When the worry is level high and restful nights are in short supply, conditions are perfect for a mashup. Welcome back to Dining Room Tunes - so-named because there's a grand piano where my dinner table should be. This is Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein's "When I Grow Too Old To Dream," written in 1934. I hope you keep dreaming - loud enough for all of us to hear.

This is part two of my series on my adventure as a first-time music director .You can read Part One here, and I hope you will. The show is over, but I had requests from so many of you who aren’t in the DC area to hear more about how it went, for me and for the students. Spoiler alert: it’s a happy ending.

Much is afoot. I’m music-directing the fall show here at American University. Those are words I definitely never imagined I’d write. When my friend Aaron Posner asked if i’d take it on, I was shook. And then I said yes.

On marking a year of grief with a decidedly quiet tune.

I’m about to do something I rarely get to do: just sing. I know; I sing all the time, but usually I’m writing a script too, or learning lines. Not this time…

It's been autumn for me all year. So I figured I should sing about it.

On finding my purpose again after loss.

Reflecting on what’s working for me (and what isn’t) when I’m closing in on a performance.

The act of making music is inherently generous. Sure, it’s brave, it takes hard work, but it’s more than that. It’s really an act of giving, it’s hopeful. It says “Here. This thing I made that is part of me - it's for you."

In the midst of change and uncertainty, kindness of both the human and the canine varieties gets us through.

And consistency is a kindness. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I don’t want to practice!

I think a lot about service, about the idea that we’re here for one another, that if someone needs upholding, we do the holding up. We all have the service gene, however uniquely it manifests. My husband John, my Silver Fox, has it; for the past 20 years he has served in our federal government as a special agent in Criminal Investigations with the Treasury Department, and last week he retired.

Two months’s summer travel is, I know, a great luxury, and I joke that in our solid middle age we took a gap summer, as opposed to the now-normal collegiate (or not) gap year with a backpack. We wore the backpacks, and we discovered a few things along the way.

When a city bears your name (or you bear some version of its), you have to visit.

Dublin! I love this city and it’s grand altogether, as they say.  Here are some of my favorite things  with these favorite people from our first week of this incredible two-month-long vacation

Whose woods these are, well, I thought I knew. Our beautiful Into The Woods got squashed by the Covid giant; I went down hard.

I have never felt anything like what I did when I walked out onto the stage of Feinstein's 54 Below on the night of September 8, 2021.

For me, holding onto my art is how I cope, how I maintain my exuberance and fight my sadness, it’s my way forward. It’s what I wish.

You know that moment when you're really close to the finish of something and then start to ... doubt? I do.

It’s early September. At my sister’s restaurant in Colorado her team wipes layers of wildfire ash from outdoor tables and batten down the hatches for a pending snow storm. 2020, you beast.