Settling Into Routines.

If you haven't noticed from my manic writing style, I have a tendency to keep my plate as full as possible at all times.

Aside from getting advanced degrees in music performance, I've been a gymnastics coach, roller girl, flying trapeze student, piano and voice teacher, actor, singer, and a bunch of other things. I am a person desperately in need of structure and activity - I tend to lose my mind if there's nothing going on, like an Australian Shepherd stuck in a studio apartment.

So, of course, I started booking gigs and scheduling shifts as soon as my feet landed home. I wanted to reabsorb myself in the odd balance of my frenetic nature, after the loose scheduling of being home. No TV. Small sips of the internet. Just beautiful human interaction.

A very tired, very happy showgirl blogger, back home.

Please, dear reader, don't take that as me saying "ERMAGERD, taking care of my parents is soooo le boring" - I would be back there in a heartbeat, but nobody understands my need for stabilizing adventure better than my mother.

Besides, she walked 3.2 miles on National Cancer Survivor's Day. She is not messing around with her recovery plan.

"I got lost. Also, I need to work on my selfie game", she texted me.

I did not have such an active Cancer Survivor's Day.

"My dentist told me I need a crown. I said, 'I KNOW, RIGHT??'"

Funny story:

My dentist had to take a phone call mid-post, and when he returned I said, "Is everything OK?"

"Yep."

"Good, because I want you happy when you're inside my mouth. Uh. I mean."

Game. I do not have it.

Every so often, mostly while laying in bed after a couple of glasses of wine, I get an anxiety-related tightness, gripping my heart and momentarily squeezing the air out of my lungs. What if there's more, I quietly panic, What if the tumor markers indicate it's elsewhere?

And if it is, what could you possibly do to stop it?, the rational side of my inner monologue lectures. 

Being the control freak that I am, I want her scanned and cleared yesterday. I want to be 100% certain that there is no need for panic. Of course, I also want Ed to make a stunning recovery and for unicorns to exist and for absolute equality.

But just for today, I'll settle for relaxing into a moment of normalcy. That's all anyone can do, right?

Celebrating my return by picking strawberries.