You know what the only thing better than a great date is? A FREE Great Date! As in, free tickets to a great show at the Walton Arts Center. Heck, we’ll even throw in dinner at Bordino’s Italian restaurant, just down the street. All you need to do is send us an e-mail at mamas@nwamotherlode.com, and we’ll put your name in the hat for the drawing. If you like, tell us why you really need a Great Date and we may publish your witty or heartfelt answer on the website soon. If you copy your friends on the e-mail to let them know about our site, we’ll put your name in the hat again for every friend you tell. Here’s a little more info about the show:

On Friday, September 5, Chicago’s legendary comedy improv theatre The Second City will appear at Walton Arts Center at 8 p.m. Deface the Nation is The Second City’s all-political revue with customized comedy for the election year. Featuring scenes and songs that poke fun at both political parties and a variety of pundits, The Second City proves that there’s no shortage of comedy coming out of Washington D.C. Tickets for The Second City: DeFace the Nation range from $20-$32 and can be purchased by calling the Walton Arts Center Box Office at 479-443-5600 or by visiting waltonartscenter.org.

Founded in Chicago in 1959, The Second City has become the premier training ground for the comedy world’s best and brightest. Their alumni list reads like a who’s who of American comedy, as it includes: Mike Nichols, Elain May, Alan Arkin, Joan Rivers, Robert Klein, Peter Boyle, Harold Ramis, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, George Wendt, Martin Short, John Candy, Bonnie Hunt, Tim Meadows, Chris Farley, Mike Myers, Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Horatio Sanz, Ryan Stiles and countless others.

Not only will an evening with The Second City provide audiences with the chance to see comedy stars in the making, but they will also have the opportunity to see absolutely hilarious satire and cutting-edge improvisation. From Bush to Clinton to Obama to the other Clinton, DeFace the Nation is a hilarious romp through the beltway and beyond. No topic or subject matter is off limits for The Second City. If your parents asked you not to speak about it at the dinner table, chances are it will be made fun of in an evening with The Second City.

Good luck, ladies! We’ll announce the winner on Friday.

Dear Rhonda,

Almost every time I get my hair cut, I have one side that ends up longer than the other. It was okay for the first 100 times or so, but now it’s just plain annoying. Is it okay to call my stylist and go back to have her cut one piece or should I tackle it all by myself? I really don’t know what to do. I don’t want to offend my stylist by questioning her work. HELP!

Dear Tweaker,

I definitely think your stylist should know you’re not completely happy. She may need to take a little more time with your cut to execute a precise length all over. Also, I would remind you and anyone who gets a cut to KEEP YOUR HEAD STRAIGHT AND YOUR FEET UNCROSSED! (I capitalize that part because we stylists would like to shout it from the rooftops.) Countless times, I’ll begin a cut and my client will start a big conversation, bobbing her head around and there I am, trying to chase her down like a two year old high on cupcake frosting. One time, a client kept tilting her head to one side so I’d push it back straight. But, in a nano-second, it was leaning again. I secretly wished I had a prop to hold it up!

Here are a few simple suggestions that might help you get a great cut from your stylist. As I already mentioned, keep your head straight and your legs uncrossed. Then, when she’s trying to get that precision cut just right, try not to talk to her too much. I know it sounds silly, but there IS a concentration factor at play here. If she’s chatting it up with you, then she may not be paying as much attention to the cut itself. Some stylists are great at multi-tasking and others just aren’t.

Never, and I mean NEVER, be afraid to contact your stylist for any reason. This is a service industry, and it’s your money. (I say this with a bit of hesitation because every stylist knows there’s at least one person out there who will get out her ruler and measure every single hair. That’s a little extreme.) But if you feel you’ve got a legitimate complaint and you’re self-conscious about it, call your stylist to fix it. Trust me, I’d much prefer to fix my own mistake than to have a client get upset because she took scissors into her own hands and things went terribly wrong.

Rhonda Moulder is a mama of two great daughters and is a stylist at Blue Door & Co. salon in downtown Bentonville. E-mail her a question at mamas@nwaMotherlode.com or give her a call at the salon at 479-273-9944. Have a happy hair day.

By Shannon, Ladybug’s mother

I have been in purge mode. The most recent victim was my bedroom closet. I went through and dragged out all those hanging clothes that I NEVER wear anymore. Near the end of my grab, un-hanger and toss frenzy, I came upon a crisp, white shirt with three little buttons at the top. Then I had one of those moments where your eyes suddenly well up with tears and your heart squeezes with sadness. Truly, I was absolutely overcome with emotion as I pulled the cotton top to my chest. That was the shirt I wore when I was newly pregnant, when no one but close family – and my husband, of course – knew that there was a tiny life growing inside me. Just a few weeks after I found out I was going to be somebody’s mother, that was one of the first “maternity” shirts I bought. It looked like a normal white button-down blouse, but the tag said otherwise. My little secret. Then my chest began to inflate and – this is the thought that sent me into a near-swoon – one day that shirt just didn’t fit anymore. When I couldn’t wear it anymore, when I had to graduate up to a bigger size, that’s when the enormity of the baby growing inside me became real. My swollen belly and burgeoning boobs were proof to me and everyone else that I was, as they say in the Bible, with child. That’s when we told other people, as if it wasn’t obvious, that I was expecting (can I just say that I’m 4’ 11” and began resembling a walking beach ball very early on?).

After I had pressed the shirt to me for a while, I got down to the next layer of forgotten maternity-wear: the bigger-in-the-boobs-and-belly clothes I wore throughout the exciting, sickness-filled, fibroid-producing, thrilling ride to the emergency C-section delivery table. There was the black with thin white stripes top that I wore with my elastic-waist jeans. And there, at the end, the stretchy ankle-length leopard print skirt and matching top that kept me from going naked at the newspaper where I worked until the last days of my pregnancy (sorry, former office-mates that you had to see that one so much near the end).

I ponder whether to keep these clothes or not. I won’t need them anymore. We have our 6-year-old Ladybug and feel our family is complete. We don’t plan on any more children, so I could technically give the leopard skirt and white shirt away. But I think I’ll keep them — those two items, at least, as a  reminder of the new life I was beginning.

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To refrain from being a Debbie Downer, I give you the following conversation with my husband:

“I think it’s sweet how Ladybug likes to watch Westerns with you,” I told him.

“Yeah, but you have to watch closely because inappropriate stuff pops up a lot,” said husband. “The old Westerns are better.”

“Yeah, but they all have fights, someone gettin’ killed and cussin’,” I noted.

“Yeah, I guess. But without that, you’d have Brokeback Mountain,” he said.