Years ago, I read an article in Training and Development magazine called The Ground Crew. It was written by a man who stayed home with the kids while his wife worked. She was in the training profession and traveled extensively. He picked her up at the airport one night and she immediately started going through a list of questions about whether this got done or that got done. That upset him and he was trying to figure out a way to talk to her about it when he noticed a plane lit up on the ground being serviced by the ground crew. He watched how everyone had a job to do to get the plane ready to take off. Each job was important and necessary. So he explained to her that even though she has lists of things that need to get done while she is gone, her ground crew consisted of one husband, a 6 month old, two twin 3 year old boys and a 6 year old girl.

The article always sticks in my mind because I am like that woman. I have lists of things to do every day and won’t rest until the list is done. Since the list is always there, it is never done. My husband is the opposite of me. He enjoys every bit of his weekend. At 9pm on Sunday night, he decides what part of the list he wants to tackle that can be done in 30 minutes and that is all he will do. This is my ground crew. He is the best ground crew any woman could ever want or need.

Tom has the most beautiful blue eyes. I could and do stare into them for hours. He has salt and pepper hair and either a beard or goatee depending on the season. He treats me like a princess every minute of every day. Tom worked on dairy farm and an agricultural farm as a kid and still has the strong looking hands and forearms to show for it. He is a patient teacher and has shown me how to fish, drive all types of boats, and paddle a canoe. When we hike, he is always pointing out wildlife or animal tracks. When we first starting dating, he went out and bought a used rototiller and tilled my garden. He loves to can what we grow in the garden. It is March and we are still eating bean, carrots, tomatoes, peppers and onions we grew last season.

He built my greenhouse for $125. I watched him draw it on a piece of paper, and assemble it in a weekend. I never saw him measure anything and claimed it couldn’t be level. He showed me it was. I have no idea how he can visualize that and do it. He is just now finishing up my third greenhouse.


He is my support, my rock, and my friend. We laugh together. Sometimes, I swallow the metaphorical feather and I will start laughing and can’t stop. It gets him laughing too. It was a big sacrifice for him to agree to my becoming an apprentice horseshoer. He would have to support both of us. He has never complained about that, no matter how hard it gets. We get along very well together and usually chose to be with each other on the weekends instead of doing things alone or separately.

He loves me unconditionally. We have been married 13 years and he still holds my hand every car trip. He kisses me goodnight before going to sleep, even on the nights we have been grousing at each other. (Like the old joke, we never go to bed mad. We haven’t been to sleep for 3 years!). He cleans a kitchen better than me. (Something about cleaning deck plates on a Navy ship with a toothbrush every time he got in trouble!) He also cooks healthier foods than I do.

Tom is also my voice of wisdom. I will work myself to death. Over this past year, he makes sure I eat when I am too tired to. He makes me stop and rest on my days off. He makes sure I slow down when I work outside so I don’t get heat exhaustion.

He has the patience of a saint. He speaks softly and thoughtfully. He is rarely angry. Being raised by a mom that yelled every day and was unpredictable every day has a lasting effect on my life. Tom is quiet, consistent and dependable. I really need that in my life. When we met, we both just got jobs in boating safety. He has always called me his swab, even though I got promoted to mate when we got married. He always greets me with a pirates “yar matey.” That just makes life so much more fun. I was so lonely until I met Tom. He is truly my other half.

Like the woman in the Ground Crew story, I can get carried away about the list if I am not careful. I work every day at appreciating Tom so I don’t take him for granted. It is easy to complain that something didn’t get done on the list. But sometimes you just have to throw the list aside, lean on the door jam and watch him napping on the sofa with the kitten tucked into his arm. An unlimited supply of hugs is better than the list any day!

I Know The Wichita Lineman

When I move to a new state I look for clubs to join, so I can meet people with like interests. In Hutchinson, Kansas I joined a kennel club. I wanted a dog and I wanted to learn to train dogs. The president of the club at that time was a man who was recently retired from the phone company. He started working for them nearly forty years earlier as a lineman in Wichita.


After his retirement, he and his wife started raising Pomeranians. They are active people who love to hunt, fish, ride horses, boat and camp. Last year, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with all their friends and extended family. When he and his wife took a six month trip, I stayed in their house and took care of their thirty dogs. This wonderful man stands six foot, five inches tall. He is lean and long, with a full head of silver hair and a smile that always sits comfortably on his mouth and in his eyes. He has a way about him that makes people feel comfortable. He is also a great story teller.


One of his stories takes place when the kids were small in the late 1960’s. His youngest child was mad that his older siblings would not let him ride the horse, so he decided to run away. Instead of trying to make the kid stay, his dad said “OK. But it is getting dark. You had better take a flashlight.” The kid went to the cupboard for a flashlight. Dad walked him to the door. “It is supposed to be cold tonight. Do you want a coat?” The child went to the closet and got a coat. Dad opened the door and looked outside. “It is almost your bedtime. Do you want to take a pillow and a blanket?” His son went to his bedroom for his pillow and blanket. They walked outside. His dad asked him about supper. “You are going to miss supper if you leave now. Do you want some food?” Back in the house he went for a box of crackers. Dad was waiting for him with a wagon. “Here you go. It will be tough walking with all that stuff in your arms.”


As his son started down the driveway, he asked his son if he wanted to take one of the dogs with him for company.

So, he watched his boy walk down the dirt road with his wagon and the dog. His oldest son walked up to him. “Dad, you can’t let him run away from home!” His dad said “He won’t go far. He is not allowed to cross the road. So he either has to walk a circle around the section of farm ground, or go to the school bus shelter at the end of the road. Besides, the dog is with him and that dog won’t let anyone near any of you kids.”


He watched the child through binoculars until he saw him go into the bus shelter. After supper, when it was just dark, he walked to the bus shelter. His son was cold, tired and trying not to be scared. Dad told him that he was just checking up on him, that he didn’t need to come home. “But if you want to come home, I will walk with you.” I think the boy and the dog rode home in the wagon pulled by his dad.

Read to learn how to write

Books are woven through all parts of my life. I was a latch key child long before there was a term for it. I spent hours reading. As a kid I read every Louis L’Amour western and every Walter Farley black stallion book I could get my hands on.

Our public library was an old three story Victorian mansion in the center of town that was donated to the town years earlier. It was dark with lots of small rooms and too many stairs. There was no security at a library back then, so I would go into the back rooms where the old books were kept and sit on the floor in the corner looking through them.

From that library I read Congo by Michael Crichton; Johnny Tremain, by Esther Forbes; Savage Sam by Fred Gipson; and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

I remember reading a great book with twin sisters, one of whom went on a space journey where she was frozen in time so she would survive the journey. When she finally got back to earth, her sister was fifty years old than she was. I don’t remember the name of the book or I would read it again.

During the summer of 1981 I was recuperating from some unexpected surgery. My neighbor started taking me to her Friends of the Library group. People donated books to the library all year long to be sold at an annual sale. This annual sale also gives the library a place to put books they have weeded out of their system. I had a lot of fun sorting the books and stayed for three years, until I moved to Texas. Each state I move to, the first place I go is the library to sign up as a volunteer. I am now in my 27th year volunteering.

I volunteer a couple of hours a week sorting the Hobbies and How To section books. As a rule, the maintenance staff keeps a constant four pallets of donated books to sort through year round. There are sorters who go through those books and sort them into categories. They roll their carts of sorted books down the isles where there are tall bookshelves defined by individual categories. Each person assigned to sort a category sorts the books into sub-headings. Those books are boxed and stored until the annual sale.

At the same time, some of the sorted books are sent upstairs to a used book store located inside the library. Books that are deemed to have a potential larger value are stored separately to be sold on an Internet store front. I enjoy my volunteer time though out the year. It is quiet. We are in the basement, so my cell phone won’t work. You can visit with people or just lose yourself in books. The person who sorts audio ‘stuff’ has a record player and he plays music on vinyl throughout the morning. There is a dining room in the library if you need coffee or a muffin. And, of course, there is the library upstairs. The photo below is the where the main sort takes place.

Writers Retreat

I am going to Norman, Oklahoma to a writer’s conference at the end of April. I am curious to see what a writer’s conference is like. I had hoped to go to one last year at Ball University last year, but it didn’t work out.

The writers group I belong to just got back from a retreat at the Elms Hotel in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. We wrote a lot and ate too much junk food. The meeting room we worked from had windows along the entire wall that looked out over the grounds. It snowed most of the day, making it the perfect day to sit indoors and tap away on the laptop. It helped that the bottom floor of the hotel has a heated mineral spring water lap pool and a full service spa!

I am back in the shoeing season groove. I left the bookstore because my supervisor was a bully and I just didn’t want to be that miserable everyday. It did pay the heat bills this winter. It also paid for a new fridge, carpeting in the living room, two new recliner chairs and a big repair bill on the Subaru. Everyday at that job was like being in the movie Gaslight. Life is too short.

The past month was spent getting caught up on my novel writing. The location and setting within the novel have been tightened. That also meant I had to change some characters around. The ones I don’t need can be used in another novel.