P.S.

Dunno if you can tell, but that platter of seafood is gigantic, almost as big as a 9" x 13" baking dish if it were casserole/oval-shaped. My mom's face was a sight to behold when it showed up -- her look of amazement was just priceless.

After we saw the Golden Dragon Acrobats (warning: their official site sometimes loads slooooowly) at NJPAC today, my fella took us to the Iberia Peninsula Restaurant, also in Newark. (The experience just confirms my suspicion that Portugese restaurants may not know how to cook in any quantity other than VAST.)

The acrobats, but the way, were fantastic. I am a happy camper, and even my mom, tough critic extraordinaire, conceded that it was quite a good show. (Yes, you can probably still feel the waves of relief -- wherever you are -- which I exuded this afternoon.)

And in addition, my engineer had never seen Chinese acrobats perform before, so I was very pleased to introduce him to a fun new experience. Plus, this current show lived up to my childhood memories and then some. Yay team!

I do wonder how much cross pollination there has been with Cirque du Soleil. Sure, Chinese acrobats have been performing for 2,500 years, but Cirque has better PR. So if you like Cirque, you would like Chinese acrobats. The videos on YouTube don't do them justice, so I have not embedded any here, but they're around if you feel like hunting them up.

Okay, all of this, while possibly interesting, is really a roundabout way of my leading up to a few comments, some of which I've been trying to avoid facing:

1. Some of my posts are veeeerrrry long. (Yes, I am starting with the easiest item first.) I have been using this blog as not only a way of keeping friends updated, but also as a semi-public diary. Hence, verbosity.
2. I think I have officially reached the freak-out-in-panic stage of cancer treatment. I know that all things look "favorable" but cancer is still freakin' scary. Plus, waiting to hear about the "likelihood of recurrence" from the oncotype test is ... uh, terrifying. Probably another week of waiting before the oncotype results come in with my recurrence index.
3. Arming myself with knowledge is good, but it is also scaring the sh*t out of me. Remember: my technique to date of dealing with this has been -- if not exactly denial -- just not pondering anything too deeply.
4. Going off oral birth control for the moment has whacked out my hormone levels, so I dunno when the urge to cry is normal fright, and when it's PMS. Since extra estrogen = BAD idea when one's cancer is estrogen-positive = no more hormonal methods for the moment; futurecycle regulator alternatives to be decided at some point.

Okay, I'd better go heat some milk or something to calm myself down, or else tonight will be another night of tossing and turning. Sigh.

(Note to self: In the future, DO NOT think about this stuff after dinner. Idiot.)