Debbie had a pretty tough year, losing her sister Dianne  at the beginning of the year and her brother Don the previous year, both to cancer.  She was very close to Dianne and visited her often in Creston, Iowa.  Dianne had also come out here on limited visits usually to help Debbie with our first wrestling camp of the year. Debbie plunged ahead with her usual interests, competing in softball, enjoying watching sports and visiting our daughter and grandchildren in Iowa.

Debbie has really pushed her comfort boundaries in recent years when she used to be concerned about driving on a trip alone and now she makes the 450 mile trip to Iowa at the drop of a hat.  She still refuses to drive in the bigger towns, Omaha and Des Moines and skirts them like they had an outbreak of the bubonic plaque.  About the only other thing she is afraid of is staying home alone.  For the life of me I can’t understand how she can be afraid living out here in the middle of God’s country, where people don’t lock their doors or maybe don’t even have a key for their door, a house full of guns,  more bows and arrows than a small sporting goods store and FIVE dogs (four of them big) and  sometimes up to four inside and three cats.   You can’t get within a football field of here without these dogs going ballistic.  You see we have the basic outside guard dog, or alert dog, who then notifies the inside attack dogs, who then bark like the hounds of the Bastervilles and who for sure would scare any unlikely intruder away faster than green grass goes through a goose.  Unless, of course they threw a stick and said fetch!  I am not sure how the cats would figure into this yet.  I’ll let you know next year.  

Debbie talked about retiring her softball cleats, glove and bat this year.  However,  we did some reflection and came up with the statistic that she has been playing softball for 52 consecutive years without EVER missing a season for pregnancy, moving or come hell or high water.  She has slowed down a bit and gone from fast pitch to slow pitch and her hit balls she used to get triples on she now gets singles on and she keeps to the infield either pitching or playing catcher.  I think she has decided to go for the Guiness Book of Records.  She lives up to her nickname that she got in Alaska while playing ball.......kamikaze mom! She has several wrecks per season and usually looks like a practice dummy for a bunch of practicing paramedics, with knee braces, ace bandages and deep penetrating sports cream ....and that is before the game.  

She also added bowling to her lists of sports (can you call that a sport) and this is her second year.  She has gone to the state tournament the last two years and actually got 24th place in doubles last year.

Debbie works VERY hard at our wrestling camps and other retreats.  She is literally the chief cook and bottle washer, feeding up to 70 wrestlers and coaches or other campers and cleaning up after them.   She is a bit tighter wound than me and I think she officially quit 12 times this last summer, but the camps wouldn’t be possible without her!  She is always worried about if they will like what she fixes or if she has fixed enough.   Her cooking always gets the highest ratings on our camp exit surveys and she cooks enough food to founder the Roman Legion.  One day she was worried about enough pasta for spaghetti  and actually cooked 20 lbs. of dry weight spaghetti ......OOPS!

There is also another matter.  I haven’t checked with a professional yet, but I think Debbie is reliving her childhood or somehow retrogressing mentally to her childhood.   The reason I say this is when I come home and she is watching TV it is always in black and white.   At first I thought the color was going out on our TV or that I was losing my color vision.  Then when I looked closer I realized that all of the programs were either as old or older than her.....Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds,  John Wayne,  Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  It is difficult to watch TV with her if you want to watch something produced within the last 5 to 7 decades.   I am sure there is a psychiatric explanation, phobia, or syndrome condition for this.

All in all I think her favorite things are our animals and to support and visit our family and grand kids and to tell me what I need to do.