"I got it out of my system," she says, her voice still retaining its sweet Scottish brogue. "All I did for my entire 20s was work and travel. I would do three or four different things at the same time, and it didn't stop."

She's not exaggerating. If she wasn't pumping out hit records such as For Your Eyes Only, Strut and You Could Have Been With Me, she was touring, doing TV or appearing onstage. It kept her busy: For the '80s and a good part of the '90s, she was a household name.

"I figured out what it was about," Easton says from her home in Los Angeles. "Record an album, tour on the album, do TV to promote the album. It became, 'OK, I get it. This is how it works.' And it doesn't change. Whether your single was at No. 1 or if it stiffed, it was all the same."

She pretty much put the brakes on her career when she hit her mid-30s. She adopted Jake, now 7, and Skylar, now 6. The single mom channeled her energy into work that would keep her off the road and near her children.

That's one reason she's touring alongside Michael McDonald, Oleta Adams and Peabo Bryson in "The Colors of Christmas," a holiday bash in which she'll sing some of her hits - no, not Sugar Walls - and seasonal tunes. The tour makes a stop at Celebrity Theater on Saturday.

"It's fun. It's four weeks. We're on a bus telling our war stories. It's a nice tour. But if it were three months on the road, it wouldn't be quite so charming."

These days, the 42-year-old's career consists of corporate gigs ("My bread and butter," she says), voice-over work and casino shows. This year, she enjoyed a major success with a four-month run headlining at the Las Vegas Hilton. She will return for all of 2002.

"Now I'm singing songs that are meaningful to me," she says. "I did so many years of touring where you're a slave to the latest album. Now, I do some of the hits - that's the reason I'm up there in the first place - but I put in songs that give you an inkling into what's going on in my personal life."

What is going on with Easton personally? She's a devoted mother, something she sang about on her lovely 1999 CD Home. And she's engaged to a plastic surgeon, something she jokes about in her stage act.

Despite the ups and downs, she sounds genuinely content.

"I'm really happy right now," she says. "What lights me up is being a mom and singing. That's what I'm about now. It's not about what's going to make me the most famous. I don't care about that kind of stuff anymore."

But never say never. Easton released a diva-inspired disc last year, Fabulous, that did well in some parts of Europe. It reminded her of her heyday.

"Who knows?" she says laughing. "I guess there's a chance that when I'm in my 50s, the hormones could kick in and I'll buy a pair of thigh-high patent-leather boots and go out and tour. But if that happens, please, give me a Prozac."