A milestone for Cliff's sister

Rena, Cliff's sister, has had her share of trying times this year. She's been through a divorce that wasn't in her plans; she moved from Wisconsin to Missouri; and she went to school to study for her GED. Oh, and she got a job immediately after moving. She's been a busy gal.

She took the GED test almost three weeks ago, and has been on pins and needles, hoping she passed, yet afraid she hadn't.

Today we got the good news: She passed! At the age of almost fifty-nine, she's officially equal to a high school graduate. Her brother, my husband Cliff, was forty-eight when he reached that milestone.



Of course, a celebration was required; so we went to the Mexican restaurant at Lexington . (Cliff has that silly expression because I caught him in mid-chew.)

Rena's next plans? She hopes to get a better job, now that she has her certificate. And she has signed up for a beginner's motorcycle class because...

She wants to buy a motorcycle!

You just can't keep some folks down.

A delightful storm

This year, Mother Nature has been quite generous with precipitation... up until August. This month, the whole world simply dried up. I've been watering my baby Norway Spruce trees, as well as the lilac bush and the burning bush I recently bought. No worries about grass; we haven't planted any back here yet. Oh, there's the clover/orchard grass mix that was here when this was a pasture, but with all the traffic that's involved with building and moving, that's pretty well shot.

Yesterday all day long, the weather-guessers excitedly blathered on about possible heavy storms. When we're going through a dry spell, I tend to block all that out, because I just don't believe the forecasts.

Along toward evening, though, distant thunder grew closer and raindrops started falling. My dog, scared of storms, cowered behind my chair, and I settled in to enjoy the storm. Then the electricity went out. Now let's face it, there isn't much you can do in such a case to keep yourself busy. At my house, you can't even flush the bathroom stool more than once, because we're on a well, and an electric pump brings water to the house.

I remembered my Blackout Buddy, which supplies me with light and a radio in such emergencies. Trouble is, I never listen to the radio, and couldn't find a station I liked. I remembered Cliff talking about a show he listens to at work on his MP3 player: Delilah. But I didn't know what station to look for; so I called him on the cell phone, at work, to see where it's found on the dial. Turns out it was KUDL, a soft-rock station.

I don't know when I've enjoyed a storm so much. Just me and my frightened dog in the safe cocoon of home which has, of late, become my favorite place to be.

The power was out for an unusually long time, and I went to bed sometime after nine, still with no lights.

We got three quarters of an inch of much-needed rain.