Star studded week

So we had a big party on the new deck this past weekend.  Seriously are you so tired of hearing about the deck?  I need to shut up about it.  But I guess you can tell how much I love it.

Because my husband spent two weeks gallivanting (okay yeah I know it was for work but I like to say gallivanting anyway) around Europe with them, he became pretty good friends with some of the rappers who are his clients.  So these guys came to our party on Sunday.  What better way to christen the deck than to have Tech N9Ne and Krizz Kaliko hanging out?  It was awesome.  The hubs told me I wasn't allowed to geek out and ask for their autographs or anything. You will be proud, I didn't. But I never get to see these famous people he gets to work with so it is kind of exciting for me.

Although we had some famous dudes at our house this weekend, this post is really about my dad and his start studded weekend.  As you may or may not know my dad is working his way towards an Academy Award.  He is so adorable and actually spent a day this week filming a major Hollywood movie.  You have to go read his blog about it all, it is very entertaining.

http://actingyourage1.blogspot.com/

My worlds are colliding and it is fantastic

So, I admit it. I watch The Hills - and The City too - don't you judge me. I know you watch stupid TV too. Yours might be a different special kind of dumb, but dumb nonetheless.

If you live under a rock and don't know what The Hills is, it is a ridiculously over the top show about a bunch of obnoxious rich LA twenty somethings. Does Heidi Montag and 438 plastic sugeries in one day ring a bell?

Although I think Heidi looked prettier before and that her face (well her top lip really) resembles a platapus a bit now, I'm not judging her plastic surgeries. Hell, if I had the money and the cajones, I would have oodles of body parts lifted, tucked, sucked out, plumped up and placed back where they originally started. Probably wouldn't do it all in one day though...


But I digress. I love the Hills and don't care what you think about that. I get enough grief from my husband.

As you might know, my whiteboy husband directs rap videos which in itself is really funny. Anywho, while watching the Hills this past week they featured Tech N9NE, one of the rappers who is a client of my husband's!

That was fantastic for a lot of reasons but the main one is that my husband is no longer allowed to give me crap about watching the deliciously terrible show. His client's music was on there and in some way that probably involves lots of algebra or something, that relates directly back to him, right?

In the score of life, wife: 12,465 husband: 6

Suburban mom attends first TECH N9NE concert

Thursday night my husband, Dan, came home, picked up the phone and called our babysitter to see if she was free the following night. He wanted to take me on a date. I was unbelievably excited about this because we have not spent much time together for the last couple weeks due to crazy schedules. Not to mention how cute it was on his part to initiate the whole deal.

Friday morning he called me when he got to work and told me he just remembered his client, TECH N9NE was playing in Kansas City on our date night. As I've written about before, my husband and two other guys own a production company. One of the things they do is make music videos and some of their clients are rappers. That is so very different than what I do on a daily basis.

When they play in town, Dan likes to go to the concerts to show his support. I stay at home with the kiddos on those nights and watch movies about Princesses. It is totally understandable that he wants to support them and he asked me if that would be okay to do on our date. Attending a rap concert is not exactly my idea of a romantic evening but we were going to go to dinner beforehand and he said we wouldn't have to stay all that long. Okay, fine he talked me into it.

Never mind that I rarely listen music with lyrics about anything other than letters of the alphabet or animal noises. I'm a mom with two kids 5 and under, what do you expect? Dan makes the kids listen to good music - he doesn't stand for the kid music and so they actually have pretty good taste - Spoon is a big favorite of theirs. But when they are with me I let them listen to whatever they want.

Anyway, Friday night came and we headed out for our date. BTW- what does mid thirties suburban mom of 2 wear to a rap concert??? I've got to be honest, I did go through a rap phase when I was 16 along with all of my friends - but I have not revisited it since then.

Dinner was lots of fun, afterward we went to a bar to grab a few drinks and then headed over to the concert. I so did not want our evening of quiet to come to an end but alas we had to go. My "not so sure about this whole deal" mood soured a bit more when we walked up to a long line outside the venue that wound around the block. Top that with the fact that it was 11 degrees and snowing - this was not starting off well.

After standing there for about 5 minutes, a guy with TECH N9NE and crew who knows Dan walked up, took us out of the line and brought us in a side door. Not bad.

Inside we got a drink and started pushing our way up toward the front. The place was packed! We came to a standstill in the dead middle right by a gated area that housed the lighting and sound for the concert. The guy running the sound said "hey Dan, come on in here." Score! We got to watch the entire concert in an area that, had it not been gated, would have housed about 25 people smashed into one another - but instead it was us and the sound/light guys. There were even stools to sit on. Things were getting better and better.

About thirty seconds into the concert I was hooked. The crowd was so excited and there was so much energy. Sadly I think the last concert I went to was Jim Cosgrove, Mr. Stinky Feet. It just did not have quite the same feel...

I do happen to know a lot of TECH N9NE's songs because I've seen the videos that my husband directs. About 2 minutes later I was on the stool rocking with the crowd (see I'm a total mom - what a dorky thing to say). It was so much fun! There is one song at the end where girls lift their tops - I was so into this whole deal, I think Dan was getting nervous. He said I was not allowed to do that because A) I have children and B) There were cameras filming everything. He's no fun!

After the concert was over we went backstage. It took all my willpower to not embarrass my husband thoroughly by asking for a photo with Tech and Krizz Kaliko. I had only met them before for about five seconds at the Strange Music Christmas party this past December but they all gave me hugs like they had known me forever. They could not have been nicer and actually spent a lot of time telling me that my husband is awesome and extremely creative. Coming from guys who just played to a sold out crowd who were dancing and singing every word to their songs, that is a pretty big compliment.

The evening was the best date ever. Suburban mom is now a rap fan.

That Tux!

As you might now by now, my husband and I are very fancy. Okay not really. Since I work from home, it is a big day when I get my shower in before 2:00 PM and my husband works in the creative world so the last time I saw him in a pair of khaki pants was somewhere before Y2K. That is why I find it very odd that we are buying him a tux.

Tonight we are going to our second black tie event in 2 months. Now, I love to dress up. I got that from my mom who always looks like a million bucks. Unlike her, I am okay with leaving the house un-showered to drop the kiddos off at school. When I was little my mother would have curled her hair, painted her fingernails, ironed a dress and put on high heels before she got us to school.

My mom uniform in the summer is black running pants, Fit Flops (if you don't have a pair, you must get them they are so comfy), a t-shirt for exercising in and either my OU or KU visor (depends on my mood).

The winter mom uniform is very similar except sports a black North Face jacket on top of it all - oh and tennis shoes instead of Fit Flops. I'm not the only one who dresses like that though. I cracked up one day as I was standing outside my daughter's classroom to pick her up - 6 other moms in the hallway had the exact same outfit on - including the jacket!

Since I rarely get out of anything that isn't made of stretchy gore-tex material, I love dressing up, putting on my fancy jewelry and doing my hair and nails - and I love going to these events. I have a million things to wear to them. These type of events are popping up more on our social calendar lately and it has been fun. We are nowhere near like my parents who wear tuxes (well my dad, not my mom) more times a year than I probably shower, but for us casual, unkempt folks every two months is pretty often. From what I gather it is less expensive to purchase a tux for my hubby than to keep renting them - and who wants to wear pants another man has worn, anyway?

Now if I can just get him to shave...

He hangs with rappers, I hang with toddlers

My husband and I started dating in college. We met in a French class and also had the same major - advertising. It was meant to be right from the beginning. Our early careers took a similar path and we began working in the Account Management side of some Chicago advertising agencies (well that is after he skied Vail for about 8 months). Boy how things have changed...

He was never happy in that "organization" role -which if you saw his side of the closet would not surprise you a bit. So he switched sides and moved over to be a creative. He worked as a copywriter and spent his entire day avoiding people like me at the office. I spent my entire day trying to wrangle people like him. In the evenings we would come home and spend hours defending the people who worked in our same roles at each other's companies. Who knows, maybe this opposite thing is why we work well together.

So here we are now, several jobs and several cities later and our roles absolutely could not be more different. It is not uncommon for my husband's Facebook status to say "I just rode to lunch in a Bentley" or "I am currently filming a music video in a deserted funeral home" while mine run the line of "baking cookies with the kids!" or "kids and I are at the zoo and just saw a baby elephant!"

My husband co-owns a production company. He hangs out with music artists. I hang out with 2 and 4 year olds. He loves what he does and I love what I do. For the past two days he has been in Los Angeles meeting with people at Sony. For the past two days I have had play dates and have made homemade play doh.

When he got to LA he called to tell me he had landed safely and I asked how his flight was. Here was his response:

"It was good. I actually ended up sitting next to this rapper I know." - that is so not a sentence that is ever going to come out of my mouth.

My Husband the Rock Star

What are you doing right now? Probably not the same thing I am. Currently I am rifling through my wardrobe looking for something funky and rock starish. Where am I going you wonder? Well to my husband's CD release party of course!

You know how you do stupid things when you are in love?

When I first started dating my husband he had a really nice guitar and just strummed it but didn't really know how to play. Being the super thoughtful girlfriend I was, I got him guitar lessons for Christmas one year. So really the only person I can blame for all of this is myself. At the time I thought it was adorable. He had the one guitar, played the same chord his teacher taught him over and over again and made up funny songs about me.

Fast forward 10 years and about 13 guitars later (not like he has gone through 13 upgrading each time, we actually own 13). I couldn't tell you the last time I watched a TV show or had a conversation without background music of whatever he feels like playing at the moment. Everywhere you turn in my house there is a guitar. He is constantly asking me if we can put those guitar holder things on the wall in our living room. I keep looking at him like he has 6 heads. Maybe I should let him because they at least the darn guitars wouldn't be underfoot at all times. But I just don't see that as the direction I want to go with our decor.

His favorite place to leave them is propped up against the edge of the couch. At least once a day a child knocks one over onto the floor. I laugh the smallest laugh on the inside when that happens. If they were put away in their proper home in the basement these things wouldn't happen.

We have lived in several different cities since the days of those first guitar lessons and he has left many bands in his wake. Now that we have settled in the place we plan to be forever, he has formed a band that is serious. Well as serious as you can get when you practice about 3 times per month. As much as it drives me crazy when he comes home at 3AM from a gig, I gotta say I think the Also Rans are really good and they have made a name for themselves around here. My husband is actually the lead singer which is funny because until that happened, I didn't even know he sang.

Clearly being rock stars is not their primary source of income or really any source of income. They all work really hard in their day jobs and it is a great way for them to let off steam but I always thought it was just kind of a hobby. That is until one evening we had this conversation:

D: "If we got signed to a label and had to go on tour, would you and the kids go on the tour bus with me when school was out?"

ME: "Um, let's cross that bridge when we need to sweetie."

I need to keep in mind that he is the one (along with 2 other members of the band) who owns a company that directs and produces music videos, so obviously he knows more about that stuff than I do. Shows you how much I know. I wasn't even aware that the major labels were itching to sign a bunch of 30 something dads with gray hair.

I've discussed this with the other wives. We want to be supportive. They are allowed to tour as long as they are not gone for more than 2 days at a time, don't go further than Omaha and don't get tattoos.

Really, I'm not trying to sound negative. Like I said, I think they are really good and it is great that they have so much fun with it. And to be honest, it is kind of hot to see your husband as the lead singer of a band. I think the issues all lie with me. Seriously, what do I wear to a CD release party that the entire city has been invited to? Hurriedly combing Play Doh out of my hair and rubbing a combo of soap and water to erase a marker stain on my shirt as I run out the door after tucking two children in bed doesn't really scream rock star's wife, does it?