After a nine hour drive to Milwaukee Friday evening (it's normally about four hours) due to the extensive winter storm, Mom and I met Cara in Chicago for our Christmas present -- tickets to "Wicked" and dinner. Don't we look theatrical? The show was great (though if you loved the book, put some distance between your read and seeing the stage production, because they're about as similar as my two children -- same parents, TOTALLY different personalities). The music is pretty modern, less chorus/verse/chorus than the traditional Broadway, and I've been listening to my cd since I returned home. My current fave inspired the title for today's blog. Nifty lyrics, and the final number before intermission, and those are usually pretty cool. Very carpe diem-esque, so of course I loved it. I think I actually liked the actresses in Chicago better -- the two witches have a number of songs together, and the Chicago girls had more easily distinguishable voices than the two on my cd from the New York company. Ah well, whatcha gonna do? The revived Oriental theater is very pretty if not a bit cozy. Chicago has done much to revamp its theater district (ok, wait, I don't' remember it even having a theater district), though we had to walk with heads ducked down in disapproval past the corner formerly housing Marshal Fields which is now yet another Macy's. Scowl, scowl. And when did this blog become a venue for theater criticism? Guess it's good I don't get out more...Anyhoo, everything else is going well for us. My flu finally broke up a week ago Saturday, so it waylayed me for a full 9 days. When it was gone, it was totally gone, so that was a bit of a bright spot. I just woke up Saturday morning and felt totally fine. We'll take it! I ended up missing that entire week of school, though Friday was questionable. I think I could have done it, but it was probably better not to risk it. And Eric likely would have chained me to a chair or something, so it's always good to avoid that level of marital strife...
On another note, I'm now two thirds of the way finished with my LAST, repeat, LAST chemotherapy round (fingers crossed). My toes hit a low point last week in terms of numbness and tinglies, but those have actually gotten better since then. I still (crossing fingers again) don't have any problem with my fingers, and have also seemingly lucked out on the muscle and joint pain frequently associated with Taxol. My fellow chemo patients who sit around my area all seem to be susceptible to that problem. Unfortunately, my eyebrows and lashes are choosing NOW to thin quite a bit, so we'll see if I lose them completely... such timing! My hair itself is growing, albeit slowly. I actually have a hair appointment set for myself next week to see if anything can be done to shape it yet. My biggest hair problem now is making sure the wig covers my REAL hair. Such a nice complication!
Kids are doing well, Cavanaugh is now officially 10 months old and at the "I could probably walk, but crawling is SO much faster" stage. She's still tiny (checking in at 17.5 pounds and in the 25th percentile), but she's growing on pace for her size, so there don't seem to be any worries there. Kile is returning to his formerly happy self (he's been a bit of a pill the last few months), and Eric and I are thrilled to have our son back. Our newest agreement with him is that our names are Mommy and Daddy until he is five. Then we can be Mom and Dad. He thinks its' funny. He's currently looking forward to starting preschool, something we're hoping to do late this spring. Eric continues to be busy with both the Jesup and Waterloo clinics, though he did take off the entire day today to go with me to chemo. Such a nice guy... if only I could get him to pick up his laundry. Work wise, life is busy for me! My oncologist and I had a discussion last week about our choice of professions, that both seem to be regarded by the rest of the world as something that someone has to do, but no one else wants to! Frankly, most days I think he has a much rougher go of it. At least I get summers off!
Carpe diem! - Trela
