As a trucker’s wife, many questions may come up. Questions concerning home life, meals, children, laundry, how we deal with being alone and even trucking questions.

I welcome your questions and comments. I will try to answer as many questions as I can here. My e-mail address is listed at the end of the column.

Dear Kelly,

My husband splashed diesel fuel all over himself the other day while fueling.

I can normally get his clothes pretty clean and fresh by using Tide with bleach and a stain treatment for tough spots, but this smell is unrelenting!

My washer and dryer smell and I have had to take my personal laundry to my sister’s until I can fix this! His clothes still reek and I don’t know what to do.

Please help!

Smelly Washer

Dear Smelly Washer,

First of all try re-washing his clothes with a cup or two of vinegar in the wash.

That worked for me. I hung his clothes on a line to dry the second time to air them out a bit more.

For the dryer, I took some clean rags (old towels) and dampened them with vinegar and ran them through a dryer cycle to get rid of the smell in the dryer.

Other methods I have heard of folks using are a can of Coca-Cola in the washer, baking soda, Simple Green (an all-purpose cleaner/degreaser (http://consumer.simplegreen.com), a citrus degreaser and Goo Gone, another citrus based cleaner.

I haven’t had to try any of the others, but I would love first hand comments from anyone who has!

Good Luck!

Kelly

Dear Kelly,

I married a trucker… I am supportive, faithful, and even wash my husband’s laundry between trips.

I understand the fact that his schedule is irregular and I am not in any way resentful making the last minute changes to my schedule to accommodate his home time.

Of course there is a “however”… I am sure you hear this from every trucker’s wife out there; we have three small children, one, two and five. I work full-time and spend my evenings at home with the children, running the house and doing contract work for extra money.

My DH is complaining that he hasn’t been on a hunting trip since he started trucking (prior to our being married.) Last year he went on a fishing stag for five days and then had a week off work until his truck was back.

I haven’t had ONE single night away in over two years and it is all I can do to not strangle him when he complains.

How can I get him to see that the VERY limited time we have for vacations or opportunity together as a family needs to be spent as a family or at least equally distributed so we both “get a break”?

I Need a Break Too

Dear I Need a Break Too,

Thanks for writing.

I can completely relate to the needing to get away.

Is there a way that you both can come up with some kind of compromise?

If he gets say, 10 days of holidays, offer him the idea of three days for the hunting trip, three days for you to do something while he stays with the kids and maybe three days where the whole family goes camping or to a cabin? If you don’t hunt, maybe you could go and stay at a friend’s place, or visit a family member.

If it’s in the budget, maybe a nice hotel with a pool and a hot tub would be a great way for you to unwind and de-stress?

Don’t be afraid to let him know that you feel stressed and also need to get away.

Looking after the home and children is a full-time job in itself!

Being denied time for yourself, while he gets his, will only lead to resentment, and that is not good in any relationship. In our lifestyle of being married to a trucker, this is only compounded. Everyone needs a vacation to relax and rejuvenate.

I really, really hope that you can get some away time. I try to go out for dinner with a friend at least once every couple months while my husband stays home with the children. I know it’s not a real vacation, but it gives me time to relax, have a good meal (that I didn’t cook or clean up after) and talk grown up!

Not to mention the one-on-one time between my husband and the children does wonders for their relationship as well!

Kelly n

– Kelly Livingstone is the editor of ATruckersWife.com, a Web site dedicated to truckers’ wives and what’s important to them. You can e-mail her at column@atruckerswife.com. Or you can send your questions and comments via snail mail to: Letters, Truck News, 12 Concorde Place, Suite 800, Toronto, Ont. M3C 4J2