I’m gonna clear my head; I’m gonna drink that sun

So  a couple of days after I had talked to Erica at Wild Iris, she sent me an email to talk a little bit about the details – and wound up the email with “Oh and by the way if you send me your name and the  name of your Plus One I’ll get you on The List for the Indigo Girls show.” Which was followed by about three hours of me flailing around and going “a;ldkjadfja;ldfkj!!!1!a;dklja;dfjdsj!ELEVENTY!!!!!”

I immediately thought of Jenn for my Plus One, thinking of other names should she not be available, but she was; so we went; and fun was had.

Nothing perfect usually ever happens for me. I am used to that, and try to tell the universe how utterly grateful I am when something good does happen (like free tickets to my favorite folk rock group). So when Jenn and I not only had a lovely dinner but then got to the theater to find out that there were two lines and nobody was in Line #2, so we got to be first? That was all kinds of awesome. We stopped at the t-shirt table, of which I promptly bought one and noticed that they have about four albums and DVDs out that I don’t have (which I didn’t get, because we weren’t sure what the place was going to be like and I didn’t want to bring my purse in case we wound up standing for the whole concert). We had thought it was the same place (Ye Olde Shit City Music Hall) where we saw the Cowboy Junkies a number of years ago, but it was better than that – it was at the old Florida Theater! I don’t think I’d been there since we used to dance there at Old Wave Night 17 years previously… and I don’t think management has cleaned the carpets in that long, either. It was awesome and time-trippy, seeing Amy Ray stand where I used to throw myself around dancing.

Where was I…? Ah, yes. So I bought a t-shirt, and we walked in and saw a spot pretty much right up front; it was off to the right and just behind the rope that divided off the VIP sitting section. We stood there for a few minutes marveling at our luck in getting such a good spot, and how there was hardly anyone there, and how the VIPs were making us jealous with their cold beers and their Bar Wench who was running back and forth serving people. There was at least one bar in back of us so we turned around to see what the line was like and OMG huge wall of angry lesbians in back of us! If either one of us had moved, we would have been (a) crushed and (b) would never have gotten our spots back. For the hour we stood there before the opening band, we mentioned every now and then one of us going to get a beer while the other held our spots, but at that point the jostling was getting to the point where we didn’t want to risk moving. Well, *I* didn’t want to risk moving. I hadn’t brought my camera but I had brought my swanky new cell phone that has a great camera, and I had a straight shot from about 30 feet away, above people’s heads. My plan was to sneak a photo or two. I needn’t have worried – the girl next to me was obvious about videoing every song. Man, concert etiquette has changed since back in The Day!

The opening band was great fun, and the Girls themselves were powerhouses, as always. And you would have thought that before the concert they’d asked me to fill out a list of my favorite songs, because they did almost every single one that has ever echoed in my heart. We stood in one spot for four hours, fighting off the girls in back of us, and when time came to leave we could hardly move (who knew leg muscles would get so exhausted just *standing*?!) and we were a little dehydrated and both of us suffered from Concert Hangover the next day. And it was totally, completely, absolutely, fucking the best time ever. I can’t thank Erica enough for those tickets – going to see the Indigo Girls, experiencing the energy of the audience and the way the Girls give out to the crowd only to get it back ten-fold… it was amazing. It was definitely the mental reset that I needed.