Tomorrow is the as yet labeled holiday celebrating the birth of one heckuva a cranky broad. She was our cranky broad. The people’s crab.

Much more than trying to remember and figure out the anniversary of her death, I remember Pat on her birthday.

I set myself up a deadline of getting something new written about her by tomorrow, so I wrote a fair amount this past weekend. It’s rough, I want crystalline prose dripping from my fingertips. But, in the lumps and bumps of drafting, who the fuck knows, if not diamonds maybe a bit of zirconia.

The Pat story I decided to commemorate in my writing, which may turn into some kind of intro went something like this…

One story sums up the adult relationship I had with my mother, Pat. I had gone to her house to take her shopping, run errands or just annoy her, as she was wont to comment on some of my visits. As she flipped TV channels in the living room, I wandered in some other room. Excitedly, Pat called to me to come and see what was on television.

I entered the living room to see a nano-second of a Brady Bunch special, as Pat gleefully switched off the TV entirely. Incredibly pleased with herself, she cackled that she had been waiting 20 years to do just that.

Vintage Pat.

Two things kind of sink a bit of a counterpuntal thang in my head about the loss of Pat and her anniversary day.

First, I’m behind in my writing or my creative writing. Behind in the goals inevitably you have to set up in your head to trick you into thinking you got something to say. I mean, come fucking on, the world cares not for the shit dripping from my gray ooze. If and what I write is on the importance scale about a -273, actually more like negative n+1.

So I give myself guidelines to fake tangibility, substance, merit. I got nothing, of course.

Anyhow, my creative writing got trumped a bit by the prosaic matter of life. I poured my skillz into documentating my Nick hate.

I wrote two whole pages on why in god’s fucking name we would be terribly unlikely to give him our cash, and in fact he be owing. I threw in California state code and clauses, I documented, I ‘splained. Most of all I demanded our dough back.

For extra drama, I attached this list:

Item: ➡ Replacement cost
Casual Home Birch Sailcloth Tab Top Panel Pair – 84″x108″ ➡ $34.99
Classic Home Ball Drapery Rod – Mahogony Wood (7′) ➡ $24.99
Sterilite 44 qt. Trash Can (for trash) ➡ $12.99
Sterilite 44 qt. Trash Can (for recycling) ➡ $12.99
IKEA Wastepaper basket (main bathroom) ➡ $1.99
IKEA Wastepaper basket (master bathroom) ➡ $1.99
Round Patio Table ➡ $29.99
Master Plunger for kitchen sink ➡ $8.99
Master Plunger for kitchen sink ➡ $8.99
25 Ft Snake (Drain Unclogger) ➡ $18.48
Grand Total ➡ $156.39

Asking Nick not just for the money he took but a tasty bit more. I think Pat would approve. I’m not sure she would have gotten it up to write the major opus herself, but she’d certainly applaud her baby girl not getting taken or kept down or cheated.

On the flipside, tomorrow’s big event at work will be signing up for a walking/fitness challenge. They’ll be doling out some free pedometers so you can log your steps, get all fit and shit and win some prizes or some other kind of teambuilding fun and friendlty competition.

Now that, competing, fitness, exercise, walking, physicality, in and of itself, is of no fucking relationship to Pat whatsoever. But, her sisters are about nine thousand times more active then Pat chose to be, and they’re still here. Arguably, teaching, her life’s work apart from messing with her own kids, took a huge toll. I doubt folks realize how teaching is probably right up next to mailman and waitress for on your feet all day kind of hell.

I whiningly and whingingly hit the gym, walk, move about a bit, because I am my mother’s daughter. I refuse to take this life lying down, though, and I’ll be fucking damned to give it all up too soon.

Some days, when I’m strolling through Cali in sunshine among folks who love the active life, I mean this is the state no doubt that invented those baby jogger strollers, I muse on the might have been only not really not actually. If through the luck of geography or wanderlust, if Pat landed here, what would have happened. Would she have been one of the feisty dames in polar fleece lining these not so mean streets walking their artisanal cheeses and breads and local wines home from the upscale grocer?

Or, would she still have preferred a couch and a crossword?