Tuna's View

Hey guys. Tuna Girl here again.

Poor Patrick. He really has missed blogging. So much so that even though he woke up late for work this morning, he tried to post an entry before he left. In fact, in his own words from the beginning of that post:

"Ok...I'm a bad blogger. I haven't been posting. I suck really hard. I get on my knees and use my mouth and...oh..sorry...I'm getting distracted."

Unfortunately, Blogger wasn't cooperating with him. Which I think might just be Karma in action, since he was making fun of me in his post. But in his frustration he asked me to guest blog today.

Which I am happy to do. Except...well. I think most people come to Traveling Spotlight for the humor. Let's face it. Patrick can be pretty damn funny. And he's even funnier in person. (Most often at my expense, but hey.) So when I write for him here, I do my best to be humorous too.

But I'm just not in a funny mood today. And funny isn't something that you can force. I've been struggling all day to start writing. And here I sit at 9 o'clock at night, finally putting words to screen.

If there is one thing I've learned in the past year or so of blogging myself, it is that when you can't be funny, it is best to be sincere. Patrick knows this too. As funny as he is, he can also be very poignant. He has shared here about his cancer and his father. He has shared who he is. And that takes courage.

And if there is something I've learned as a guest blogger, it is that you should always, always, always write about the owner of the blog.

But there is a fine line between sincere sharing and sappy overload. There is a fine line between giving you a glimpse of Patrick's life from another viewpoint, and oversharing.

So I'm going to start by telling you about just how much Patrick is really working here. You can't possibly understand just how dedicated he is to earning money to get his life jump started without seeing his face every night. I've known some dedicated people in my life. Hell I'm one of them. But he is a man on a mission. And he's exhausted.

But he still makes the effort to take time for all of the people who are demanding of him. It's amazing how he can take just five minutes of free time and make them fun. You wouldn't believe how many friends he has made here. We can walk from one end of the main drag in Provincetown to another and it will take us an hour because he stops every few feet to chat with some friend or another.

And I'm one of the people making demands on him. Though he says that I'm not. He had a morning off a couple of days after my daughter's birthday, and instead of spending it with some hot guy in P-Town, he spent it with my daughter. He bought her an Easy Bake Oven and spent the morning helping her make birthday cakes. Let's just call it Easy Patrick's Bakery.

And one morning, he got a phone call just as he was leaving for work and didn't say goodbye to my kids. When my son figured this out he was really upset. After he cried for a while I called Patrick on the phone so that he could say goodbye via digital means. I could hear them on the phone. Patrick said, "You know I love you, right?" Oh, sniff! Patrick felt so strongly about making sure my son felt better, that he canceled his plans for an overnight in P-Town and made an exhausted drive home so he could see my son in the morning.

You know, I call Patrick "Uncle Patrick" and I think he thinks that I'm kidding. But I'm not. He's family. Not just to me, but to my family too. In fact, my daughter even said to me recently, "Patrick is like your brother, Mommy." She's right. But he's more than that too.

So we all know about Patrick's sex drive. Many of us know about his financial woes and career struggles. We know that he is a survivor. We know that he is a friend. A great friend. We know that he is a comedian and a storyteller.

But I am privileged to know that he is an amazing family member with an overgrown heart too. And I wanted to share a little of that with you.