I spent the last few days hanging out with Kayla Marie of the Owl You Need is Hope and Stand at the Edge blogs. You may also know her from as augustwhisper on YouTube.

To say the experience was awesome would be an understatement. Kayla has been going through something that (thankfully) not many of us will ever have to—several rounds of chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She has good days and bad, but lately even her good days have been peppered with various levels of suck in the form of nausea and general confusion she affectionately refers to as “chemo brain” (hereafter referred to as CB). I’ll be honest, during CB fog is the only time I feel like we’re an even match intellectually. I may always beat her at arm wrestling, but everywhere else she’s got me whipped.

She has a list of 101 things that she wants to accomplish in 1001 days—the Day Zero Project. I wish I’d looked at the list a little closer before we planned our time but we did manage to get our painting on over at Color Me Mine. The turtle I painted will be epic. Her owl will be pretty cool, too. We’re still trying to decide if Raphael the Ceramic Ninja Turtle should live at her house permanently or if there should be some kind of time-share arrangement. I’m leaning toward the latter.

I’m looking forward to the next visit and when she’s eventually cleared to travel again. If you haven’t checked out her blogs, you should go do that now. Go ahead. I’ll wait.