Comedy Cruise, Sydney Australia

We wanted one last hurrah before the baby was born.  I was gigantic.  I looked like I’d swallowed a basketball. Plus a football, and maybe a little league team.  I was 37 weeks pregnant, and going on a comedy cruise in Sydney with my husband.  Maybe going on a cruise when 37 weeks pregnant is not the best of ideas, but everyone says the first baby is always late and never early, and that was the earliest cruise date we could get.  The others were all sold out.

As the boat pulled away from the dock, I freaked out a little.  What if I went into

any day now

labour (I didn’t know at that stage that labour is not actually like the movies, it’s not bang, your water breaks and 5 minutes later you have a baby.  No, it’s not like that at all.  Not for the first one anyway)?  What if my water broke?  Would we have to make the entire boat turn around prematurely just to drop me off?  Would I end up having a baby in the bathroom stall all by myself?  I decided not to think about it.  Well, to try not to think about it.

I felt much better when a group of people were running late, missed the launch entirely and then caught a water taxi to the boat that was already 15 minutes away from the dock.  Sure, it cost them $80, more than the cruise itself, but hey, they were on.  And then I knew that if something crazy happened, like soiling myself with amniotic fluid, we could just get a water taxi back to shore.  Relief sigh.

The comedy was hilarious.  We were warmed up with a comedy magician.  I can never figure out how they do their tricks, but when they do tricks and comedy at the same time?  Gold.  Then there was a rather hilarious mangey looking character who I’d just seen a week or so before when I was in the audience of Ready Steady Cook. They liked to keep us entertained in between filming segments, so he was the comedian providing the let’s-keep-the-audience-riled-up-and-cheery comedic relief.  Funny, when they introduced him on the cruise, they said “you may have seen him on the Footy Show,” and some other places that I can’t remember because I had baby brain then, and I have it again now, but they certainly didn’t say “you may have seen him making people giggle during ad breaks on the set of Ready Steady Cook.”  Nope, that’s far too embarrassing.

A man in the front row attempted to heckle the Ready Steady Cook comedian.  But heckler had a mullet.  Yeah, you read right, a mullet.  I’m sorry, but if you have a mullet, you can’t really heckle anyone.  Then he said he was from Rooty Hill, which is in Western Sydney, bogan capital of Australia (Western Sydney, not Rooty Hill specifically).  Ready Steady Cook guy spent most of the rest of his set making jokes about bogan Rooty Hill guy.  It was hilarious.  I was kind of afraid all the laughing might send me into labour, or at the very least, make me wet myself.

The cruise included an entree (for you Americans, that is an appetiser, not the main meal), main (yeah, that is the main meal.  The big one.  The one after the entree.), and desert. I can’t for the life of me remember what the dinner was, but it was yummy.  I know I ate it all.  I was hanging out for that desert.  I was 37 weeks pregnant after all.  They were doing that whole every other person thing.  You know, this person gets the delicious chocolate cake with a strawberry on the side and some sort of fudgy squiggle on top of that, the next person gets the strawberry cheesecake, the next person the chocolate cake, and so on.

Since Aaron and I were sitting next to each other, we were going to get one of each and then split them.  Only the waiter must have seen my gigantic pregnant belly and didn’t want to make me wait for my cake.  Instead, he gave both of us the cheesecake, which happened to be the one that came to our table first.  Humph.  What was I supposed to do?  I couldn’t just say “um…excuse me Mr. waiter who is trying to be nice and not make a pregnant woman wait for her desert, but I actually wanted the chocolate cake.  Take this back now please.  Come on, take it back.”  No, I couldn’t do that.

I sat there for a bit, flabbergasted at the two plates of cheesecake in front of us, willing one of them to turn into the gooey chocolately delicious mudcake that the guy across from me had in front of him.  Nope, it was still cheesecake.  Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious cheesecake.  But I wanted mudcake!  Darn it, I was pregnant and I wanted mudcake!  The man across from me didn’t touch his mudcake.  It just sat there, in front of me, taunting me.  I could have reached out and grabbed a bit, that’s how close it was.  But I couldn’t.  It was torture.  Surely guy across from me was going to at least try his mudcake?  Then at least I wouldn’t be staring at it, salivating at the very prospect of devouring it.  But he totally ignored his delicious looking cake.  It just sat there, staring at me for the rest of the trip.  I thought about asking him for it, but what if he was planning to eat it at the last minute?  Awkward….

He didn’t.  He just left it there, untouched.  Not offering it to anyone.  No, “hey, I’m not going to eat this, anyone want it?”  Nope, not at all.  The boat pulled up to the dock and he stood up get off.  Hmmm….maybe I could just try a little bite….  No, that would have looked extremely dodgy, and everyone was already staring at me for being so out of place with my basketball team belly.  Oh how I wanted to eat that cake!  Looking back, I should have just asked the waiter for the chocolate cake.  Sigh.

FYI, don’t wear a tiny mini skirt on such a cruise.  The cruise boats are not that big, so you can lose your footing if walking around from time to time.  One 20-ish lady who appeared to be from a hens night (bachelorette party) was going down the stairs in her hi-here’s-my-butt mini skirt, lost her footing, and went bum over head down the last few stairs.  Hi-here’s-my-butt mini skirt went all the way up and turned into hi-here’s-my-entire-nether-region skirt.  Lucky for her she was wearing briefs.  She probably shouldn’t have been wearing those 4 inch heels either.  I’m sure that didn’t help.

Thanks Sheri, for writing my first-ever guest blog.