December 17th - Trans-Siberean Shmorchestra

To update my post from yesterday - yes, I have time to post twice in one weekend, can you tell we're starting to get our acts together here? - I ALSO am the proud owner of the following Christmas Specials (on video tape, sadly):

• "Fraggle Rock Festival of the Bells"
• "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" ( cartoon version from 1985)
• "Berenstien Bears' Christmas Tree

Yesterday we went to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert at the Wachovia Center. Embarrassingly enough, I knew sad little about this group. I knew that they had a Christmas song or two on the radio, they used synthesizers and guitars and traditional orchestral instruments. I figured, with the word "Orchestra" in the name of the group it would be, I don't know...quieter? We had an extra ticket (well, Bob's parents did. They were going with friends who bowed out and they didn't really want to go anymore so they gave the 3 tickets to us) so we called my friend Cathy, another music teacher in my district, who happens to be 8 1/2 months pregnant w/ her 2nd girl.

We had no trouble getting there, no trouble parking, GREAT seats, and we settled in for a nice concert. WOW the Wachovia Center is huge, first of all. I was a bit shocked to see like 8 orchestral instrumentalists come out and sit in this little part of the stage...and a bunch of long-haired guys in tuxes come out with electric guitars.

*I should digress for a second here: I have a slight prejudice against long-haired guys with electric guitars. After playing 2nd fiddle to an electric guitar for 3 1/2 years while with my boyfriend from high school, I'm not ashamed to say that I got a tad sick of the sound, and a tad bitter/annoyed.*

Before the concert started, they played the 2 songs that you hear on the radio...not live, though, just recordings. Nice. Then the concert started. HOLY CRAP, LOUD. I must be getting old. I am, I know. I will be the first to admit that I'm not a 'cool' person, music-taste-wise, at all. I haven't been to a genuine rock concert since my mom took me to see Tiffany when I was 9. (Damn good show, btw. I've been to about a million crappy-ass 'battle-of-the-bands' type things, mind you. But loud concerts like the usual Wachovia Center things are not my bag. I have old lady eardrums.)

The concert was in the form a narrated Christmas story (very similar to the Mannheim Steamroller "Christmas Angel" one), with a very good narrator guy and a very loud rock song that used laser show lights (very cool) every 2 minutes...which, except for having used a DIFFERENT Christmas carol's main motif over and over, was the same as the LAST very loud rock song we heard 2 minutes earlier. The story was hard to follow, too...something about a guy in a bar telling a story about an angel coming to earth to check out man kind and going all over the world and seeing man's cruelty to man and then seeing some bartender give a little girl cab fair to get home to her father who missed her on Christmas eve...and then it turned out the the guy in the bar telling the story was the Angel...yeah, the stuff that dreams are made of, for sure.

And the lack of coffee, aspirin, and sleep I was experiencing coupled with the ridiculously loud (although very well-performed) repetitive music all came together to create one doozy of a headache. By the time they finished the story I was like, "NEED. COFFEE. ASPIRIN. NOW." And "this show is over now, right?" Nope, they weren't giving us an intermission, and now they were going to play all their non-Christmas stuff. They have non-Christmas stuff??? Dear God.

And Cathy didn't look so good. It occurred to me half-way through that really loud music can be a torture device to a woman in her 3rd trimester...and baby Ashley was kicking the snot out of Cathy. We were both ready to leave. I made one desperate attempt to find coffee and painkillers...hey, the no sleep thing creates certain dependencies. I'll wean myself when she's sleeping through the night, thankyouverymuch. I asked Bob if we could leave, and he graciously agreed. He wasn't all that interested in their non-Christmas stuff. And he was tired, too, having been on baby-duty the night before. I still say I have the best husband ever. So we left, shaking our heads at the fact that none of us thought to bring earplugs. Well, to be fair, I thought it was more "orchestral" than that, and earplugs don't go with "orchestra".

I was so grateful to Bob for being cool with leaving the concert half-way through that I did baby duty last night. Wasn't hard, though. Got her to sleep around 12:30 ish, and she slept till 5:00!!! (4 1/2 hours! This is big, for a newborn. Big. Of course, she wolfed down bottles before bed last night, so she was good and full, so that helped. But it gives me a strategy for tonight!)

Today and tomorrow, I want to:

Do laundry
Hang M-A-D-E-L-I-N-E letters in the nursery
Make baby foot & hand casting w/ the kit we got at the shower
Write thank-you to Cathy (gave us a baby gift)
Put Christmas boxes in attic
Sweep/Mom floors
Use the hot glue gun to finally fix the arms on Joseph and the one shepherd

HOLD MY BABY!

...that was my other problem last night. I really missed my baby. Some moms get that 'instant love at first sight' thing w/ their babies. I loved her, of course, very very much. But I get more attached to her every day. I actually miss her in the morning after Bob does baby duty, crazy as it sounds. So I'm going to hold my baby now, now that she's awake.