My first memory of telling someone what I wanted to be when I grew up was when I was about four or five.  I’m not sure where I got the idea, but I wanted to be one of those baton twirling girls.  I wanted the cute outfit and some boots.  I twirled my baton all the time but never got very good at it.

When I was a little older my favorite show on television was The Annie Oakley Show.  I wanted to be a cowgirl.  I think my parents even got me a little cowgirl outfit complete with cap guns.  I remember paying cowboys and Indians with the neighborhood kids.  I was always Annie Oakley.

When I got into Junior High all I wanted was to be a cheerleader.  In my Freshman year I became one.  I cheered four years in high school and two years in college.  I should have moved to Cincinnati and cheered for the Bengals.  I might still be there.

In High School I also wanted to become a writer.  I had a wonderful English teacher by the name of Vivian Kruse and she told me that I was a good writer.  I used to write short stories and let my friends and teachers read them and critique.

I despised my first real job out of school which was making these minute fuses in a factory.  I did the same thing over and over. On occasion, our supervisor would allow us to switch to a different section of the assembly line.  I could have died of boredom had it not been that my best friend from high school quit college and came to work beside me.

I worked there for a year and saved all my money and went to college for a year and a semester.  I did terribly because I just wanted to have fun and be a cheerleader.

But in college I still wanted to become a writer.  I was majoring in English Literature which I absolutely adored.  My Freshman English teacher told me that no one in first semester College English would receive an “A”.  I was appalled.  I got one in my second semester.

In later years, I got a job as the receptionist and Junior Executive secretary for the Treasury Department at The Mead Corporation in Dayton, Ohio.  I loved working on the 24^th floor and having a bright and shiny new clean office.  I loved answering the phone for everyone and directing the calls.  I love being the Xerox key operator and fixing paper jams and stuff.  I loved typing the horrible humungous Accounts Receivable report and even suggested we do a brochure with it with charts and graphs.  I got a huge pat on the back for that one.

Having two daughters, I was pretty happy being a homemaker and mother.  Especially after we moved to Lake Summerset and could afford to live nicely.  I worked at a local newspaper and took photos of kids at school and wrote the stories about their major accomplishments.  The kids all loved when I came to school because I might take their picture and they’d be in the paper.

While I was working for AT & T while they dismantled their office, I had nothing to do but shred paper at the end of the day.  I answered telephones and ran errands.  I asked them if they minded if I wrote since I was stuck there doing next to nothing.  They said it was fine.  I wrote most of my novel during this time.  I wrote the beginning and the end but didn’t figure out how to tie it together.  I dreamed the middle.  I woke up amazed that I knew how to complete my novel.

I have since rewritten it several times and it is now so out of date that it will never become a story.  But I do have the ability to say that in my life, I have written a novel.  Several times.

And now as a sixty-seven-year old retired school secretary, I am just happy to be a Master Gardener and blog writer.

I remember years ago Addi suggested to me to “write about what you know.”  I guess that is what I am doing with my blog.

Peace be with you.