Dan’s out at Sam’s this morning buying a bag of whole bean coffee, a case of Coke Zero, and a bag of bird seed. You know, the essentials.

I had intended to go with him, but I woke up this morning with a migraine. And, instead of asking him to bring me some Gatorade to wash down my morning meds, I decided I was tough enough to do it myself.

I made it to the kitchen and back without falling, but the room was spinning out of control from dizziness by the time I made it back to the bedroom. By the time I’d flattened myself out on the bed and closed my eyes, the damage had been done. My vertigo and migraines and gag reflex must all be on the same circuit. I said goodbye to the medicine I’d just taken and waited for my vision to return to normal.

Early this morning while the sky was still dark, I had awoken from a dream that I’d received the results of another MRI and the doctors were telling me “there was another dot in my head.” I’m pretty confident that was just my brain’s way of processing the incoming migraine while I slept.  But that split second of consciousness where I thought I actually had a second brain tumor was pretty shitty.

So, instead of continuing my streak of feeling pretty good for a girl with brain cancer, I’m staying home today and taking it easy. It’s disappointing though. Dan and I were talking last night about the things we wanted to do today, and now I just can’t. I can, however, share some pictures with you of the stuff we did this past week while my parents were in town helping us with projects around the house.

Mom helped us with the landscaping out in front of the house. She laid the stone border and mulch and helped us hide the hideous gas meter by arranging my potted flowers and the landscaping rocks scattered around our yard. (This is actually not the final product, but it’s close.)

Dad installed the kitchen sink we got for Christmas (to replace the cracked, leaking one). It wasn’t easy, either. He had to improvise to get it to work and there was talk that we might have to call a plumber.

Mom drove me out to Country Arbors Nursery to get Dan’s birthday present. (His birthday isn’t for another couple of weeks, but I can’t drive and I wanted to surprise him.) Yes, that’s a three-foot-tall Sasquatch in my back yard. I named him Pipsquatch. We love him.

We also had a garage sale. It doesn’t take long for me to feel suffocated by too many things around the house. Particularly things we don’t want or use. What we didn’t sell, we loaded in my parents’ Jeep and took to Goodwill. Bonus: we dragged the old kitchen sink and a 25-cubic-foot, poop brown Lady Kenmore side-by-side refrigerator to the curb and a couple of scrappers hauled them both away for us. The weather was gorgeous.