Hot Trick Summer

 Hello my four loyal readers!  Sorry I haven't blogged lately.  I'm too busy living my best life! (Except I miss my family...so, maybe not my best-best life, but living "Hot Trick Summer!")

For context, "Trick" is what people here call me, because there are only like five people I allow to call me Pat (my mom hated that nickname, and Annie doesn't like it either).  So, a few years ago, with the help of my Gen Z peeps here in Utah, I was rebranded as "Trick."  And I love it!

Two months have elapsed since I updated this blog, and I've spent it in Cedar City.  Working.  Working on lines and blocking, working on myself in the gym, and working on letting go of the negative energies that I fall into more often than I like.  And it's been pretty amazing!  It's been too hot to go on my long walks, so I go to the gym six days a week, and on the seventh day, I try to get into nature and climb something.  This past Sunday, I got up before dawn to get to Zion to be on the first shuttle to the top so I could hike "the Narrows."  I've also hiked in Kolob, Cedar Breaks, Ashdown Canyon and Three Peaks.  When I am alone in nature, I feel as if I'm visited by Papa (my grandfather Merck), and once by my dad.  Last week, I think I was visited by Ferris Bueler.  My male role models?  

Papa was my first hero.  He had played minor league baseball, and almost all the time I spent with him was throwing a ball in his backyard or oiling our gloves after while listening to the Pirates on the radio and drinking Iced Tea.  He had endless patience for me, and we would play catch until it was so dark you couldn't see the ball until it was a foot in front of your face.  I even did a cabaret act last week dedicated to him.  I did a speech from "Field of Dreams," which reminded me of Papa when it came out and still does.  Papa would also walk all over Morgantown.  When his Alzheimer's got really bad and he didn't always know who he was, it wasn't uncommon for him to be brought home in a car.  Papa never lost his athleticism, even as he lost his ability to remember.

My dad showed up as a butterfly.  I know that sounds hippy-dippy, but my dad was a hippie, so it makes sense.  See, when my dad died and we were cleaning out my childhood home, there was a black and gold (Pittsburgh colors) butterfly outside the house letting me know he was still with me.  A black and gold butterfly showed up on my hike in Cedar Breaks ten years after he passed.

As for Ferris Beuler, as I was hiking "the narrows," I found it very difficult to look around at the gorgeous surroundings while walking through the rocky water.  Like a bolt of lightning, I thought:  

Anyway, I have a little less than four weeks left of my contract.  I haven't gone on for any of my understudy roles, although a lot of understudies have gone on, so I'm keeping fresh just in case. I also got to direct a reading of a beautiful new play in the Words Cubed program.  

But best of all, I went home a couple of weeks ago and spent a day with my family and then brought Corey out here for a whole week.  It's the first time I've had that kind of uninterrupted one on one time with him since he was a little kid.  It was so great!  We saw shows and went to the cabaret.  We ate in restaurants and I bought him tons of swag and we had real conversations.  It was a special week for me, and I hope he remembers it when someday I am gone and show up as a butterfly for him.

Fitness wise, I'm just under 160 lbs.  I wear a size 32 pant again, and I find myself drawn to working out daily.  It's crazy, up until I lost my kidney at 28, I worked out daily.  After that, I would go back and start to get in shape and then something else terrible would happen.  But correlation is not causation and I am filled with energy and growing stronger!  Watch out, world!