indoors from her specific shorts down to her shoes. This lady is very fit, really pretty, and can likely set a mean table. She's very social with all her luncheons, charities, etc.

During spin class a rap song was blaring over the speakers and she began to giggle along with the instructor as they tried to figure out the lyrics. She looked over at me and asked me if I knew what they were saying and what the heck it meant...and I gladly translated.

"I'm very fluent in rap you know," I confidently told her. I decided to push farther and add, "In fact, I listen to a lot of rap. Gangsta rap too!" She smiled and found the words, "Well, isn't that a fun fact."

Haha, you just never know who you are sitting beside in spin class. That homely, sweaty, white lady could have Flo-Rida playing inside her head or Easy-E or Tupac....one reason I like some of it isn't for the grime, the grit, the hard-core lyrics, it's writers like Tupac who could put together words at a higher level, use symbolism and actually be brilliant. Some of the other stuff just cracks me up and I like to laugh.

I will say that now that my kids are getting older, and can actually hear some of the words despite their hearing loss (if they hear only one word, it'll be a curse word) I have limited opportunities to play this type of music. And, to be quite honest, I have enough of it still in my head that I don't NEED to hear it much anymore. But there you go, just a little 'fun fact'.