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I thought yesterday would be the day I was going to get better. It wasn't. I tried, but had kind of a crash. My chest hurt, and I coughed so much my ribs hurt too. I made it to the grocery store to obtain food items for Raptor and Nipper, but once I got home, that was pretty much it for the day. Put things away, semi-tidied my office, put away my laundry. Wrote a sentence or two just to prove I could. I was seriously worried that I would not be able to enjoy the visit. I took another COVID test, just in case I had it after all, but I didn't. Meanwhile, the Sparrowhawk had been to the gym, where they were trying to break the record for the number of sit-to-stand exercises performed in an hour. The goal was to complete a million total, in all the Rock Steady gyms across the country, to represent the one million people in the US with Parkinson's. The Sparrowhawk did 381. He was tired. I was very proud of him. One guy did 650, but he was an outlier!

Today: very much better. I mixed up some bread immediately on getting up. This was a good thing, because my hair stylist texted to say she could move my haircut up by half an hour. I left the Sparrowhawk in charge of baking it, and went and got my hair cut--finally. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny. When I got home, the bread was ready to come out, and it was good. I promptly put the ham in, along with some sweet potatoes wrapped in foil. I steamed some amazingly big brussels sprouts--like mini-cabbages really--and marinated them with oil and herbs. I washed the lettuce for salad and cut up some cucumbers. I cut up a lot of strawberries for Raptor. The Sparrowhawk mailed the Easter packages and got a new debit card. He had to cancel the old one after some sketchy charge attempts showed up.

And then--they arrived! Quite early, at 1:30! They had awakened at 6 and thought "We're already packed! Why not just go?" So we sat down and had some lunch. After awhile we started to play Cranium, to much hilarity. I was going back and forth to the kitchen, where I was scooping the baked sweet potatoes out of their skins, adding sour cream, spices, and lemon juice, putting them back in, sprinkling them with brown sugar and covering them with mini-marshmallows. I have never done this very bourgeois thing before, but there's always a time to experiment. The Raptor wanted to take a break, so we went out for a walk while the Sparrowhawk practiced the piano. When we got back, I took the ham out, put the sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts in the oven, sliced up the ham, and mixed up the salad while the others set the table. Dr. Nurse stopped by to eat with us and visit with her cousin the Nipper, and we hung out until nearly 8 when I packed up some food for her to take home to Dr. Music. He had a long day and did not have time to come over. It was a very nice day, although I may have overdone it just a bit . . . . I got 10,000 steps!