It's the weekend, and I am remarkabley glad of it for a self-employed person.

I have to say that the week was a little rough. Thursday, I had an appointment in the morning to meet with the Avon D.M. and get a makeover, along with Baseball Mom, the person who "recruited" me. ( that's kind of silly since I basically self recruited myself - I contacted Avon about becoming a rep after doing research on line. All she had to do was show up at my house and not act flakey or scarey. But still, she is a pleasant, warm person and is sincere about doing right by me in her leadership duties) So I left in plenty of time for the appointment....

I had to go to Hanover, which meant I had to drive on Rt. 30. I hate Rt. 30. Not only is it a slow road which carries about 18 times the amount of traffic it was designed and built to carry but , for me, it is "Bad Memory Lane". I lived in a house that fronted the road, one of two "haunted" houses I've lived in in my life ( but that's another story)

Anyway, no sooner did I turn onto the road then traffic came to a total stand still due to some road construction. I was right behind a pick up truck with a cap on the back. Inside the cap, half covering the window, were a swarm of bees. Bees are my only phobia. Spiders, I let out, snakes I think are interesting, mice...well, I once simply picked one up my his tail as he scurried past me having caused no end of commotion in a pizza shop where I was eating lunch. He was tame. He was obviously an escapee from the pet store down the mall, but still, I thought two women were going to pass out when I did it, and the store manager, a big, burley ethnic looking guy was sort of green. But bees - urgghh! I got swarmed and stung once when I was a little girl, and am also pretty badly allergic, so this is a phobia grounded with a bit of realistic fear.

Nevertheless, just watching those things aggitate at the cap window made my skin crawl. I turned the radio up to take my mind off that horrible buzzing sound they make, and looked around to try not to look at them. But the only scenery in view was the nursing home where my friend Angela spent the last days of her life and the Sheetz market where we used to walk across and eat all manner of disgusting food because we were all so sick with grief, that is, her family and I, that we couldn't taste anything anyway.

Finally, I broke free of the construction. I was late for my appointment but the Hive-On-Wheels turned off. Thank God! What worse thing could be in front of me? Well....

Up directly ahead of me was an old truck hauling a trailer. His speed varied wildly between 5 and 40 mph. On the trailer were three bright blue port-a-potties. The trailer had not been hooked up properly to the truck so, though the trailer had break lights, they didn't function. I closed my eyes for a second and imagined my insurance agent's face if I had to tell him that I managed to have a head on collision with a portable bathroom on Bad Memory Lane. It went clear to Hanover in front of me and I was fully 30 minutes late for my appointment. Thankfully, no crashes.

I do have before and after pictures of my makeover....after is a lot better! The appointment was informative, and I came away feeling more confident. I got home, my Avon order had come in along with about 10 million extraneous pieces of paper that I had to sort through. Winston ethusiasticly stuck his head in the boxes and sniffed everything. I sprayed him with some "Dream Life" perfume, but it only made him sneeze, and he still smells like a dog.

The Hub got home and we decided to brave the notoreously unfriendly service of the local Friendlys for dinner. He loves their ice cream. As he finished his meal, he called Jenne to ask a question about the job he's doing. That was when we found out at that Friend Will had been in an auto accident, hit from behind on his new job down in Northern Virginia. He was at a stop when somebody in a porche suv - can you even imagine such a thing - hit him so hard it drove his little saturn into the stopped car in front of him.

We went down to sit with Jenne, at least until she actually heard from Friend Will. We didn't want her to be alone just in case the next phone call was not "Okay, I'm being released and my friends are driving me to their house" but something worse. Luckily, we did hear from him and his injuries seem, now, to be limited to whiplash, which is bad enough.

Anyway, I was so worried about him that I completely forgot about my appointment with Dr. BackCracker the next morning. I called my friend "Gold" to tell her that I could drop off her Avon order and tried to get ready to leave, but was stymied by a series of phone calls from the Temporary Agency.

They wanted me to take a proof reading job for a medical company in Hunt Valley, and they wouldn't take no for an answer. First I told them six weeks was too long and I couldn't start right away anyway due to pending work with my business. They called back and said it could be done in 30 days and I could start in the middle of next week. I told them I had no experience with medical terminology, which isn't entirely true, but I've never formally worked with it. They said it was more important to be "comfortable with a foreign language, but there was a translation guide available for the parts of the work which were not in English." I told them that I spoke no foreign languages, but still, they were sure I was the right person for the job. "Just talk to the woman. Do a phone interview."

Okay, I thought, I can get out of this by just being honest. I have no experience at all at the type of work. Imagine how shocked I was when the woman explained to me that she was asking for someone to proofread medical specifications and NOT ANY PART of it was written in English, but in "various Eastern European languages."

"Umm. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that. What if something got out wrong. This is medicine! I couldn't live with myself! " I said, astonished. "I don't speak any Eastern European languages."

"No one here does. We could never fill our positions if we required fluency. We have very sophisticated translation program, and one person who has fluency, but what we are looking for are the proofreading skills, the ability to pick up differences from the correct translation to the print. It's very tedious, especially since it's not in English."

"That isn't proofreading. That's rows and rows of 'one of these things is not like the others' except in the cyrillic alphabet!" I said. Well, that will offend her and she'll just hang up, I thought.

Instead she said, "That's exactly right! Are you familiar with the cyrillic alphabet?"

Dumbfounded into one of my famous highly truthful replies, I said, "Well, I know the characters and I could probably tell if one was not printed correctly, but I would hardly say I'm familiar -"

"Oh, the agency was right! You are far and away the most qualified candidate for this job. No one else even knew what the cyrillic alphabet was. Plus you showed a grasp of how important this is in your concern about safety. I can't wait to meet you! What day did you say you could start?"

How do I get into these things? I know, I know. I could have just said to the agency, "I'm sorry, I can't do this." But the pay rate is really good, much higher than anything they've ever offered me. I just couldn't, in good conscience to the our household, turn it down flat. So. That gives me work for thirty days starting Thursday (I'll just take off a day to meet my commitment to Mrs. B.)

Well, lets just hope my Lithuanian great-grandfather will smile down on my from heaven.