A tribute...

For those of you who don't know, tomorrow is my mom's birthday. And for those of you who REALLY haven't been paying attention, she lives with me now, so we get to spend lots and lots and lots of time together.

Which has actually been quite wonderful. She's honestly the best person to have in your corner when, as a Captain of Industry, you work 14 hours a day and have no time to do laundry, take bathroom breaks or feed yourself. I can count on two hot meals and clean underoos every day now that Mom is here. She even stripped my sheets, washed and dried them and made up the bed with hotel corners and shams and stuff last week when I was completely swamped and my sheets were beginning to walk around by themselves. It was the best day ever.

But I digress - I didn't want to share with you today the ways my mom makes my life better - I wanted to share my all-time favorite Mom adventure story. It's a classic from the Starling family album.

Mom likes to do outdoorsy stuff. She likes rafting and hiking and biking and all that. So every year for her birthday or other Mom-centric holidays, she asks to do something like that. Like for her 60th birthday, when she rode a mechanical bull. But that's a WHOLE 'nother story.

For Mother's Day about five years ago, she and I decided to go biking and canoeing on the towpath up the road from where we lived. (The towpath is a remnant of canal days, where the horses towing the barges would walk. Fun facts.) Anyhow, we signed up for the half-day bike-and-float package, where you ride upriver on bikes and then float back downriver in a canoe. Two hours, no muss, no fuss, back in time for a light lunch and a movie.

I should have known how things were going to turn out when we arrived at the bike shop and the only man working had an artificial leg. NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT - it just makes it really hard to test out bikes. Which would prove to be an issue later. He also only had about four teeth, and they all got in the way of his map-reading skills. He got out a grimy little map and showed us the way from his shop, through town, to the towpath. He told us to pick out a bike, ride it around a little, and then we could head off. The guys with the canoes would meet us about five miles up the road for the relaxing post-ride float.

Mom and I set off, intrepid explorers that we were. There weren't any signs at the start of the towpath, but that didn't deter us - we figured we were merely the first ones out that day and we'd enjoy miles of solitude on the bike path while everyone else slept and drank mimosas. We did, in fact, enjoy miles of solitude but only because WE WERE ON THE WRONG PATH. We didn't realize it at first, but when the gravel slowly gave way to a dirt track that was so rough you had to ride standing up for fear of breaking your pelvis, we started to think something might be wrong.

Mom asked me, "Don't you work with people who bring their kids out here to ride? How can they do that on this path?"

She was right - the towpath was supposed to be this glorious bike path that was wide enough for five riders abreast and smooth enough for a tricycle being ridden by a three-year-old. We were on an old washout, it seemed. We confirmed something was amiss when we looked through the woods, ACROSS THE CANAL, and saw riders gliding easily along - families and the elderly and at one point, a barbershop quartet on a pair of tandem bikes. THAT was the towpath. We were on the hellpath.

And then it got worse. Much, much worse. First, the seat fell off my bike, so I could only ride standing up with the fear of sodomizing myself with a rusty bike part, or I could walk next to my bike, carrying my seat. FOR FIVE MILES. Then, we ran into an elderly couple collecting trash along the path who said, kind of cryptically, "Well, it's a beautiful day for a ride, as long as you watch for the trains." TRAINS?

We found out what they meant soon enough. Seems the hellpath was merely a feeder for the deathpath, which was just train tracks. We followed the train tracks, figuring they'd get us to civilization at some point. They did, but not before becoming a trestle bridge that crossed the river. WITH NO WALKING AREA. Nope, just a bridge made of train tracks and a 30-foot fall to your death or certain paralysis below.

Did I mention I'm afraid of heights? Mom had to talk me across that bridge like a hostage negotiator, wheedling, cajoling, tempting me with a Hostess Sno-ball, whatever it took. We carried our bikes across this giant bridge, praying the whole time that a train wasn't coming. I resolved to throw my bike in the river, make my peace with God and hug that train. I wasn't jumping.

We finally ran into a little town called Clinton, Ohio, where we accosted a nice man in his yard who put the seat back on my bike for me and gave us directions back to the towpath. By that point, I'd made several hysterical phone calls to my brother and my boyfriend at the time, both of whom had no idea where we were but thought it was pretty funny that we were so lost. We also called the folks at the bike/canoe shop, who had pretty much the same reaction.

Two miles of riding later, we found the canoe portage. And 30 minutes after calling the bike shop, a father-son team in a pickup showed up, unloaded a canoe and took our bikes. For a minute, we thought they were just stealing our bikes. The one gentleman, though, finally spoke to us, to tell us that we needed to watch out for branches in the water, because, and I quote, "earlier this week I came out to cut some of them branches out of the water but I dropped my chainsaw in the canal and I haven't been able to fish it out yet."

So I went the entire canoe trip visualizing a running chainsaw slicing its way along the bottom of the canal, just waiting for the opportunity to remove one of my limbs. Makes for a relaxing trip.

By this point, Mom and I had turned a 45-minute bike ride into a three-hour epic journey and we were starving, so we paddled down that canal as fast as we could, giving the whistling, cheerful bicyclists the finger every chance we got and scarfing down Hostess Sno-balls like they were Powerbars. By the time we got to the end point, we leapt from the canoe, ran to our cars, and I honestly don't think I've ridden a bike since. Or celebrated Mother's Day.

Mom thinks that was the best trip she's ever taken. Which is why she's such an awesome mom. Happy Birthday, Skippito.

Fairy Ann, Wheeler-Dealer

My mom is a wheeler-dealer. Put her on the phone with a salesman, and she'll get the best deal they've ever given anyone. Throw a stack of coupons and an office-supply catalog at her feet and the doorbell will ring 20 minutes later with a guy delivering your free paper and a bonus box of kittens.

I share none of my mom's special abilities. It embarrasses me to use a coupon anywhere but at the grocery and even then, I sometimes feel bad holding up the line with my fist-fulls of money savers. This is why, now that she lives with us, Mom does all the negotiating. Just today, she battered the woman from Scott's into some sort of crazy discount by threatening to go back to TruGreen. And she got the TruGreen lady to give up some serious ground herself, by threatening to go with Scott's.

It's an art, really. She sits down at the phone with her legal pad at the ready and her loins girded, cracks her knuckles and goes to work. Twenty minutes later, the Schwan's man is paying her to take his food.

Now this can go the other way, too. Lots of people have made money off my mother by sending her coupons. DSW, for one, can send every employee to college off the interest on Mom's "Special Birthday Discount" coupon purchases alone. Tony has razor blades to last until his beard stops growing. We have enough Tylenol to stock a hospital. And her car smells like freshly-baked sugar cookies because the Manager's Special at the car wash wasn't a good enough deal alone - it needed the additional air freshener and chassis wax. (Come to think of it, we could all use a good chassis wax.)

So the next time you click a coupon link in your email or accept the senior citizen parent of a military service member discount at the movie theater, think of my mom. She's probably in line behind you, waiting to combine her offers to get in for free.