Laps

I'm in at my community pool doing laps, well really I just finished and I'm in the jacuzzi writing this. Swimming is such a zen activity for me. It always makes me wonder, is life just at its core about putting ourselves in the water and swimming, one stroke at a time? I think so.

I remember my swim coach in high school, Nora. Our pool was always freezing. It was never heated and if we'd dare to complain, she'd glare at us. We would do hundreds of laps during practice. She'd blow her whistle. Come on! Faster! I'd come home starving and would fight my sisters for the last pork chop.

My favorite was always the team relays where I either swam backstroke or freestyle. I was on the junior varsity team and was better at sprinting than at long distance. I loved the fifty meter and the one hundred. I always lost my breath in the longer distances. 

When I think back to high school, swimming kept me on track during my freshman and sophomore year. When I quit the team, school started to go downhill and by senior year, well, as you know by now, that year was a disaster.

Yet, still, those years of competitive swimming taught me a lesson I  use in my life to this day. That lesson is that it's all about putting yourself out there and getting somewhere, even if it's only to the other side of the pool. 

Get up and go

I have decided that I need to start working on a one woman show. It's something I've always dreamed of and after performing one of my many stories at the Colony Theater on Sunday, I thought, I gotta do this. Now. 

Then the universe conspired to help. Just with putting forward the intention, some pieces fell into place. After one email to a contact, I already have a LA theater venue for a one night performance. That's a start. It's not a "run" but it's a start. That can be my first show. Then I was sent a great referral for a one person show class. It's a workshop for an evening a week for 6 weeks. They help you build a show. You have to interview so I already sent them an email. It's not cheap but it's not expensive and I have savings from my grant I was awarded that I can use. I tell myself, this is an investment in myself. 

It's all so exciting and new. I have to buy a picture projector carousel because I want that old school feeling in my show. The click click. And I need to start collating my pictures. Oh and there's the music and I need to find a musician to accompany me (hint hint if anyone is interested). 

That's where we are. Let's see where we go! 

Multi-hyphenated and a dream catcher

The other day, someone referred to me as a multi-hyphenate. I had never heard the term. I had to look it up. Was it because of my last name being Mantz-Pelaez? But I looked it up and it turns out that it means a creative who does many things well. 

What a compliment, I thought. That person really "sees" all I do. Podcasting, writing, performing, and curating. Not to mention my day job as a deputy public defender. I don't know if I do it all that well, but I try.

When I think of where I want to be in the next few years, I know this. I want to be a creative full-time. Yes, I know it's difficult to monetize, almost impossible. But impossibilities have always been my forte.

How do I get there is the question? I decide to read my moon cards. They tell me that my dreams need a practical plan. Ain't that the truth! 

Dreams are great and all, and it's definitely necessary to visualize and imagine. I know one thing for sure, all dream catching requires a pragmatic approach and a to do list. And lots of hard work. So here we go . . . 

Saying yes (again)

This Sunday I am in a performance called Manecdotes. It's all the way in Burbank. I live in San Bernardino so it's a two hour drive minimum. There's also an evening rehearsal mid-week. Ask me, why do I do this to myself? The answer is, I don't know. 

I suppose I decided to do this again, the perform in LA thing, on a whim. I've lately sworn off driving to LA due to my nighttime driving issues and my overactive bladder. I've pulled over way too many times to pee at a McDonald's or an AM PM just praying I would make it. 

But the Colony Theater that I'm performing at is lovely, the producer/director is easy to work with and the cast of writers reading their short, true stories about fathers and fatherhood is incredible. When I got the call, I just said yes!

Many great things have happened to me due to my predilection for agreeing to things on a whim. My job as a public defender was offered to me after a second interview and without thinking of the financial hit, I said yes. I gave up my big firm paycheck without even thinking about it. It was one of the best decisions of my life. I also said yes to a reading at Beyond Baroque that my friend liz put together years back and her publisher was the one who published my full-length memoir. And when Covid hit and an online poetry class was offered by a poet I loved, I said yes and signed up and the poems I wrote in class eventually led to my hybrid chapbook about public defense and punk rock. 

So saying yes is good. It usually leads to something. You never know who will be in an audience, especially in Burbank. Let's see what happens. I'll just make sure not to drink too much coffee or Diet Coke.

For now

I'm posting two days in a row. Blame the weather. Blame my sleep patterns which are fucked after taking care of a sick shih tzu for a month (who is now much better, thanks for asking). Blame the espresso. 

I'm reading some manuscripts for a contest I'm judging. People ask why I do this in the little bit of free time that I have. And no, I'm not getting paid to do it. It's mainly because I love it. I love to read. I love to imagine an unknown writer of Latinx descent getting a book contract. I love helping out a nonprofit that I admire. 

Plus, it's fun. It's inspiring to read these authors' books, and see the result of their blood, sweat and tears. Less than a decade ago, I was in their shoes. Sure, I'd published stories in a few journals, and did readings. I workshopped pieces. I did summer writing retreats. But it never entirely felt real until I held my first book in my hands. And then my second. Then I knew I was a writer for real but also that I'd been one all along. 

Sometimes, it feels like it happened by magic, but then other times, I look back and think, shit, you made that happen with years and years of hard work. You not only manifested it, but you created it. Like a sculptor. You made your life happen. 

What did you expect to happen except exactly what did?

So when I read these manuscripts, I really read them. I love their effort. Their talent. Their shimmering brilliance on the page. The judging part is hard, but I can already tell that I'll know when I know. 

So for now, I'll just keep on reading. 

Time Time Time

Time. I feel like it's getting away from me.

It's as if time is moving so fast that I cannot catch it. Is this what they mean by life moving fast? I just did some research about time. They say that perception changes as you age, especially with repetition. A physicist recently hypothesized that with age, one's brain slows down in its processing and recording. It's as if we're all in our own Groundhog Day movie and our brain just lumps it all together.

The solution to this would seem to be change. My body is craving change. Something exciting and new as they used to sing in the Love Boat theme song. How do I get that? What do I need to change? 

My first thought would be to change my routine. Work has become routine like. Prep for my three days of court on my two office days. I like the routine of that however, and need to prep to maintain my courtroom demeanor. Last week, I had a funeral on Tuesday so was very stressed in court on Wednesday as I wasn't as over prepared as usual. So that won't change.

Maybe I need a vacation. A long vacation. But then there's the shih tzu factor. We can't really travel with a fifteen year old shih tzu who is on multiple medications, unless we take him with us. So that's not really possible. 

What about my weekends? That is hard. If I change too much, I end up exhausted. I have a performance in Burbank's Colony theater coming up and it's freaking me out because it's on a Sunday night. And I have to drive out for a rehearsal on an evening work night. So that's enough change there.

Maybe the trick is to try and make your brain capture moments. To be present. My husband suggested turning off our phones and the television. That could help. Maybe as a memoirist, and with this blog, I'm already recording it so maybe this whose entire question has already been answered.

That said, I'll end with a Bowie lyric. A funny one from his song titled "Time". The entire song is filled with witty bits of poetry, but I like this one, "Oh, well, I look at my watch, it says nine twenty-five/And I think "Oh God, I'm still alive.""

Dear Mama

My mom really freaked me out last week. I almost lost it. I was at work and got a call late in the afternoon from an unknown number. I let it go to voicemail, but they called back so I answered." This is Go Go Grandma. Is your mom Judy with you? She missed 3 rides."

My mom was missing. She had an appointment at Kaiser. That much I knew. But I thought she said it was in the morning. Or maybe she said the afternoon. Where was she? I started calling her phone. I called ten times. No answer. I texted. Face timed her over and over. Nothing.

I imagined the worst scenarios. Mom had fallen and couldn't get up. She had been robbed or kidnapped. Or at worse, she was dead in her apartment and never caught the Uber. Or maybe she was just at the doctor's. Maybe her phone died and not her. This is what my psychologist years back had taught me to do when anxiety took hold. Don't just think fatalistically.

I called my little sister Annie. She is a hygienist, but she called me back on a break. She said what I had been thinking, my mom never misses an appointment. Ever. Why had my mom missed 3 Uber rides? And why wouldn't she answer her damn phone? 

Annie sent her daughter Sophie to my mom's apartment complex. I finished what I could at work and started driving to Kaiser. Then ping. I'm driving. I ask Siri to read the text. 

"I'm fine. Mad at Go Go Grandma. Walking home from Kaiser. Mom."

I said back, "Text Mom."

"Mom, what the hell? It's miles. Did you bring your walker! You're walking miles? Stay there. I'll come get you Call me."

Ping. 

I asked Siri to read the text.

"Almost home. Mad. Don't want to talk. Yes, walked home. On walker."

"Text Mom, Mom what the fuck. I'm coming over."

When I got to her apartment, my mom had her legs elevated. She had walked the mile and a half home. And she had walked miles at Kaiser trying to find the Uber according to her pedometer.

All in all, it was an anticlimactic ending. I went and got her a chicken bowl. And that's the story about my dear mama.