Sunday, August 03, 2025
August Happiness Challenge Day #3
Friday, August 01, 2025
August Happiness Challenge, Day 1
Wednesday, June 18, 2025
The Rolling Stones Would Be Appalled
AI Image |
"You'd better take an extra shirt," I told my husband as he spoke of his plans to wash his truck before heading off to a continuing education class he needed for his contractor's license.
"It's so hot outside, you might stink when you're done."
He laughed. "Smell like a monkey!" Then he sang, "Whoo whoo whoo whoo whoo whoo whoo" in an effort to imitate the monkey singing in the Ray Stevens song Gitarzan.
For a man who believes The Rolling Stones are the greatest band of all time, he has strange taste in music sometimes. I don't know how many times we've listened to that Ray Stevens song lately.
I kissed him goodbye out in the garage and grabbed the cordless vacuum. "I stepped on a Cheerio, I need to clean it up," I said. "Be careful in the heat."
Back into the house I went, all the way into my office, where I'd apparently dropped a lost Cheerio from my robe and then smashed it. As I ran the vacuum, I began singing the Jane part of Gitarzan. "Baby! Whoooa! Baby! A scooby dooby dooby baby! Whoooa! Shut up Baby, I'm trying to sing."
I decided since I had the vacuum in the back, I would do a quick run-through of the hall, the bedroom, and the kitchen. I caterwauled all the way. "Baby! Whoooa! Baby!"
When I turned the vacuum off, I heard laughter coming from the garage. I went out to find my husband, hat in his hands, laughing so hard I thought he might fall off the chair.
"Is that . . . ," - guffaw - "what you do when I'm not home?" He finally managed to get out.
"Baby! Scooby dooby doo Baby!" I sang back.
Of course it is.
Here's the song on YouTube if you're not familiar with it:
Monday, June 02, 2025
From Firefighter to Farmer: A Birthday Tribute
My guy |
It’s a big day today!
My husband celebrates another year around the sun. Let me tell you a little bit about my guy.
He retired from the city fire department, where he was a Battalion Chief, in 2020, after 36 years of service to the community.
But that has never been his only job. He’s a life-long farmer who tends cattle on land that has been in his family since 1859. He is also a septic tank installer, one of the few locally licensed for alternative systems. He’s a guy who never lets the grass grow tall beneath his feet - especially at haymaking time.
Farming is my husband’s passion. He enjoys the work because he finds it challenging. Farming gives him the ability to be his own boss and work at his own pace. He loves to see the results of his hard work.
His grandfather and father worked together on the farm, and when my husband was old enough, he joined them. His grandfather passed away in 1983, leaving the farm to his wife, and my husband’s father took over management. When his father died in 2010, my beloved became the next in the long line of family men to take over the farm.
In 2014, my husband received the Clean Water Farm, Conservation Farmer of the Year Award from the Virginia Department of Soil and Water Conservation for a water project and best management practices that he implemented on the farm.
His work as a septic tank installer is also a legacy operation. His father installed septic tanks for a living and was still working when he passed away at the age of 74. My husband began working for his father as soon as he was old enough to be of help and then worked for him full time when he finished high school.
After his father passed away, my husband purchased the septic tank installation business and kept it going.
When he was with the fire department, my husband rose up through the ranks to become a Battalion Chief in 2009. He was in charge of five stations and about 35 firefighters. He was a certified emergency medical technician and chair of the fire department's apparatus committee, which designs new fire engines and ladder trucks.
His biggest fire occurred in the late 1980s, when the TAP building burned down. "It was a cold, long day and a big building with a lot of fire inside," my husband recalled. "The conditions were too dangerous to fight from the interior of the building." At that time, he was a lieutenant with the fire department.
The flood of 1985 "was the hardest non-fire event we've had," my husband said. He was a firefighter at the time, and his entire department was in mourning because a captain and a firefighter had been killed by a drunk driver during a wreck call a few days before.
"We were busy constantly getting people out of the water, and we had a few fires," my husband said of that terrible flood. "We couldn't get around town, and people were stranded. Parts of the city were cut off from other parts on account of the water. Our company rescued three people that day on our side of town. We helped get a woman out of the creek where they built the Food Lion Grocery at the intersection of Hollins and Plantation. We rescued her from her car. We used the aerial ladder. We were on one side of the stream and Roanoke County was on the other, and we stretched a rope over and got a boat and brought her to safety."
Now that he has retired from the fire department, he devotes most of his time to farming. He wants to keep the operation going as long as he can.
Today he is mowing hay, doing what makes him happy.
Happy birthday to my best friend and my only love!
Monday, January 13, 2025
My Baby
Monday, November 18, 2024
Forty-one Years Ago
Sunday, June 02, 2024
Tuesday, January 02, 2024
He Is Morning
Monday, November 20, 2023
Oops
My husband on his bike in better days. |
I offered to drive him to the shop so he could ride the bike home, but the inspection sticker was out of date. I suggested he take it and have a sticker put on it, but he said no, he'd take the trailer and bring it home.
Tuesday, November 07, 2023
The Long Day
Tuesday, August 22, 2023
Happiness Challenge - Day 22
Today I am happy that my husband didn't cut his leg off.
He dropped a pickle jar as he was putting it back in the refrigerator, and it shattered. A big piece hit his leg and shaved off a good inch of skin. It wasn't deep, but it bled a lot.
I rushed around trying to take care of him and clean up pickle juice all at the same time. I was trying to keep the pickle juice from running under the refrigerator, plus there was glass everywhere, and he was bleeding somewhat profusely.
After I got him in a chair and his bloody shoes off of him so I could see what he'd done to his shin, I saw that he probably didn't need stitches. I hunted up the bandages and patched him up, then cleaned up the mess. After he rested and the blood finally stopped oozing, he helped me clean up. I was having difficulty with the mopping, so I was glad he was well enough to help me with that.
I told him I was not buying him anymore pickles. This is the second jar of pickles he's dropped and busted in the last year.
Pickle juice is very hard to get up off the floor.
Tuesday, July 25, 2023
The Legend
While we were visiting the Virginia Fire Museum Saturday, my husband saw two trucks that he was quite familiar with.
One was not being displayed, but he recognized the rear end of it immediately. It is a type of fire truck called a Quint. A Quint served as a pumper and as a ladder truck.
My husband hated it. I can remember hearing him fuss about that truck as if it were yesterday instead of 1995. He said it was absolutely useless on a fire scene.
My man reviewing the Quint he used to ride on at Station 13. |
The other truck, though, was Ladder 1. This was a "real" ladder truck, one that bent in the middle and had a driver in the rear.
This was a truck he loved.
My husband rode this piece of firefighting equipment. In fact, he was on the committee that designed it and was instrumental in its setup.
I'm not sure how my husband fit in that tiny little place in the back. |
While we were looking at the truck, my husband struck up a conversation with one of the men helping with the museum. He told him his name, and the fellow said, "Oh, I know who you are. You're a legend at the city."
My husband has never given himself much credit for the work he did at the fire department. It was an enormous job, being a firefighter. He saved people during floods, he worked car wrecks, he put out fires, he saw things people shouldn't ever see. He rose from the bottom of the ranks to Battalion Chief, and I was ever so proud of him with each promotion. He took his role as mentor to the younger firefighters seriously, setting aside time to help them train and learn. He knew where his people were on the fire scene at all times; he never did simply "surround, drown, and burn 'em down," - his people actually put the fires out and saved people and property. They knew they were expected to do their jobs when Battalion 2 was on scene.
I was thrilled to hear someone call him a "legend" at the city fire department. I know he is highly thought of, and he left on good terms. When he hurt himself on the farm in 2014, I had to ask to the nursing staff to keep the firefighters out of the room so he could rest after his surgeries on his hand. Nearly every one of them who brought a patient to the ER wanted to come in and see how Chief was doing.
He's been retired now for three years (I can't believe it's been that long.).
They still call him Chief when they see him. Sometimes they call. "Can I talk to Chief?" they will say.
It always makes me smile.
He is a legend. They don't make them like him anymore.
Monday, July 17, 2023
A Catch-Up Post
Wednesday, June 21, 2023
Insides of a Septic System
Friday, June 02, 2023
He's My Number One
Monday, May 01, 2023
Metal In Your Eye
Tuesday, March 28, 2023
Sports
Thursday, March 09, 2023
Thursday Thirteen
Friday, November 18, 2022
Got You on My Mind
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When we were young, beautiful, and clueless. |