Extreme Makeover Home Edition Diary #7

My apologies for not posting sooner, but I needed a couple of days to recover from The Big Reveal. I expected to be bursting with excitement when it was all over, and I planned to get on the computer to blog about it immediately. Instead, I spent the rest of the day fantasizing about taking a hot bath and curling up in bed. Two days later, I can only describe the big day as strange.

On the Wednesday night news, they announced that people should take the shuttle from Totem Lake Mall no later than 7:00 a.m. if they wanted to be at the reveal. This made me nervous. I had no intention of taking the shuttle, or of being there so darn early, but what did this really mean? Were they going to close the spectator entrances at a certain point? Would there be nonstop fun and excitement that I'd be missing between 7 and 9?

I woke up with a nervous stomach, and gave serious thought to crawling even deeper under the covers and forgetting the whole thing. I had taken two hours off work to be there, but those two hours could just as easily be spent in bed, couldn't they? Finally, curiosity got the best of me, and I threw on some clothes, fixed my make-up, and pulled a hat over my bed hair.

We got there at 9:00 on the dot, and as I hurried up the hill, my heart sank a little. "They're going to move that bus," I thought, "I'm this close, and I'm totally going to miss it." Hah! I could have slept in, showered, had a real breakfast, and still been on time for the reveal!

The sad thing is that I went there fully intending to have a great time, but the general mood was sour. People wanting to leave were trying to walk up the street because the sidewalks were so packed, but they were immediately shut down and told that they'd just have to walk around the block. I was starting to smell mutiny, and the vibe was changing from "Yay! Move that bus!" to "Seriously, move the f-ing bus." Maybe it was because everyone had already tried to do this the day before, but I sensed that patience was waning on both sides of the fence.

For the next hour and a half, we watched as they filmed the empty limo creeping up and down the street, did crowd shots in front of the house, and fiddled with the bus. There were plenty of glimpses of the design team, but aside from occasional bursts of energy from the Lake Washington High School Drill Team (my alma mater!), it was freakishly quiet.

Watching the show, you get the impression that the reveal takes place in real time: the limo comes up the road, people cheer, the design team greets the family, and everyone chants "move that bus" with an almost crazed level of enthusiasm. The bus moves and the family goes into the house with Ty. Watching it unfold in person, you realize that things are carefully staged and filmed out of sequence, just like any television show. Weirdly, they don't bother to keep the crowd abreast of what's going on, so you don't always know when or why to cheer, and when Ty finally ran down the line to give high-fives to the crowd, it was kind of random. I stuck my hand out, but he missed me. Even so, it was surreal seeing him in person and being part of something I've watched on countless Sundays over the past 4 years.

The thing that freaks me out is that instead of raucous cheers, I swear you could have heard a pin drop when the bus finally moved. I felt a little choked up for a moment, and then it was sort of over. The crowd immediately dissipated, even though the design team was still standing in the street, and I spied Ty on the porch after the family had gone inside! Wait, what? I always thought he went in with them! He was leaning on a post, sort of hunched over, looking like he was either talking on a cell phone or trying to recover from a case of the spins.

To tell you the truth, I think we all had a case of the spins by that point. Theron Zahn from KOMO barged past us in a decidedly unfriendly way, and it seemed that the adventure was truly over. I headed home, scurried to change clothes, do something about that bed hair, and eat breakfast, and arrived at work feeling somewhat shell-shocked.

"How was it?" everyone asked excitedly, and I didn't know what to say. "Torturous" came immediately to mind, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I know I would have kicked myself for years if I'd missed it. Besides, Ty did run right by me, and he touched my mom.

My manager sent me downstairs to collect the amazing autographed shirt my colleague's husband had gotten for me, and we spent the rest of the day trying to decode it. I can clearly make out my own name, but there's something written between that and Ty's signature that no one can read. I'll probably spend the rest of my days trying to crack the case, but that only makes the whole thing more exciting and mysterious. If anyone out there knows what Ty tends to write when he signs autographs, let me know. "Zip WA" seems unlikely.

Despite ending on an odd note, the experience was great as a whole, and I'll be looking forward to seeing how it all plays out on television. More then...