Tag Archives: fun

Patty’s Day: Happy birthday, Pat

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Another March has rolled around on the calendar, after a March last year that I thought would be the March to end all Marches.

Here we are, still sheltering, as the world scrambles to get vaccinated now. The speed of the vaccine is an improvement. You can’t not think of pandemics and health emergencies past, and how they were handled. We now have new president, Old Joe, at the very least asking the country to behave. I don’t know that people had to be begged to be conscientious and careful for polio.

I still think of Pat, my mother all the time. Especially when I do things like buy a roll of green burlap and try to convince M. that I can make something with it for his holiday decorating. Crafting with bits and bobs and junk and trash and bailing wires and whatever else you have on hand, and visualizing that something might be possible in a pile of rubbish, was Pat every damn day.

Today, she would have been 92. She would have been a 92 full of so much to say about the past year.

I’m certain she would have hated Donald Trump almost as much as she hated Cardinal Bernie Law. Although, she’d always hate Law more for his role in letting little kids get hurt. Repeatedly. For years. Horribly. In Pat’s judgement there can’t be a hell big enough for the priest scandal and any child molester or person who looked away from the molester but did nothing.

I’m sure, if Pat were here, I’d be getting an earful on not working. Whenever I’m between jobs, I hear her worrying voice. Will I end up in some Dickensian debtors’ prison, if I don’t get a J. O. B.?

At exactly the same time, she’d be telling my husband that it’s a poor family that can’t take care of one bum. (The immortal words of her uncle Joe, opining on the unemployed.)

She’d have to admit that between the extended unemployment from the government, the craziness of COVID19 and the fact that M. is working, we’ll be fine.

I have to give equal space in my head for Pat’s worry about work with her equal conviction that you can’t let the bastards of any workplace bring you down. From everything she ever said behind your back, you’d find out that Pat was actually pro-fun and doing your own thing.

All of the above is pretty dull. It’s not a fitting way to honor her birthday. Let’s try some chestnuts from way back when, when Pat was alive and kicking. Really kicking.

One of the things that I definitely inherited in my DNA from Pat (although rumor has it my dad Earl probably had a dollop, too) is a willingness to add a little kookiness to any workplace. Sometimes begrudgingly, but always with gusto, she’d take on decorations or gifts or ceremonies, and throw in some straight out of her head crazy touch. Pat’s head contained Pinterest well before Pinterest was born.

She also was doing Pinterest fails before they were born.

When I left my old job, my first California job, my first job in a long time with a healthy run and leaving with goodwill, I left the familiarity to do wacky things. A group of friends, among the coworkers with whom I still try to stay in touch, we held impromptu contests and challenges and mini events. They weren’t official company events, but they were sufficiently goofy to not get stopped by management.

This time of year, it would be all about Peeps. Peeps are wads of sugar, ostensibly marshmallow, shaped like bunnies and chicks with all sorts of radioactive food coloring. Given their hardy, some would say inedible, structure, they lend themselves to construction projects.

The Washington Post had a famous diorama contest for 10 years. They killed it, coincidentally or not, with the beginning of the Trump Administration. At my old job, we maintained the tradition.

In the heady days of Trump’s first 100 days, I knitted pussy hats and handed them out alongside my sister and aunt and cousins and some of their families and friends in the streets of Washington, DC, while marching with thousands of angry women.pussy hat

I also contributed to tiny little Peeps-sized hats, along with my coworkers, who also marched. We made an epic, historically accurate diorama, based on our lived experiences as marchers in despair at Trump’s ascendency. Peeps march
Had Pat been around, I believe she would have marched along with her sister, too.

If Pat had been around, I believe she would have found the source of Peeps with the ultimate discount, bargain, cheap (pun intended) rate. She probably would find a Peeps coupon.

And, she would have spitballed diorama ideas like no other. She’d probably pitch me ideas to use for future pranks and challenges at work.

I do miss that between my unemployment and the pandemic, there’s no place to pointlessly entertain yourself while earning your daily pay.

Pat would also embrace the pandemic. Not only would she not mind being forced to stay away from people — kind of a utopia for some of us — she would have figured out some angles for fun. I am certain, if you were Pat’s friend or family, she’d anonymously be sending you packages or leaving suspicious bundles with old shopping bags on your porch with something fun or tasty inside or maybe just something she bought on sale.

If anyone reads this post, try to carry on the goofiness that is still possible. Wear a hat on your next Zoom call, maybe even a balloon hat. Or change your zoom background to something out of the ordinary — not the Golden Gate Bridge or a tasteful Apartment Therapy interior — try a ball pit or bar or Chucky Cheese’s or PeeWee’s Playhouse.

Make something. Even if it’s lopsided or imperfect. Use a milk carton as a vase. Bring a treat to work, if you go to work, or send a treat to a coworker, if you don’t. Send an anonymous package or leave something on someone’s porch.

Fun is something you can make. Make something for Pat the Maker.

In this week’s episode

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There’s a line in the movie “Auntie Mame” that always resonated with me. If I remember correctly, it’s “Life’s a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.”

I was obsessing about that line for the better part of the week after my Spanish lesson.

First, probably makes sense to explain the Spanish lesson part. I work in a place that among its benefits is some dough to pay for edumacation. Like many a place, on account of the IRS not minding, I’m offered for them to pay for me to get me get my learn on. Only thing is, you can’t just learn anything, so I opted away from belly dancing (IRS no likes) and into language (everybody likes lingual ed, right?).

Besides, they say that old people learning shite like languages helps to ward off the old dementia. We’ll see.

So I take one-on-one conversational Spanish. Miguel comes by and for an hour and a half listens to me butcher his native tongue while awkwardly trying to utter something akin to a coherent sentence. Mostly I fumble around for adjectives, destroy verb tenses and using what feeble few words I know to describe something kind of like, but not really, communicating.

Miguel. Él es muy paciente. Soy un tonto, pero lo intento.

Believe it or not, I actually learned the word “tonto” on Wednesday. It’s not “friendly Indian guide,” like the Lone Ranger might think. It’s idiot or fool.

I was trying to explain to Miguel, again with my infinitesimal Spanish vocabulary, what it meant to be kooky or quirky. We whipped out our phones and language apps and tried to figure out the equivalent expression. We failed. But, I did learn that the Three Stooges are the “Los Tres Chiflados.”

In this week’s episode of my Spanish class, I tried to tell Miguel about our fiesta de el psíquico, where Felix the psychic medium came to our house and gave readings to our friends for a modest fee.

We chatted about talking with the spirit world and psychics. I learned that Miguel believes los muertos no hablan. I gotta agree. I don’t really know whether the dearly departed are up for chats while we drink red wine and/or tea. Wouldn’t once you are dead you would kind of figure, hey, no more mundane chit chat for me?

I learned that Miguel believes in demons, and it could be they, the bad’uns that Felix is actually chatting up. It’s a mysterious thing this existence and life and death and all.

But, I also learned that Miguel kind of thinks I’m nuts. Or maybe he admires me. Nah, probably thinks I’m nuts, which brings me back to Auntie Mame, and the banquet and starving.

In the movie, and in the musicals too — by the way, it’s a toss up between Angela Lansbury and Rosalind Russell as better Mames, sorry Lucy, I love you, but not the same league — Mame is an eccentric “free spirit.” It ain’t always pretty, there are bankruptcies and pregnancies and pissing off people, but she has fun.

I think Miguel thinks I’m like Mame, only I’m almost certain it probably wasn’t a big cultural touchstone in his native Ecuador. So, he doesn’t know that he thinks I’m like Mame.

Maybe I am.

We chatted some more in a mix of Spanish and a little bit of English to get a point across, and he tells me that every lesson he is surprised what I’ve been doing. In his words (and gestures), most people do kind of the same thing all of the time or maybe stick to a few things. For me, and for M., though, the cluster of activities seems to be a bit wider than most.

His example: this week I told him about la fiesta de el psíquico and awhile back it was how both M. and I became ministers in order to marry our friends. And, there is my renewed vigor, as a new season is upon us, for crabbing. And, writing. And, comedy. And, then there is the actual real job.

I gather my list is eclectic.

Of course, old Miguel is one to hablar. He’s a Spanish tutor. But, he’s really a math teacher. His math students are reformed parolees. He also spends some free time writing short stories. Incredibly short, I think he keeps them to 100 words. He read me one and made me try to sort out the meaning as a Spanish lesson. It was about a crab (see above interests).

But, I wonder, why not spend weekends on adventures? Why not try everything? Why shuffle alone in the expected course?

In my head, life’s a reality TV show, and I want to see what’s going coming up in next week’s episode. I want to make sure the team of writers that live in M.’s and my heads comes up with interesting new adventures. I want to order a la carte so I can try a little of this and a little of that and then get seconds on what I like.

How else will I ever find anything I like, if I don’t try everything else?

On a side, definitely tangential but possibly relevant, note, I think this philosophy drives a constant source of amusement in my life, and in M.’s. Apparently, we don’t act our age. To a lot of people that’s admirable, to quite a few it’s puzzling, and to still more it’s evidence we are childish or some how naughty. Near as I can tell, pushing 50 is meant to be a rather serious affair, somewhere between an IRS audit and a trip to the morgue.

I very much risk dying a dilettante. But, by all that is holy, I’d rather have grabbed a plate for the banquet then gone hungry.

There has to be special circle of hell

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All my life I’ve sucked at sports.

It’s a special kind of suck. Not totally incompetent, like I can catch a little, hit the ball with some slight awareness, if not authority, throw without hitting the back of my own head. I not only know what a line drive is, but in my life time I’ve hit it solidly down the middle and made the pitcher hop.

Nope, my suck is all about the almost. For example, despite an understanding of running without worrying about where your hit ball lands, my burners are without fire, my running leaden. Any ball thrown by any human can get to first before me.

I compensate by having fun. I may suck at the concepts and skills behind team sports, but I appreciate the camraderie. I get the act even if my personal follow through is weak and painful, and I can admire skill in others.

But I’m not all about competing. If my teammates swing and miss but smile at the trying, it’s only slightly different than a sweet catch deep in left field. I’m forgiving when things slip and enthusiastic win or lose.

However, and you to know there would be a fucking however, if ever I’m competitive, it’s over the douchebags who care too much. In tonight’s episode, I really wanted to be a 6-foot tall male gorilla in someone’s face. Instead, I just indulged my big mouth.

We were losing, because that’s what our team does. The final score was 13-3, so clearly we weren’t what you might call a clear and present danger. What’s more, it’s co-ed, city D league not semi-pro ball.

That’s the backdrop, late in the game with a damn unlikely chance of catching up. We’re at bat. More particularly, one of our women players who has been known to swing and miss was up. One of our few very competent, very good players was giving some pointers from the viewpoint of the first base coach. As the first couple of balls hit the catcher’s glove, he let her know which pitch went wrong where. Nothing too intense and certainly not overboard, just a little patter about low or outside.

The pitcher, who really is looking to taste that league t-shirt he’ll get from playing winning ball, stopped the game to let the first base coach know that it was. “against the rules” to coach the batter. He admonished him from the mound that just so he knew, our guy was breaking the rules.

He was adamant. He was yelling. He was a king douche. Seriously, man, life is short and so are league games. And, for the record, the man you were lecturing has been playing, coaching and watching ball prior to your birth, Mr. D-bag.

Meanwhile, the ump missed it until the catcher explained it to him, and he said increduously that there was no such rule. He told everyobe to keep playing and was chuckling about it a hit later when I was on deck.

Of course, I yelled to my team and requested some coaching from the dugout, because the ump said it was OK. The pitcher glared at me.

It was sweet to get a hit down the middle off that guy’s pitches. It was a shortlived joy, as my ball went right to the second baseman and another out. Sigh.