Sir Paul

Kay, so today was a seriously craptastic day (do withdrawals from percocet involve flu-like aches?  Dude.  That stuff is EVIL), and I pushed myself too hard, and then I crashed. And then I cried and cried.  So.  I want to talk about something peppy. 

And nothing is more peppy than the subject of Sir Paul McCartney.  My dad and mom got tickets for themselves and my sisters to go see him in concert in Salt Lake City.  They got these tickets MONTHS ago.  Before Ben's layoff.  Before cancer.  (Actually, cancer was happily settled into my body long before Salt Lake was a glimmer in Paul's eye.  It's weird to have had this killer inside of me for so long and I had noooo idea.  No inkling.  And when I finally got an inkling, BAM!  There it was, and it had spread and been kicking my butt all along...)

They flew my two non-local sisters in and got us hotel rooms and everything.  It was so awesome.  SO.  AWESOME. 

Eeee!  Okay.  I'll set the scene.  Lex and I had gone to the mall a few days before the concert to get t-shirts made for each of us.  There was this t-shirt kiosk that could basically print anything you can find when you google any kind of image.  And each t-shirt was only like $25!!  Pretty good deal.  And what we got printed on our shirts was way cooler than anything they were selling there at the Delta Center.  Or whatever they've named it now.  The American Express Center?  If it's the American Express Center, they might as well name it the You-Can't-Use-Our-Card-ANYWHERE Center.  AmIright?

I was going to explain our shirts to you, and then I thought I would google and show you the images we used on our shirts, and then I got ADD and got distracted by little nuggets such as this:

 Yeah.  I'll just tell you that they were cool.  And we liked them.  And each one was different.  Nat is doing her "I think my shirt is cool" dance:

 The energy outside of the Geico-Guaranteed-to-Save-You-15%-or-More Center was electric.  People were smiling and laughing at each others' shirts and just smiling ear to ear.  We were among them.

 Lex wanted me to listen to a song on her phone:

And then we wanted to see what I would look like if I was blonde:

Whattaya think?  I know it's hard to make a good judgment based on my weird face in this picture.  I'm really not seeing blonde in my future, though Micah has chosen a blonde wig for me.  I think I'm a better brunette.

We ate once inside.  I got nachos.  And was obvi still embarrassed about my flat chest.  Or maybe just kind of...supporting it:

Though back then, man, I was on the good stuff.  If I felt pain that night, it was miniscule compared to where I'm at now.

Hiding my chest again:

 And then letting my flatness show (I really want you to see my shirt, too):

 "I look like a little girl in the springtime!  And it's okay!"

Okay, now for the nitty-gritty.  Best concert EVER.  First of all, my family and I are huge Beatles fans.  And therefore huge Paul McCartney fans.  And I actually like a lot of his later stuff from Wings.  And then there was that one cool song from the eighties, "Set on You."  I was hoping he'd sing it, but he didn't.  Anyways, he did a really great mix of songs - lots of Beatles.  A little bit of Wings.  A few of his new songs, which weren't bad a-tall.

So dude, he comes out, and the entire Aren't-You-Glad-You-Used-Dial Center exploded in cheers.  And he looked fantastic!  I mean, I don't know if he's had work done, but he's 72, dude, and he looked like he was maybe 52.  He's fit as a fiddle and has tons of energy.  He looks awesome.  He wore Beatles-style boots, skinny black jeans, and a white collared shirt with a red blazer.  After his first song, he took off his blazer and announced that would be his only wardrobe change for the whole concert.

And that man played and sang for three hours straight, you guys. 

The stamina!

The charisma!

The adorableness!

He's always been adorable.  Even more so now.  I just want to give him a hug.  After every song, he would dance around a little, like, "Man, I don't want that song to end.  I just love that song!"  He often would yell, "Oh yeah!" after each song, just like he does in "All you need is love."  Same thing.  After every song, he'd hold up a number with his fingers while he raised his guitar in the air.  I think he has numbers for his guitars.  Because I noticed he'd hold up the same number the same time he used a certain guitar.  It's like he was saying, "Give it up for Guitar Number 4!"

And this man is amazing.  He plays bass, guitar, and the piano.  And I know he paints a lot and is an artist - he and John met at art school, for Pete's sake - and the videography on the screens surrounding him was very artistic and just beautiful.  I wondered if a lot of the art shown was his own.

My family was just a little bit emotional.  I saw Dad getting weepy outside the Plop-Plop-Fizz-Fizz-Oh-What-a-Relief-It-Is Center.  And I saw him crying when Paul sang "Yesterday."  Mom cried when he played "Let it Be."  Nat cried when he played a song he had written for John after his death.  The song basically was saying, "I wish I had said these things to you before you died."  It was a beautiful song.  I'm not sure when Lex cried, which was weird, because I sat right next to her.  I cried during "Blackbird."

And did you KNOW that Paul wrote that song when he was watching all of the footage of the Civil Rights Movement in the 60's?  Oooh, and he told he coolest story about Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.  Jimi learned Sgt. Pepper's like two days after the Beatles released it.  And he was playing it at a concert, but he did this thing with his guitar that made things kind of psychedelic, but it would make your guitar go way out of tune.  So he was playing Sgt. Pepper's, and his guitar got out of tune, and Eric Clapton was in the audience.  And Jimi asked Eric to come tune his guitar.

I mean, we were just eating these stories up.

I kept thinking how sad that he's lost so many friends and family.  Jimi, John, George, Linda...  He's outlived so many people in his close circle.  He played "Something in the Way She Moves," which was written by George, on the ukelele, which was cool, and they showed photographs of he and George together behind him.

I spent most of the night with my jaw on the ground.  Like, I can't believe I'm in the same room, albeit a really large one, as Paul McCartney!!!  Oh, and his voice was clear as a bell.  It sounded like it sounds in all of the recordings from fifty years ago.  Awesome. Amazing.  What a talent.  And what a burst of sunshine he is in this world.  His songs have touched so many.  It was such a dream come true to watch him perform.

Now I can die happy.

Sorry.  A bit of dark humor.  That is what Tina Fey calls a "rough joke."  It's like when Thibault gets stabbed in Romeo and Juliet, and he's trying to laugh it off, and he says, "I'm okay, but tomorrow, you may find me a grave man."

But I'm not dying like Thibault did.  Promise.  I'm wearing my Cancer Assassin bracelet, which basically makes me invincible. 

A side note:  We brought Gage down so he could fly out of Salt Lake City airport with Lex and Chris the next day.  Chris watched him while the girls and the mama and the papa went to the concert.  And the next day, Dad gamely took Gage swimming in the hotel pool.  Gage reared up or did something and hit Dad in the eye, HARD.  And gave Dad quite the shiner:

I told Dad he looked like a Mary Kay consultant had done his makeup.  You know how they tell you to swoop the darker color through the crease of the eyelid, and then kind of fill in that triangle at the outside corner of your eye?  That is a perfect Mary Kay eye, right there.

Anywho, it's time for my Tylenol PM's to take me away.  Which they don't really succeed in doing, by the way.  But I'm determined to stay off Percocet.  I can DO this.  I did it before with my hysterectomy.

Another side note:  Micah told everyone at Cancer Camp that his mom has stomach cancer.  Because of my hysterectomy I got two years ago.  I reminded him today that what happened two years ago wasn't because of cancer.  It's because my baby holder and my bladder had collapsed inside of me.  I told him the cancer that I have is breast cancer.

"Can you say 'breast cancer,' Micah?" I said.

"Bwest cancer."

"Good. That's right.  That's what I have."

"I thought you have Boob Cancer."

"Um, yep, yeah, same thing.  Boob Cancer.  But not stomach.  I never had stomach."

"Yes, you did.  They cut you open and stitched you back up, Mom."

"Okay, whatever.  What I have right now is Breast Cancer."

"Boob Cancer," he corrected me.

Sigh.  "Yes."

Anyways, Paul McCartney.  I am a fan.  A huge fan.  Bless him for bringing joy to so many.  What an amazing thing, to have touched so many millions of people.  Wow.  We can definitely check this off the bucket list.