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The set list is available here.In other coolness: this particular show was filmed for their next DVD release, which tickles me to no end.

Of course, there were moments of wit and hilarity. Since our seats were in the nosebleed realm, which is always entertaining when attending a show with Kara, who's afraid of heights.

"Oh, you're not gonna fall!" I told her during her post-Kings of Leon hand-wringing. "Not unless I push you, anyway."

"THAT'S WHAT I'M AFRAID OF!!!!"

Later, Holley nudged me, laughing as she yelled, "We paid $100 each for these seats!" And then we all laughed and laughed and laughed. The laugh of the damned, of course.

A bit later, when Kara went in search of a toilet, Holley suggested that we throw Kara's jacket, just to freak her out. I thought that was a great idea, and that we should leave a note on her seat that said, "You're next!". Unfortunately, I would have had to borrow a pen and paper from Kara (which she had on hand to write a rough draft of the terse letter she's sending to Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, but that's another story).

While we were waiting, four conical, glowing red lights were lowered, one for each member of the band. I tried to tell Holley that they were special U2 heat lamps, specially designed for maximum pop star freshness, but employees are required to dispose of any pop star left under the lamps for more than 15 minutes. I wasn't exactly successful in relaying this info, because I cracked myself the fuck up and couldn't get my entire long-winded fast-food joke out without heaving with laughter.

Obviously, I had a touch of the altitude sickness, coupled with the bad karma that comes from eating a 1/2 pound of pure Chicago beef under an autographed photo of Oprah at the Palace Grill.

Now, before I get into the show itself, let me tell you something. In the big moments of my life, especially over the past four years or so, U2 has always been present. When I know I need to walk out of my house to face something big, and I'm having trouble doing so, "Beautiful Day" appears, and I'm coaxed out of my home and my comfort zone, into new territory. It happened when we were trying to drag ourselves out before the Nov. 2001 U2 show camp-out, and when my friends and I were getting the gumption to hit the road for my 30th birthday road trip to Memphis. It happened the night I went to the hospital to give birth to Clara Jane. After 14 hours of early-stage labor, wondering with each pain how much longer I could stall, "Beautiful Day" appeared on VH1. It was the last song I heard played in my home before it changed forever. It was how I knew it was time to make the most frightening journey of my life.

About a month prior, it was another U2 song that triggered the notion that I was on the verge of something big. I was undergoing some tests to make sure all was well with Clara Jane. One of the tests involved measuring her heart rate and movement to ensure that they corresponded with each other. Just as the nurse started the test, "Where The Streets Have No Name" started playing on the lite-rock station the nurses were listening to. The song starts quiet, with a flutter of melody from The Edge's guitar, building into a racing heartbeat of drums and bass until it explodes with Bono ...

I want to run
I want to hide
I want to tear down these walls that hold me inside.

And as the music built, my baby began to wiggle, then tumble. By the time Bono's voice burst through, I could feel my child in every square inch of my body. She gyrated, kicked and twisted. Her little heart thundered in jagged lines on the fetal monitor. For five and a half minutes I was more aware than ever of the human being inside me, seperate from me.

The song ended, her movements returned to normal, her heart rate slowed. It was just a momentary burst of interuterine excitement, the fetal equivilent of stopping your daily routine, cranking up your favorite song and pogoing around the living room to blow off a little steam.

In the eight months I had carried her, she never seemed real. I felt her movements, but the concept of carrying another human being just felt completely abstract. She was never as real to me as she was in those five and a half minutes. Music could move her, just as it has always moved me.

My daughter and I had found our first common interest.

Why do humans dance? Why do we bob our heads to a tune? Because we're wired to do so. It's in us before we exit the womb.

Can you hear me when I sing...
You're the reason I sing
You're the reason why the opera is in me

Bono wrote those words in a song for his deceased father. I was dreading hearing those words in concert, in the aftermath of the most recent blow-out with my own father. But it barely fazed me on Monday night, when I expected it to lead to a blubbering breakdown. My heart seems to have decided on its own volition to no longer dwell on every single way I have failed him in my life. I can't feel bad about that anymore, because it's damn near destroyed me, these feelings of never being adequate, of knowing that the only person I ever wanted to please still sees me as being little more than a lazy smart ass.

Can you see the beauty inside of me?
What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?

I'm trying to reclaim it. I can see it. It's there. I can almost touch it, if I reach.

In all of the glitz and rock star spectacle, beyond the screaming crowd and filming, it came down to two songs for me. Two songs that turned me inward and left me tear-streaked and shaking, reminders of what this life of mine is supposed to be about.

"Beautiful Day", six songs into the show:

Touch me
Take me to that other place
Teach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case

Words I've heard so many times over the past four and a half years. Words that have always given me a little push when I needed it. But they didn't push this time. They pulled me back.

As much as Kara fears falling from the nosebleed seats, I have feared falling of late. In the worst moments of the past 15 months, when I've felt inadequate at best, and like a whirling sandstorm set to destroy everything I love and myself at worst, I have felt myself falling. It would be so easy to fall, so easy to just let go of this life and be done with the pain. A few times my fingertips have relaxed and I've just about let go. Said my goodbyes, made my peace, and waited to drop.

I know I'm not a hopeless case. I know I'm not a hopeless case. I know I'm not a hopeless case. Sometimes, I need Bono to remind me of that in person, in the presence of 30,000 other people.

And in that moment on Monday, I felt something shift. A question answered. A flutter followed by a gyration that makes life real. Real and good.

Nine songs later, "Where the Streets Have No Name", and all I could think of was that little girl at home, the one who came to life for me during that song, the one I'm going to hang on for.

And once again, I walked out at the end of a U2 show completely shaken to my core, and reminded of what it means to be alive, what it means to be human, and what power there is in surrendering to something much larger than myself and having faith that I'll be caught should I lose my grip.

Today, Clara Jane and I were back to reality. Groggy breakfast. Swollen baby gums with teeth gleeming just under transluscent skin. Frantically rushing to take care of my basic hygeine and the bills while she napped. Grocery store and Target in the sweltering heat and humidity.

I was listening to How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb as we ran our errands. While I've enjoyed it, it hasn't touched me like other U2 albums. But then again, Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby and All That You Can't Leave Behind didn't reach me at first. It took time.

Pulling into the Target parking lot, it suddenly meant something to me as I looked in the rearview mirror into those smiling blue eyes, the child giggling as she pulled her big toe to her mouth just because she knows it makes me laugh:

Baby slow down
The end is not as fun as the start
Please stay a child somewhere in your heart

I'll give you everything you want
Except the thing that you want
You are the first one of your kind

And you feel like no one before
You steal right under my door
I kneel 'cause I want you some more
I want the lot of what you got
And I want nothing that you're not

Everywhere you go you shout it
You don't have to be shy about it

And I cried as I pulled into my parking space. I cried as I laughed at the giggling girl in the backseat with both of her bare big toes in her mouth without shyness, without fear and with nothing but love and joy.