Just...

We just wanted a girls' night out.

Drink and smoke with great abandon, without fear of setting a bad example to our children.

Just hang out, and feel there was not a care in the world, other than getting hope tipsy and safe. The husbands indulge: they would take care of the kids.

Just 3 girls, wanting a night out. After weeks of planning and re-scheduling, we hit the only easily accessible joint in town. Everything about the place, from its name and rickety tables to the patrons and the music, was askew.

But we were determined to get drunk. And being drunk would be the only way to enjoy that dig.

Tequilas and cocktails fail miserably in their endeavour. They barely draw out a few giggles from us.

An hour before midnight Cinderellas start discretely, and then not so discretely, looking at their watches. And then call out the men to drive us back home.

Where we having fun? Oh, yes, we were. That was for sure. But somewhere in all that wanting to cut loose and run wild, mommy-strings were tugging at us. Has one been fed? Is the other up? Are the men watching violence (and whatever else) on TV while the children are around?

Are these creeps around us -- young and old, really the alternative for what we have left behind at home for the evening?

Apparently not. Final analysis:

We girls do need to go out and have some fun -- Get drunk, get high, smoke ourselves senseless. But the beauty of it is, our life is not so screwed up that we need to do it everyday.

Just that one night in ever so many moons, when we want to be just girls. Not wives and mothers.

Just Girls out on a night for some Unadulterated Fun.

Just wish Doha had a few more decent joints to do that.