It's 2 in the Morning

...Literally.

After being startled awake, by my dog, who is too stupid to realize the being walking down the stairs is none-other-than his favorite human in the house, my 3 year old daughter, who let out this hair-raising bark, peed on the floor in her fright, caused said 3 year old to screech at the top of her lungs and bawl her little eyes out for about 5 minutes, I'm wide awake. The dog, who IS smart enough to unzip her own "house", is now hiding under the bed and won't come out...embarrassed?? probably...still scared sh&tless? Most definitely!!

So where does that leave me? With my 3 year old correcting my spelling mistakes (so she thinks) as she lays her head in my lap and me sitting on the couch at 2 in the morning writing to ya'll. Oh how I'd love to go back to sleep...but with the chaos that just rained down on my happy little slumber party, that won't be happening anytime soon I imagine. So lucky you--you get to read my mindless wandering thoughts....again.

Really though, it's been a while since I've actually just sat here and typed whatever popped into my brain....so it was time, right? The problem is, when it's so early I have very little brain power actually working. I'm kinda like on auto pilot, ya know I can function as though someone were driving me but not really...I can't make any major decisions, change courses or anything...I'm simply doing what come naturally---so that means that you all get a glimpse of ---whatever it is that makes me....me.

So I was born in Des Moines, Iowa, a snowy (blizzard) March day, around noon for those that must know. Actually, in high school a guy who was quite a bit older than I was set his watch to go off on March 18th the minute I was born. Of course that was a couple months before my birthday and when his watch went off he had to remember what the reminder was for...he did, then called me to tell me....this is the same guy who proposed to me when I was 17, he was 23. Did we ever date, you ask? How could a 17 year old get away with dating a 23 year old?? We NEVER dated...not once. We hung out with friends, did the "cruisin'-main-street" thing, chatted, laughed but never once did we go out....EVER. So of course when he proposed I laughed in his face...like "Come on your such a dork...I'm only 17" kinda thing...then I saw he was serious and well...crap! Where do you go from there? AWKWARD!!!

hahahaha, Stacey and Jenny know I'm talking about...hahahaha, same guy had a friend who teased Jenny about liking NKOTB when we were strollin' the local mall, she about got into a fist fight with him over it. Yeeeeeah good times there, remember that Jen? LOL.

I've liked NKOTB since I was in 10th grade. I was new in town and some church kids had come over to say hi, introduce themselves and all that. Now at the time I was a huge Bon Jovi/Poison/Whitelion fan...posters of hot rockers graced my walls...until Tiffany walked in. She asked an innocent question "Do you like New Kids on the Block?"
"Who?!" I replied, that was so not my style of music. She was shocked I didn't know who they were...and she quickly fixed that itty bitty problem....next thing I knew I didn't have space on my walls for all the posters I was putting up, my rocker-hotties were coming down being replaced with Donnie, Jordan, Joey, Danny and Jon....of course 4 of the 5 didn't last long either as I began to replace them with all Donnie. :)

When I moved to Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, I was once again the "new kid" in town. Something I grew very used to over the years, moving from town to town seemed to be a thing we did every few years. I sat there in my new room with my best friend, Tiffany--"Do you like New kids?" girl, decorating my room with my NKOTB posters....now I tried to keep most of my posters organized. My favorite Donnie posters were by my bed...of course, who's weren't, right? Then they gradually fanned out to the other guys, group posters and stuff like that....thing is, Jon was probably my least favorite so I stuck him in the closet. Tiffany teased me that I'd go to school and meet a friend and her favorite would be Jon, who was stuck in the closet. We laughed, hee hee, ha ha, continued to put up more posters. That following school day I walked into homeroom with my ROCKIN' Magic summer tour tee shirt proudly sported and sat down. Stacey saw me. We struck up a conversation and I asked her the all important "Who's your favorite?"
"Jon" she replied. I laughed in her face. It couldn't be helped! After Tiffany and I had just put Jon in the closet (no gay remarks intended) and joked that I'd obviously find a Jon fan to be friends with I go to school and FIND A JON FAN TO BE FRIENDS WITH!!! seriously the chances in that is like what??? 1 in 5?

Not that it mattered for long...soon other individuals were taken down, replaced by Donnie, group shots followed....it wasn't long until I had a solid sea of Donnie's beautiful eyes staring at me whenever I went into my room. I loved it. Then we moved...again. Same town, different house, time to pack it all up. This time though...I had a large room with not one, but TWO walk in closets!! PERFECT! I put up all my posters again. and now I had room to decorate even more. I had a NKOTB closet!! I had all my stuff displayed out, went up the ceiling, oh yeah Donnie slept right above me....hahaha, side note, Tiffany put a poster on her ceiling too, but Jordan fell down on her...we laughed over that one for quite a while...hey we were young, it was funny. Scared the bee-jee-bees out of her though to feel something fall on her in the middle of the night. Good times there!!! I wish I had a pic of that awesome room...man it ROCKED! I had my comic books out, my bubble gum tape cassettes, the puzzles, of course the bedding! HELLO!?!?! had to have the bedding!!! the sleeping bag...I never saw the marbles though, there's only so much a small town will stock. I remember walking down to the local Music store (literally, where band kids got their instruments) and picking up Step By Step the day it was released, I was grounded and not allowed to buy it but that didn't stop me, I bought it anyway, told Tiffany she had to claim it was hers, which of course she did :) and we died of laughter when we first heard "Stay with me Baby" and his Jamaican Accent...I looked at her and said "What did you do?" her eyes got wide and she said "NOTHING, I swear!"

Yeah super good times. And here they are 20 years later---Donnie still in my heart, if my husband wouldn't have a fit I'd probably still have his face wallpapering my bedroom walls. I guess that's part of growing up...you've give up plastering your walls with posters, you've gotta take it down sooner or later, to be replaced with pictures of your kids, your life and pretend we're adults. But the beauty of it all is for that brief time when they're on stage, the lights go down, the girls start screaming, you hear the first chords of their intro, your instantaneously thrust back 20 years and your that screaming girl, crushing on her favorite New Kid all over again. You swear every smile sent your way is for you and only you. "HE LOOKED AT ME!!!!" you exclaim to your friend standing next to you, who turns to you and says at the same time "Did you see that!? HE LOOKED AT ME" :) And because you know it means more to her than to you--you let her believe that yeah, her favorite new kids looked at her...you know she'll return the favor.

This ride that New Kids have allowed us to get back on has been amazing, heart wrenching, thrilling and fills me with a wonder I had when I was kid. A feeling of "Anything is possible" Yeah it's possible to meet your favorite New kid, it's possible to get a quick kiss from Donnie. It's possible that he knows I exists!! It's POSSIBLE to have 20 year old dreams come true. It's possible to once think Jon was my least favorite and now he's not...

The gift of reliving our youthful hearts desires with adult minds is an amazing experience. It's on a different level, while we're smarter, married, family people now, we're also able to use the Internet to our advantage to scope the guys out, to find out when they arrive, where they're staying, how they travel...all of which before was pure speculation. If you got it right, you usually knew someone who worked at the hotel, saw the fans outside or stumbled up on the with sheer dumb luck. We can plot, plan and meet them. With them even more accessible to their fans, we're able to have those 20 year old dreams come true. There's no words out there to express the gratitude I feel for that opportunity. It's humbling to know that they didn't have to do this...they WANTED to do this....for us. Can that even compute in your brain? It can't in mine...all this...is FOR US!! Why? Why relive the days when they couldn't leave their hotel rooms, couldn't grab a burger at Micky D's, had to tell the days by the city they were in and the city they'd be in tomorrow. Only now most have families....and still...they came back for more. It's just...WOW.

So when we get face to face with them and we all say "Thank you so much for getting back together" when I say it...I mean everything I've written...but how do you say that in your 10 second window at a M&G? So you say "Thanks so much for getting back together" but what we really mean is WOW...for me? For us? YOU ROCK!! And that's exactly why they still have a solid fan base right now 20 years later.

In Jordan terms, New Kids on the Block are like Woah!