Dancing With the Stars...from the cheap seats!

Okay, so most of you know that I managed to score some tickets to a taping of this season's Dancing With the Stars. I signed up on the DWTS website before the season even started and didn't really think much of it. I mean, how was I, mommy of a 15 month old, wife of a hard working hubby, going to swing an impromptu trip to Hollywood should I be lucky enough to get tickets?

Fast forward to last Thursday, about 5pm, I'm multi-tasking at home watching my son try to crawl through the doggie door, cook dinner, and check my e-mail on my iTouch (I swear, I am a good mother and no, Brody can walk through the door to the backyard...lately, he prefers the thrill of crawling through the doggie door and ending up outside), and low and behold I get and e-mail from DWTS telling me that my turn on the LOOOOONG waitlist was NOW!!! I had to make a split second decision - do I click the link to request a specific number of tickets, or do I pass on this crazy opportunity? Hmmmmm....shoot, how could I pass this up? I would just figure out the details later! So, as my hubby is leaving to meet up with friends to watch the hockey playoffs and Brody is racing around in the backyard with our dog, I yell out to Mike "MIKE....I justgotane-mailfromDancingWithTheStarsandIneedtogotoLA
onMondaytobeintheaudience!" After a moment or two of silence from my better half, I yell again "Ummmm...nokidsallowedsoIamgonnagobymyselfand
heymaybeIwillbenonTVandbecomefamous!" (yeah, right!)

After another few moments, he calmly replied "Is this your goal in life?" Clearly he could tell that I was about to start bouncing off the walls, so I think I told him to go on out with his friends, have fun, and I would research travel options and tell him all about it when he got home from the game!

That night, I don't think that I could have fed, bathed, changed, and read to my son any quicker! I was a woman on a mission to find a cheap, last minute flight to LA. Heck, I would even drive down and back in a 24 hour period if I had too! I didn't want to pass this up. I scoured all of the travel sites for about 5 hours that night, and finally went to bed thinking I had found the *perfect* travel scheme...a crazy early flight from SFO to LAX, car rental, and then a drive back to LAX after the show taping to fly home and be back at home by about 2am the next day. YES...I was really prepared to do whatever it takes to make this whirlwind adventure come true.

Cut to Friday morning and I get up extra early to get back online only to find that my perfect travel plan was still perfect, just about $200 more expensive. Not so perfect anymore.

Enter my super hero husband, who spends all of 5 minutes on the Southwest website to find another perfect flight with a bonus....I get to stay overnight and fly back the next morning! This whirlwind trip has now turned into a 2-day adventure. And thanks to some dear mommy friends, Brody now had some friends to "hang" with during the day while mommy was off in Tinseltown and daddy was slaving away at the computer.

Once my flight was booked, of course I then stressed about what I was going to wear. You see, DWTS has a DRESS CODE! My ticket clearly stated that I had to wear a formal/semi-formal dress. I honestly can't remember when the last time I wore a formal dress was....my wedding perhaps? So, I scoured the racks at Target and Marshall's for the perfect elegant, comfortable, inexpensive dress that perhaps I could wear another time. After a couple of hours of this on a blazing hot Sunday afternoon with a tired and cranky 15 month old, I found a dress and what I thought were a great pair of $10 heels to go with it (and yes, there is a definite reason those shoes were only $10...I have the blisters to prove it!).

After tossing and turning on Sunday night (something I do when I have too much on my mind or when I am afraid I am going to miss my alarm clock), I shot out of bed at 5am to do the last minute prepping - curling my hair, painting my toenails, putting on a little extra makeup (all things that I really haven't done in ages), plus I packed Brody's lunch and stuff for his day, then we headed to drop Brody off and get me to the airport on time. Once I arrived in So Cal, I had only a few minutes to run off the plane, quickly change and catch my ride so that we could be on the road and off to Hollywood with the hopes of bypassing horrendous traffic. Luckily, we flew up I-5 with no problems, and arrived at the Grove shopping center with time spare and enjoyed lunch before it was time for a last minute touch up at the car, change of shoes, and a walk to the CBS studio.

About this time is when I had my first celebrity sighting! Drum roll, please......that's right, Weird Al Yankovich.

Okay, go on admit it...you owned one of his tapes when you were younger, right? I'm embarrassed to say that I did. Songs like "Eat It," and "Fat," and plenty of other ones that were so great that I can't even remember them? Yep, that's the guy.

No worries, I knew that we would see other famous people. I mean, in a few hours I would be seeing Lil Kim, Lawrence Taylor, that hot French guy from Sex it the City, Jewel, Jewel's husband, Shawn Johnson, the judges, and other famous VIPs in the audience!

Think again....after walking from the parking structure about a mile to line up in in the 100+ degree heat all dressed up in my elegant, comfy dress, with my cheap shoes (about now is when I started noticing the blisters), then herded into an outdoor holding pen with benches (ironically the same place I waited to get into The Price Is Right about 12 years ago), sweat dripping down my brow, constant worry about whether or not I put on enough deodorant, trying to smile pretty whenever the studio folks walked by, hoping that someone might say "You look like a nice party of three, why don't you come and sit inside the nice cool studio, in the front row, next to some famous people, so that you are guaranteed to be on camera during the show!"

My hopes started to fade when I figure out the method to the madness....when you get the opportunity to be in the audience at DWTS, you want to do one of three things:

1. Show up SUPER early to be one of the first folks in line. This way, when they lead you up to the balcony seats, at least you'll get to be in the front row and actually get to see the dancing.

2. Show up really LATE and be last in line. This way, you enter the studio set last and they will use you as a "seat filler." Then if any VIP doesn't show up, you are almost guaranteed a chance to sit in the floor seats, perhaps next to some famous person's mother's sister's dog walker's agent (or something like that).

3. Actually be a famous person's mother's sister's dog walker's agent....cuz then you get VIP seating!

Obviously, I am not a famous person's mother's sister's dog walker's agent. I am just a mommy to a 15 month old, wife of a hard working super hero hubby, who got caught up in the fun of a crazy 24 hour adventure to Tinseltown.

My seat for the show was waaaaaaaay up high in the last row of the balcony, behind the judges, never once filmed throughout the evening. My section of the balcony did get picked on by the cheerleader dude who gets paid to pump up the audience during commercial breaks. (Honestly, this guy was pretty cool and they probably don't pay him nearly enough.) The seats were hard, uncomfortable, and once I thought I was going to fall off the back of the balcony. The taping lasted an hour and a half. I got to see half of the dances (luckily there were TV monitors above so that we could see everything that we missed).

But the best part of the show...that hot French guy from Sex and the City came up to our balcony before the show and gave us a little hip action preview of his dance! HELLO!!! So what if he was staring down at his beautiful wife while me and about 150 other women squealed with excitement? (Let's face it, the men in the audience were WAAAAY outnumbered by women....in fact of one of the few men in my section actually fell asleep during the taping and got called out on it by the cheerleader dude!)

Would I do it all over again? Not sure about that.

It was fun, definitely an adventure, and instead of face time on TV I came home with blistered feet, sunburned shoulders, and memories of a crazy adventure in Hollywood. But hey, in a few years when my son is old enough to understand and perhaps if DWTS is still on air, then I can retell the story (skipping the not so fun details) and I know that he'll be thrilled that a few years ago his crazy, starstruck mommy, was on TV....

....even if I was all dressed up and in the cheap seats!