Last night, I was up in my room until about 11:00 o'clock, working on a sewing project.  Mom,  Dad, and Grandpa were all in bed and Justin was at Bible study.  I heard the dogs barking but didn't think much of it.  They bark all the time.  Then ten minutes later, they began barking frantically, and I decided to go downstairs and see what was going on.  I thought maybe Justin was having trouble getting in the house.  When I got downstairs, I heard someone knocking at the front door.  I thought, "Yup, Justin must be feeling lazy and doesn't want to get his key out."  (He does that sometimes.)  So, I opened the door and who do you think I saw?  Standing in there in his PJs and pushing his walker in front of him was none other than Grandpa.

"Hi," he said very complacently as if taking a stroll at 11:30 at night in one's pajamas is completely commonplace and even more so when you're 96 years old and can't walk well. 

I stood there and sputtered.  "What on earth are you doing out here?" I hollered at him.  I had to holler because he's deaf. 

"I went for a walk," he said, "but it's too dark."

I should say so.  Then he stumbled and shuffled to his room and got back in bed. 

By this time, Dad was awake and gave Grandpa a good talking-to about not going for walks outdoors in the dead of night.  Who knows how much of it he actually heard.  The back door was wide open and a large quantity of moths and other little bugs were flying around in the kitchen. 

Oh, jubilee.  Mom and Dad are leaving for Colorado Springs in about two weeks.  I hope he doesn't keep this sort of thing up.  It's definitely not safe for an old man with a walker to go out the back door, leave it wide open, go down three steps, open the back gate, walk across our very uneven sandstone pathway, and then up the ramp to the front door at 11:30 in the evening.  It's a good invitation for falling not to mention all the unsavory characters that might find an open door very appealing.  I'm not exactly sure how to keep him from doing it though.  He's such a bull-headed man.

Somehow, our family always manages to find adventure in some odd form or another.

I am one, nasty, sweaty mess!  At work today, I spent about an hour weeding the flower bed around the sign in front.  Pete, a retired Dutch gentleman who sells flowers next door, came up to me and mustered up the best scolding he could manage.

"What are you doing in this heat?"

"Weeding," I said.

"You should send one of the kids out here to do that."

"I am a kid," I replied.

"Yeah, but...what would your boyfriend say if he saw you melting out here?"

"I don't have a boyfriend," I grinned.

"Oh..." He groaned in frustration and went back to his flower selling.  But he stared disaprovingly at me, probably thinking I was going to contract heat stroke.  (He's also quite put out that I don't have a boyfriend.  He always tells me, "That's what life is about, pairing up."  And I must say he has a point in one sense--if there isn't any pairing up, there's no life.  But it's not like I can do anyting about it!)

What I could have told him was that I had a choice of three things:  A.  I could clean encrusted chocolate, bavarian cream, sugar, and buttercream off the benches in the 88-degree back room and sweat there.  B.  I could bend over a sink full of hot water with the dishwasher running, bringing the temperature up to about 90 degrees and sweat buckets there.  B.  I could be outside in the bright sunshine, getting a marvelous tan, and sweat out there.  Anyway I looked at it I was going to sweat.  As it turned out, I did all three.  Hence, the nasty, sweaty mess.

I passed my final exam for my transcription course!  Yay!  I opend my email inbox last night and saw an email, "Final results."  I opened it in fear and trembling and discovered I not only passed, but I passed with honors.  They offered another opportunity to retake the exam and try for high honors.  I said out loud, without the slightest hint of hesitation, "No THANKS."  Mere honors will suffice.  I have no intention of putting myself through that again.

Justin's photo shoot for the CD went extremely well.  The weather cooperated beautifully.  The girls' dresses fit nearly perfectly.  It was fun all around.  I can't wait to see the CD booklet.  You can go to justinsamuelbarber.com to hear samples of music and me reading part of my story.

That's my update on life.  Now, for a shower.

Once again, thank God for Google.  I was transcribing away, when the doctor who was dictating said something that sounded like, "campit medusa."  Huh?  How does a snake-haired mythological creature get into a medical report?  So, after listening to it over and over again, I gave up and googled it, and good old wikipedia had my answer.  It's "caput medusae", and is "dilated cutaneous veins around the umbilicus, seen mainly in the newborn and in patient's suffering with cirrhosis of the liver; so called because the veins resemble the head of the snake-haired Gorgon, Medusa."  That is the definition from Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary.  There you have it, fellow medical transcriptionists!   

Nothing terribly interesting is going on in my life at the moment besides sewing, writing stories for my brother's cd, getting ready for my last concert of the season, preparing for this medial transcription final exam, gearing up to plant the garden on Monday, etc...  All of those things are interesting to me, of course, but I won't bore you with them.  Maybe I'll have a moment of inspiration some time soon and write something profound next time.