ROCHESTER, Minn. — Not long after Jan Donahue's husband left for a two-year tour of duty in Iraq, one of her neighbors tied a yellow ribbon around a tree in the Donahues' yard.

"That's great — thank you," Donahue said during a standup routine in front of a military crowd at a Holiday Inn in Rochester. "Now, how about tying one of those yellow ribbons on my dog and walking him around the friggin' block?"

The 49-year-old Minnesota mother is trying to find humor in the fears and frustrations of being a soldier's wife.

With help from a Los Angeles comedy coach, she has developed a standup routine and has been performing it in front of military audiences around the country. And while her husband is now back from Iraq, she hopes to make a career out of telling jokes.

Her new line of work grew out of her misery: a husband absent for much of the last five years, two belligerent teenage boys, a mountain of debt, her own health problems, including a deepening depression.

"Bad for life, good for comedy," said Judy Carter, the comedy coach who helped Donahue with her act.

A year ago, Donahue didn't much see the humor in her situation. Not long after her husband left, Donahue developed kidney stones and lost her job with the state Department of Transportation. Her sons were getting in trouble with the law.

"I didn't want to leave the house. I didn't want to do anything," she said. "I almost didn't want to live anymore, except I had to for my boys and my husband. But I didn't know what I was going to do, because everything that could possibly go wrong was going wrong.

In early 2007, the Minnesota National Guard learned that many of its soldiers in Iraq would see their tours extended. The Guard made counselors available to family members, and Donahue — by now at her wit's end — went to see one.

"She said, 'What do you want to do in life?' " Donahue recalled. "I said, 'I've always wanted to be a comic, but I'll never do that.' But a week later she had me at a family readiness group, doing some comedy."