T-Swift, in Concert.

We called the radio station at least 800 times. I wish I was exaggerating. Being caller #9 is just not that easy. It takes a skill that I apparently don't have. But we still found ourselves with free Taylor Swift tickets through other means, like I said before. And Friday finally came. 

Can you tell that I felt like I was at work for 19 hours that day? Because I did. I was a little distracted, and more than ready for concert time. We hit up Punch Burger (pun intended) before the show and it was delicious. We split those waffle fries, don't judge.

Two days before the show Keds was SO nice to give me four more tickets that they weren't going to be using that night. !!! I had to have a drawing out of my friends who could go...no way I was choosing. Everyone was nice about it, although there was some attempted bribing afterwards. (Summer held strong and kept her ticket, even with offers of a month of babysitting and movie passes. Taylor Swift, people. You don't just give that up.) Michael and I got there early for our backstage tour. !!! (So many exclamation marks are justified in this post.)

Taylor's MOM (!!!) took our tour group around and told us all about the RED tour. We learned some crazy stuff, like...the tour hires 120 local people at every location to help unload everything, they have "toaster" elevators under the stage that literally pop dancers up on top, 70 people are on the RED tour, Taylor has 11 costume changes that night with the fastest one at 4.5 seconds, there is no auto-tuning or lip syncing in her shows and there never has been, she is crazy involved with almost every detail of the concert, and after their 66 stops in the states this summer they are headed to Australia, then Asia, then Europe. Full on world tour, people. She sings about all these boyfriends and break ups...but when does she have time for either of those?

One of my favorite moments of the tour was when Michael recognized an announcer from Hank FM (the radio station of caller #10 haters). I saw his name tag and knew his name all too well...

Me: "Hey, Dave O'Brien!"

D: Turned around, acting innocent.

M: "Oh, I've called you sooooo many times!"

D: "Really? Did I answer?"

M: "No!"

D: Laughed as though this was ok.

M: Continued on with the backstage tour, no thanks to Dave O'Brien or his impossible contests.

(We still listen to Hank FM.)

Ed Sheeran opened for Taylor Swift, and he was crazy talented. He was a one man show - recorded his own beats and guitar, then kept them playing as he sang and even rapped, all while fading music in and out with foot pedals. I thought he was incredible. And not just because I loved his English accent.

After his performance, there was some ultimate anticipation in that room that we shared with 18,000 other (mostly female and mostly screaming) fans. Then, Taylor. Everyone talks about how her performances are over the top productions, and it's the truth.

At one point her dancers carried her in front of our section to a smaller stage right by us, and we were just a few rows away from her. Poor Michael, all that screaming. 

He wasn't the only guy in the audience...maybe the only one in our section though. Good sport. He really did enjoy it. You couldn't not have fun though, it was hilarious how much people just went crazy every time she would somehow announce the next song.

I loved having friends there with us. Becca had only been to one other concert, so I think the bar is set kind of high for her third. 

On our walk back to our car, we saw this semi along with a few blacked out cars and limos. What a crazy life, right? She did Cleveland Thursday, Indianapolis Friday, Lexington Saturday...and that is just three days of one country of her world tour. How do you even have a voice after all that?

Had to get the shirt. The whole experience was just too fun to not remember. It was my first time actually applying "the secret" to something very specific in life, which is random and a little too cosmic for me, but there's definitely something going on there. We read the book in book club, but I won't go into details about it. Just know that I put this concert on my calendar in December and I just knew that somehow we would get there (preferably for free because dental school is such a money sucker). Then through a random string of events, I suddenly had two backstage passes, six tickets, and a freaked out husband.

!!!