July 24th, 2024

Back in 2002 I was trying to think of a name for my new Yahoo email address and my new website. It was hard because every combination of linda and barclay was already taken. I wanted something easy that people could remember and then I had an "ah ha!" moment and I came up with lindawithasmile because as I looked in the mirror, that was me. All these years later, it's more me than ever. I have the sweetest, most generous, and most giving husband, a wonderful family, and an enormous number of wonderful friends. Bill and I are both happily retired, and we live in a beautiful home in a beautiful community on the central coast of California. Every morning I wake up with smile and every night I fall asleep content. I am truly Linda with a smile!

People always ask where I'm from so here's a thumbnail sketch.

I was born in 1950 in St. Paul, Minnesota. I had the happiest Father Knows Best childhood any kid ever had. My dad worked for the St. Paul Saints, the AA farm team for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. My mom stayed home and raised me and my younger brother and sister. She was the sweetest most amazing mother ever, the pied piper of all the neighborhood kids. Over the years Dad got promoted and transferred within the Dodger organization from St. Paul to Omaha to Albuquerque to Spokane. In 1971, Dad left the Dodger organization and became the VP of Operations for the newly formed San Diego Padres baseball team where he remained until he retired in 1989. All throughout our moves I never felt jerked around. Instead, I loved the adventures of traveling and living all over the country with my family and I loved making new friends.

From Spokane, I moved to Hollywood where I worked for a movie company and married a rock musician. After 10 years we got divorced. Then in July 1985, Bill and I met while we were both working for a high tech computer printer and printer supplies company. Bill was living in Dallas, Texas and I was living in Woodland Hills, California. I moved to Dallas in October 1985 and we got married on New Years Eve in 1986.

In 1987, Bill got transferred and we moved across the country to Amherst, New Hampshire. He got transferred again in 1990 and we moved to Dublin, Ireland for a year. What an adventure that was! In 1991 Bill got transferred to southern California and we moved to Thousand Oaks where we lived for 22 years. Then in 2011, Bill retired and we bought a 36-foot motorhome and traveled up and down the west coast of the United States. In 2013, on one of our motorhome trips, we landed in Grants Pass, Oregon. Bill had always wanted to live in the woods, so we made a life-changing decision and bought a great big spectacular craftsman-style home on 5 thickly forested acres. After four years we realized the home and property were way too much to maintain so in 2017, we sold our home and our motorhome and moved to the sunny central coast of California and bought a beautiful manageable home and property in Nipomo that suits us perfectly. I don't know a lot of things for sure but one thing I do know — we are never ever moving again.

Bill has become an accomplished photographer and golfer, neither of which he did in the years he was working — he's really morphed into a different person. Me, however, I'm the same me that I always was. I grew up at my mom's side cooking and gardening and I'm still the happiest when I'm whipping up something delicious in the kitchen and entertaining friends, or out in the sun playing in the yard, doing what I call Disneyland gardening.

So this is me and this is why I'm Linda with a smile!