Gale Martin

Underneath all the greasepaint and glitter, I am a mechanically challenged person with number dyslexia. I also happen to be a wife, mother of one, and full-time... more

Underneath all the greasepaint and glitter, I am a mechanically challenged person with number dyslexia. I also happen to be a wife, mother of one, and full-time marketing director, who owes her life, or at least the continued use of her knees, to Curves fitness salons. I aspire to domestic goddesshood but am forever falling short because of concave cheese soufflés. My husband Bill, aka "Dangerman," is constantly admonishing me to be careful and not to do anything stupid such as stepping off recovery boards at Curves and breaking something. Probably because I have a history of falling off sidewalks. In the pet department, I have an indoor cat Frodo, the feline equivalent of Scylla, the mythological she-devil who tore off sailors' heads for her amusement. Also, a herd of neighborhood cats parade by my basement window regularly, an occurrence I have cleverly dubbed, "The Cat Parade." The only other pets I can claim are unexterminated pests--mice, stink bugs, box elder bugs, spiders--who call 37 Briar Crest Manor home, despite our annual contract with a pest control service. My eighty-three-year-old mother is one of my best friends and my most faithful reader of my writing. I've begun taking her to church because I’m worried she’s going to kill herself one day, fighting someone for the best spot on the Communion rail. Bill and I in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where the prevailing wisdom embraced by people is expressed in the adage, “What’s the use of being Pennsylvania Dutch if you can’t be dumb?”