More on the Other Performing McKeown

Last week was a musical one for Maggie (and by extension, me and Frank, her avid fans).

Wednesday evening was the Albany High spring choral concert, at St. Marks in Berkeley. I've been to a couple concerts there (to see good friend Monica, in the California Bach Society), and the church is a lovely place with very nice acoustics.

Then, this past Saturday evening, we attended the always-fun guitar recital at the Benicia home of her guitar teacher, Peter Morley. We always enjoy these recitals. Peter is a very giving teacher and a gracious host, and Maggie played "I Want to Hold Your Hand".

Before the recital, during the day, Maggie and I had joined the Cassims (with their visiting nephew, Sameer) for a mid-day visit to Sausalito. Lots of sun, a very nice lunch, and a bit of shopping. So, even before the recital, we were pretty pooped. When we returned home (around 9 p.m.), Maggie and I got comfy in jammies and watched some LotR (Two Towers).

The next day, Maggie and I went in to SF to finally pick some perfume to go into the bottle that was part of her Christmas. First we had lunch at City View (excellent dim sum) and then we smelled some fragrance at Macy*s. She thought she might like something from Chanel or Dior, but we looked at/took a whiff of several designers/brands until ending up with two possible choices from Dior--J'Adore and Cherie. We got some Ben & Jerry's while we pondered this monumental decision and then went back upstairs to get her a nice little Cherie gift box (that included a cute little purse and some body lotion). The sales guy--I think recognizing a potential future customer in Maggie--threw in an extra thing of body lotion for her.

A very nice weekend to kick off Maggie's spring break. At the end of this week, we'll be heading up to Tahoe to spend Easter with the Bauers. The fun just never stops!

"Full" House

Emily survived the second quarter cuts in UCSB's BFA acting program, so she's still officially an acting major. :-) And, since that marked the end of the second quarter, she is home again for a week, for Spring Break. It's so lovely to have her home. We love love love having her around. I will be so very sad when she leaves again this weekend.

She and Maggie and I went to the Cerrito theater yesterday to see a sold-out 2 p.m. matinee of Labyrinth. Way fun.

I'm thinking this week I might need to take a PTO day to play with Emily while she's home. At the end of the school year, she's going to the UK for three weeks (where she and Grace Armstrong, a friend since preschool, will play tra la la and I'm trying not to resent my own daughter). So after this week, we won't see much of Emily until mid-July.

We get three more years of Maggie at home, so that helps a lot. I don't know how the parents of one child deal with this.

"The Happiest Place on Earth"

The last place on my list of places to go--post chemo--was Disneyland or Disney World. And last weekend, I got to go to Disneyland with Maggie and some of her Girl Scout friends.

Sooooo much fun. First off--I genuinely enjoy the "house of the mouse", so to speak. And Robert & Deirdre Bauer were there (well, to be truthful, they drove, and arranged the hotel, and bought the tickets to the parks... um, they did most of the heavy lifting to be truthful), so, in addition to just having fun with the girls, I also had fun with two other adults who genuinely enjoy being in Disney territory.

I didn't end up getting to do Space Mountain, but I *did* get to do Thunder Mountain, the Matterhorn, Pirates, Haunted Mansion, and most important of all--Peter Pan's Flight. Here are the girls in front of the entrance to California Adventure (where they went on the river raft ride five times). I love Disneyland. I would go there again next weekend, if I could.

After two days in Disneyland, we spent a day at the Huntington, sort of on our way back home. I got to see one of the Gutenberg bibles and an original complete Shakespeare folio, along with a new exhibition of Lincoln memorabilia (which they called "Lincolniana"). To kick off the exhibition, they had a Civil War era band playing Stephen Foster music, and a Lincoln impersonator. He was checking out the exhibits when Robert and I toured the show later. I couldn't resist taking this picture.

Picking Up, and Then Some!

I completed treatment last March (I wrote "finishing" at first and that seems like tempting the gods. Who knows if I'm finished? I'll be having a mammogram every six months for the next five years. So, let's just keep those clean so we stay "finished" and don't have to "resume" any treatment activities.)

And there you have my frame of mind. Last March I hit the ground running--literally. My friend Robert and I took Emily to San Simeon on her Spring Break (with a stopover in Cambria for lunch and a night at the amazing Madonna Inn). Then I met some college friends for some fun in Bloomington, IN and my sisters for even more fun in Chicago. Frank and I spent our 25th anniversary in NYC and then all four of us enjoyed a week in Twain Harte--one of our favorite places--at the end of the summer.

Maggie has started high school and Em is deep into the theater program in her sophomore year at UCSB. I'm taking on some of the projects I neglected last year at work and I'm a busy volunteer again.

Mostly, life has been getting back to normal. We like routine in our home. We like being together, and we also like the constancy of all of us being at home. It feels good. And right now I am throwing a bit of wrench into all that.

Last night I did something I've been wanting to do for several years now--I've joined a choir. It's been a while, so my sight-reading is really lousy (I was all over the map last night in practice). But the director said I have a "nice sound" and he appreciated my range. So, we'll work out the kinks as we go along, and I'll thoroughly enjoy doing it. And this Thursday I'm starting a Bollywood dance class at the Berkeley Y with some girlfriends (Hi Karen & Sarah!).

I figured out my schedule for the next 8 weeks or so, and I'll be out of the house two to three nights each week. In the somewhat recent past, this all would have felt a little much. But right now I'm very much in the mode of "what exactly are we waiting for?" and doing the things I want to do.

Frank, as usual, is nothing but supportive. He likes hearing me sing and so is glad I'm getting to do more of it. And I'm sure I'll have fun learning the Bollywood dancing, and Frank is sure I'll have fun, too.    ;-)

And now for some philosphizing. (Warning! Deep Thoughts Ahead!)

I was recently chatting online with a young woman who is finishing up cancer for breast treatment (or, as she calls it, "The Bullshit") and I was telling her that there's no going back. That it's happened and the treatment is part of who you are now. And then it hit me, duh. That that's always been true. I'm sure that's obvious to all of you, but sometimes these very basic truths hit me right between the eyes. It's sort of like when I got to age 35 and it struck me, pretty much like a thunderbolt, that this is it. It's not a dress rehearsal: this is life. And I'm never going to be a rock star (that was a hard one to let go of...), and if there's anything I want to do, then I'd better get on with it.

To a great extent, I think I *do* do that. With the big things, anyway. But life intervenes, and it's easy to put some things aside for later.

I'll continue to put some things aside for later (becoming a world famous cabaret singer, for example). But some things, I'm figuring, I should do if I want to do them. And so through mid-May, I'll have choir practice once or twice a week. And for the next eight weeks, I'll be dancing along to fabulous Indian music at the Berkeley Y. Now I just need to figure out how to find the time to see the Oscar nominees before the awards show...

Jury Duty

Well, I'll tell you I was more than a little bugged about having jury duty today. I went to Nevada to campaign for Mr. Obama back in November and I was really looking forward to the ceremony today. But I called the jury duty number last night and was told that I had to show up at the courthouse no later than 8:30 a.m. this morning.

First--I did not get chosen for a jury. And while most of me feels like "whew! I dodged *that* bullet," I also have to rhapsodize a bit about Judge Lawrence Appel. I've never seen a judge get a room of prospective jurors more interested in serving on a jury. He was cordial and friendly and respectful. I seriously would not have minded getting "stuck" on a jury.

Second--When I arrived at the Jury Room at the Alameda Superior Court, all the televisions were tuned to the inauguration.

Imagine a room filled with more than 200 people. Remember that this is a major metropolitan area. In that room there was every color, every creed, every age (well, above 18, anyway), and we all were sharing the inauguration together. We all applauded and we all laughed (and some of us, ahem, wept a little). And we all stood when Mr. Obama took the oath of office. It felt so wonderful to share this event with people I don't know, but with whom I share a democracy. Words won't serve. But I'm still glowing, after six hours of sitting through voir dire.

Yay us!

Back to "Normal"...

...whatever that means. ;-)

I had a check-up with my oncologist on Monday and a blood test revealed that all my numbers are back to normal. (During treatment, I had been getting a steady dose of Neulasta to keep my count high enough to allow me to keep up the bi-weekly chemo treatments. These injections stopped, of course, when the chemo treatments stopped, and last June, my white blood cell count was somewhat low. Now, all is good again.) And since my most recent mammogram (December 1) was nice and clean, and my exam with Dr. Kuan yielded nothing scary, I don't have to have any more blood tests when I visit her. Yay!

In other news, we all went to see Slumdog Millionaire last weekend, with Jackie & Yusuf. A wonderful movie, and we followed it with curries and naan at Cafe Raj. A terrific date—I recommend it.

(Also, it's been a shocking two months since my last post. I'm getting back on the weekly wagon, just in case anyone is still reading.)