Eric's band has yet another new female lead singer. I believe this is #5 in the past 18 months. The singers have all been varying degrees of good with flashes of great, but it has taken them a long time to find just the right fit...and I'm thinking, fingers crossed, that this one is keeper. Not just because she's really good (probably the best yet), but also because I cannot take the eternal drama of them finding a new female lead, rehearsing endlessly and then her ultimately leaving/being asked to leave. Drama, I tell you and quite exhausting.
Anyway, Eric suggested that last Saturday might be a good day to go see them since they were playing at relatively popular bar downtown. Now that the band is doing very well, they are playing at bars that people actually go to. This is a big change from the early days when me and my drunk friends might be the only patrons at some boring pub. But I thought it was a great idea - he has been playing so often that I have more or less forgotten that I used to make an effort to attend most of his gigs.
It was going to be my first night away from the Papaya since she was born. Almost seven months. Still, I was more than ready, so I imposed on the goodwill of my brother and sister-in-law for the second night in a row (Halloween being the night before) and arranged to have the kids stay over there overnight.
So, off we went. The bar, which I had been to before, has a real reputation of being a cougar bar and I remembered being shocked at exactly how many older ladies were there. What was even more shocking was that those exact same older ladies are apparently STILL going. It was a crazy mix of young and old. Like a tacky wedding with a good band. And, without a word of a lie there were two ladies, who were clearly pushing 70, all dolled up and rocking out the dance floor. In true Grandma-fashion they were even holding their ears because the band was "too loud." I had our camera and spent an inordinate amount of time trying take their picture. I took shot after shot of them while pretending to take shots of the band. (Later, my curiosity getting the better of me, I engaged one of them in conversation for awhile...apparently, while I sit at home watching reruns of "What Not to Wear" they hit that bar every single Saturday night.)
I just kept taking pictures. I got tons of photos of the band and my friends and even had a new one picked out as my new Facebook profile picture. At one point, alcohol interfering in my iffy ability to work the camera to begin with, I ended up on video mode and so I went ahead and videoed a few songs, which caused me to run out of room on the memory card. I put the camera away, but then, some young guy started to actively hit on one of old ladies! It was a golden moment and I felt I needed to get a picture, so I went ahead and deleted a bunch of stuff I had shot earlier and then started to take more pictures of what was happening on the dance floor which, the time at least, I considered to be real hilarity. Alas, the last pictures of the night were clearly those taken by a drunk person of drunk people. All off centre, blurry, stupid. But I was happy and figured that out of the dozens of pictures I took - at least earlier in the night - SOME had to be good.
So, the next day as I languished on the couch feeling decidedly ill and postponing the pickup of my little darlings, Eric took a moment to download the pictures I had taken.
Except they were All Gone. All that was left was the horrible 20 or so that I had taken just before last call when nobody should be either driving nor operating a camera. I vaguely remember the camera asking me to confirm that I wanted to delete photos on a screen that was unfamiliar to me, but those pints of Creemore did not allow me to stop and think for a moment. So we lost it all. Not just that night either. It was goodbye to all the Halloween pictures, and everything from several months before that, which I am choosing to NOT think about. (Sure I can put the kids back in their Ladybug and Cow costumes...but I would always know it was staged and the true moment lost.)
Still, all in all, it was a good night, but I'm still mad. All I have left is the memories of two old ladies in their pearls and heels, dancing to "I Kissed a Girl" and "500 Miles". And tomorrow night, as I watch Stacey and Clinton mock yet another unfortunate slob in their cruel three way mirror, I will think of them and shed a tear.
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