I went to a women's comedy show with my closest friend, Mae. My Mother-in-law told me about it by emailing me a link so I asked my friend if she'd be interested and I went and bought us the tickets. Reading the link the first thing I noticed is that one of the comedians featured was Heather Witherdon which I was certain I saw emcee a burlesque show the year before. She was fantastic then so I figured it would be an enjoyable evening.
It was only when I called to find out about purchasing tickets that I found out the tickets were sold and the show was being held at a baby/children's/pregnant moms store. It is one of those beautiful, elaborate and ridiculously overpriced stores that have the odd amazing find that I would hate to admit I fell victim for. I have a love/hate relationship with those stores. When I pulled up I had a friend with me who is, to say the least, a little cynical. There was a perfectly fit, gorgeous looking, "lulu lemoned out" woman getting out of her giant, top of the line SUV, grabbing her yoga mat to go to pre-natal yoga class at the same place I was picking up the tickets from. My friend promptly said "I fu**ing hate this place!” I'm not going to lie, I felt the same way. However I still went ahead and grabbed the tickets.
Mae and I went to the show, it was hilarious and fantastic. When leaving Mae commented that she had thought I could do something like that. I laughed but secretly wished I had the courage and the same hilarity that the women featured in that show do. Instead I finally found the courage to put what little hilarity I might have in my life, out there for the world to read. I say "oh dear" because I realise of course that my trials and tribulations, the experiences I've had in my life that have brought some humour to the table are similar to what most other people have also experienced. The experiences may not always be totally unique however the way I've seen things through my eyes might be.
Seeing the show that night reminded me of some funny stories of my own. The show was for mothers and had mostly "mom" humour. My mom does stand-up in Vancouver from time to time; it got me thinking about her as well. I realised being there that the material to do stand-up is attainable but it's the amazing wit and brilliance that brings it to the stage and entertains so well, not to mention the courage it takes. Seeing Heather again was an inspiration. She's hilarious, I can really relate to her humour. She was a stay at home mom for some time, she has an obvious sexy and exciting side, for lack of better words and she's just embraces and states the truth!
All three women, Heather Witherdon, Aisha Alfa and Somer Friesen were all hilarious that night and I could actually relate to all of them in some way. Which made me realise, if even one person can relate to your story, whether it be funny or not, then it makes the world that much smaller and that much easier to understand.
Now for my two cents...My Easter Weekend, 2012
My husband and I live in Central Winnipeg on a wonderful street. We have a lovely two-storey home we bought almost two years ago. We love our home and love hosting dinners for family and friends, so we decided to have his family for Easter dinner this year. His parents and our two nieces, who live with his parents, don't have to travel far as they live across the street on the same block about ten houses down from us.
Now if you are a modern day woman, or even a little old fashioned who is married with children or not you are probably asking yourself: "is this woman crazy?” Well not quite. My in-laws, very quickly after starting to date my husband, became like second parents to me. I had no family here and started dating my husband about two weeks after I moved to Winnipeg. It was the last week of November when I moved here and his parents had me over for Christmas. They are very giving, kind and generous people and have been there for me in every way ever since. Truth be told I knew it would be a blessing and a curse moving across the street from them however I have to confess I have this very strange "old lady" side to me and I, more often than not, enjoy their company.
We were having a total of twenty people over, all his family except one family, a husband, wife and little girl that were friends of ours and new to town. Needless to say despite the holiday the Friday prior, I still was very busy planning and preparing the meal. My mother-in-law offered to make a ham, coleslaw and a salad, which was a great help however my husband "likes" food and decided we had to have a turkey, a ham and a twenty pound lasagne plus all the fixings for Easter dinner. So although any help was very helpful, I still had a lot to do.
Our daughter decided she wanted to spend the night at Grandma's on Friday, which worked out because I had plans to go out with a friend and my husband was considering going out with his friends. In the end he didn't and I got home early so we took the opportunity to have some drinks. Now we've never been big drinkers or partyers but we used to really enjoy going out and having some beverages together in the early days. This changed as we got older, and by that I mean before our daughter was born! We are slight home-bodies to say the least. My husband has always been that way for the most part and for me it started shortly before we got married. Having said that, I still enjoyed some drinks with friends or even a bottle, or two, or three of wine. Once I got pregnant any drinking, of course, came to a standstill. Once I had our daughter I was breast feeding and I didn't drink, or even really feel like drinking, until recently. Crazy I know, but it's true, it was only about a year or a year and a half ago that I started to really enjoy wine and drinks again.
So we got our drink on. We had a couple. I mean a few. Okay, a lot of drinks. Our daughter was to have her first gymnastics class, that we signed her up for through the local leisure guide, Saturday morning at 10:30 am, not to mentioned all the cooking and preparing I still had ahead of me on Saturday and Sunday. My husband and I had lots of fun and "fun" having the night to ourselves with a few drinks however we woke up at 10:09 am to my father-in-law phoning, asking us if we're on our way. We didn't shower or anything, we just got dressed and got into the car and drove down the street a bit to pick her up.
There she was, waiting in the window. Her = excited beyond belief to start gymnastics, me = flooded with guilt!!! She came to the van with my husband, her shirt was dirty, her hair was messy and thankfully Grandma sent her with a banana and a juice box. We got to gymnastics only five minutes late. After a few warm ups and some exercise they sent the kids for a drink of water. Every parent in the room pulled out a water bottle except for the two hung over ones in the corner. To add insult to injury it was one of those pesky juice boxes where we couldn't even get the wrapper off of the straw! She finally got her drink and went back to having fun. There was a volunteer going around asking the parents their kid’s names which lead us to discover that our daughter was actually the first on the waiting list, she didn't get into the class at all. That was right about when she came running over for another drink and said: "I had no idea how much fun gymnastics could be, Mommy!” I immediately called one of the much more expensive gymnastics schools and inquired about getting her in. Our guilt cost us $172.00 for gymnastics school, $60.00 for two gymnastics suits, extra gas cost since it's at least a fifteen to twenty minute drive away from our home, so let's say at least another $150.00 in gas over the three months. Which give us total of $382.00, the price for having one night, the first in a very long time, to have a few drinks with my husband without a care in the world…sort of? Was it worth it? Well since my little girl wasn’t disappointed and has no clue how stupid and unorganized her Mom was this time than, definitely, it was totally worth it!
After the debacle of the gymnastics Saturday morning I had to bust my ass to prepare a meal and dessert for twenty people! Cooked the turkey, prepared the garlic mashed potatoes ready to be baked the next day, made my chocolate zucchini cake with raspberry yogurt icing, and my mother-in-law made my devilled eggs while I tried to fix my chocolate zucchini cake with raspberry yogurt icing. UGH! Okay, okay, I’m a baker in training! I love it but I’m still learning and it was ten o’clock at night and there was no way I was going to bake another one! So yeah, I tried to fix it with the icing. It looked terrible but everyone seemed to enjoy it the next day. I didn’t eat much, after all that, I wasn’t really hungry!
