On Saturday, I decided to trade in Netflix for live theatre, namely RMTC’s penultimate production of The Humans by Stephen Karam. The play opened in 2016, right in the middle of my New York trip (I saw A View from the Bridge instead), winning the Tony Award for best play later that year. This production runs at hour-and-forty minutes, with no intermission, telling the story of a Thanksgiving in a New York duplex but talks about family dynamics, secrets, and a middle class slowly eroding in America. I know how to show myself a good time.
After the play finished, I had plans to walk over to The Forks in the spring daylight, have a snack and a glass of wine, then wander over to Baked Expectations for something sweet. After doing the work-home-parents-home circuit, I wanted some solitude, even if it’s in the middle of The Common, the new hip place to eat and drink. The snow has mostly disappeared in areas, and the sidewalks look less like a skating rink/great lake hybrid. Something in my mind reminded me having a glass of wine at The Common came with a catch. I knew night outs came with a price, something I budget for in advance until…
Yikes!
I decided to wander over to Inn at the Forks to check it out, a place with more reasonably-priced wine by comparison but no dessert menu. (My plans remained fluid just in case.) I decided to skip ‘Baked’ and go for Stella’s Vegan Chocolate Cake, a dish I dubbed my date for the evening. If you talked to my younger self, circa 18-25, she would say going out on your own was a nutty idea and what would people think. Over 40 me doesn’t give an F-sharp and loves taking a walk on the path running along the river.
Around this point in the story, I have this meet-cute with a guy, beard optional, and it’s love at first sight after we struck up a conversation about, I don’t know, this Canada Goose all by itself on breaking Red River:
However, this is Winnipeg, a shallow dating pool giving me past concussions after diving in, so it’s a river walk and chocolate cake instead. I prefer solitude if any of my friends can’t come out. It’s better to get out and about than stuck in the stay-at-home rut.
Unpaused Life 