One Woman’s World

Can it be? Monday again? Indeed.

Frightened by the deluge of pleas for help, and yet, risking it all to share the Truth and Enlightenment I seem to be endowed with…. It is time for…………(drumroll)………..

**Heather is not a trained counselor or emotional wellness professional. Answers represent her personal perspective and are for entertainment purposes only.

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Re: Gambling Tips
Dear One Woman’s World

Who will win the Super Bowl! I can’t believe it’s already August and you haven’t made a predicition. Also why don’t more women win Survivor it seems like its always the men like that guy who did yoga and was hatin on Terry.

The Road Dog

Dear Road Dog,

I don’t understand your surprise at my lack of Super Bowl Prediction. I have never claimed to be a sports fan. In fact, I don’t know the rules of football. I will do my best to answer your question. To do that, I must turn to my favorite website, Google.com.

When you type in the simple question, “Who will win the Superbowl,” you get tons of hits.

Now, you could spend all day reading the results, but let me tell you. The first hit is a place for dummies like you and I who haven’t a clue to vote for the next winner of the Superbowl. But if you look at the next hit, it will tell you clearly, “Seahawks will win Superbowl.” Yes, I know that this was an article about last-year’s Superbowl, but it seems like a bit of an omen to me, that the second hit when you type in that question comes back with a clear answer. Seahawks it is, Road Dog. Mark my words.

As for your reference to men always winning Survivor. Don’t even get me started. Sexist nature of our society, male-dominant challenges, evil connivers like Richard Hatch, Johnny Fairplay, Boston Rob. Grrrrrrrrr. All we can hope for is a better setup in the September season.

Yours,
OWW… (Wow, who knew that my initials spelled OWW?!)

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My wife and I had to walk out of Miami Vice because our three year old would not SIT still. How do you cope? We gave her a juice box and everything?

Stan

Dear Stan,

Have you considered that Miami Vice might not have enough adult content to sufficiently mentally stimulate your THREE YEAR OLD?! He might need to see something with more noise and action, with louder music, with more graphic violence and color and squealing tires and language. It may be that your child is too advanced for such a mild action flick. Have you considered taking him to see The Descent? Now there’s a nice horror/thriller about underground monsters that eat people. Hopefully he’ll pay attention to that.

Oh, and take along some fruit snacks. My two-year-old daughter loved eating fruit snacks when we took her to see The Wild for her birthday.

Sincerely,
One Appalled Woman

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Re: Potty Training

Dear One Woman’s World,

Our son is 2.5? How come he still wont use the toilet. Please do something about this ASAP.

Cheryl and Shirl Stevens

Dear Cheryl and Shirl,

You neglected to include your address in your question. Otherwise, I could perhaps do the said “something” about this ASAP. If I were in your home, I would put a diaper on your son and try again in 6 months.

Sincerely,
Heather

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Dear Heather,

Would it TECHNICALLY be considered child abuse to duct-tape two little boys into separate chairs so they will stop hitting each other?

Signed,

Overworked in Oklahoma

Dear Overworked,

Are you kidding me? I think anyone who doesn’t use a little duct-tape in their parenting is on the road to disaster. In this crazy adventure we call parenting, all we can use are the tools put at our disposal. What else did God create duct-tape for? I’m not sure if you’ll recall, but one of our parenting icons in the mommyblogosphere used duct-tape to keep poo off her walls. I think the real abuse would be to let them keep pounding each other. You go, Oklahoma. Use your womanly powers and your duct tape to restore peace and calm to your kingdom. Actually, why don’t you take a picture of said duct-taped little ones and send it to the duct-tape marketing department. They could use a laugh, and you might get rich when your little ones get on a commercial or something.

That said: A star-wars duct-tape joke that I heard somewhere.

Q: How is duct-tape like “the force?”

A: Well, it has a dark side and a light side, and it holds the universe together.

Peace, out!

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We are happy to be able to help, here at One Woman’s World. So, please continue sending your questions to onewomansworld (at) gmail (dot) com. (The brackets and spell-out version of this email address is to try to keep people from sending me inquiries asking if I’d like to increase the size of my… Anyway, please, legitimate questions only!)

:)

:)

!!!

Thanks, Al

That’s what Bean asks, when we finish watching the slide show we made for church on Sunday for the Young Women. It has a lot of pictures of Jesus in it, and every time it ends, she requests: “More Jesus?”

Because Jesus is something she wants.

Like when we sing I am a Child of God, and after she claps her hands and shouts, “Yay, God!”

Like in the middle of the night when I ask her what song she’d like to sing, and she responds by folding her arms and saying, “prayer.”

Who could have told me that the two-year-old in my home would be such a spiritual strength to me, however irreverent her declarations may sound to my grown up ears.

Now to get myself to that point, that when offered a fun song, I choose prayer, that when finished reading my scriptures, my heart wants more Jesus. That when I’m thinking about my Heavenly Father, I want to clap my hands and shout hooray.

Just looking down at that little Bean face makes me know God lives. And it makes me more grateful to him than anything ever has.

My Bean and her cousin S, were born one day apart–Since Beanie stubbornly delayed her birth two hours past midnight, they do not share a birthday. But they were born across the ocean from each other. S was born in Korea, and Bean here in the U.S.A. They will be two this week, and they will be together on Sunday for the first time since last Halloween, when this sequence of pictures was taken. We’ll have a birthday party for the two of them.

These pictures do my heart good. The symbolism astounds me. I love the sight of these two little cousins from across the world reunited. Beanie, the all-American cheerleader, and S wearing her traditional Korean Han-Bok. mmmmmm, I must smile, and share:

Alright. It is enough, already. I give in.

Let me begin by saying that it was never my intention to set myself up as an authority in the world. This blog was never meant to answer the questions plaguing the lives of its readers. But after the constant flood of letters began inundating my email box seeking truth and clarity, I finally realized that for some small few of you, I may use what knowledge I have to shed light on your situations.

And so, without further ado, it is time for…………(drumroll)………..

**Heather is not a trained counselor or emotional wellness professional. Answers represent her personal perspective and are for entertainment purposes only.

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Dear One Woman’s World:
I’ve heard that putting egg in my hair will make it curly?? Is that true! Also what do I do just crack one over my head? … Please advise
—Kaycee M. Collins

Dear Kaycee,
The answer to your question is a complicated one. The answer is no, and yes, and why in the world would you want to put an egg on your head? Have you never heard of a perm, or those little pink spongy rollers, or hot rollers, or a curling iron, or eating spoiled dairy products—I’ve heard that works to curl your hair, or was that your teeth?

My main point is this: all of these alternatives seem preferable to the mess you will be dealing with if you use egg to curl your hair.

If, however, you have examined your options, and feel comfortable ending the potential life of a downy baby chick, you should then crack one egg into a bowl, discarding the yolk—unless you are overly fond of fat and cholesterol, in which case you can eat the residue, or unless you want to do a facial mask, and then just spread the yolk on your face until it dries—but back to the point. Mix the egg white up well, and then smear it through your hair. Follow this up by diffusing and scrunching the wet hair in a blow-dryer until your hair is crunchy and wet-looking, but holds a kinky curl.

And once you’ve done that, please don’t come by to visit until you’ve washed your hair several times.

**Also—not that I know this from personal experience—but it may take you weeks for your hair to recover from the distress said procedure will inflict.

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One Woman’s World:
My dating life sux. I can’t ever get any dates. Is it because my breath smells bad?

Charles

Dear Charles:

It smells alright from here. Have you considered that your personality or your spelling may be to blame?

Sincerely,
Heather

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Dear Heather:
Is the Da Vinci Code for real? Please respond.

Biff Smutzen

Dear Biff,

I’m a little at a loss to answer your question without more information, but I will do the best I can with what I’ve got.

The Book: Yes, indeed, Biff, the book is for real. It is an actual published novel: a bona-fide best-seller and major-league page-turner. It is, however, a work of “fiction” whatever Dan Brown may have to say about the veracity of every historical and artistic fact within its pages.

The Movie: Certainly I think our friends Ron Howard, Tom Hanks, and Audrey Tautou think it’s for real. As, I think, do the people who paid the 215 million dollars to see it while it’s been in theaters. Again, my friend, a work of “fiction.” Surely they taught you this word’s meaning in grade-school?

The Code: ………………………………………………………………………………..!!!!
What you do not hear is the sound of me banging my head repeatedly against the wall near my computer desk.
Yes, Biff. The Code is for real. In its entirety.

To clear up some additional mysteries:

The Lost Arc that Indie found in the Raiders movie is at this time hidden in a crate in a gigantic government warehouse for mysterious archaeological finds.

Specially designed digging ships really can grind their way through to the earth’s core and re-reverse the flow of the magma at its center, to narrowly avoid the earth being cooked by giant microwaves.

Oh, and there is also a secret magical community living among us in every land, with boarding schools training up young witches and wizards to defeat the Dark Lord what’s his name.

Sincerely Yours,
One Woman

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Having answered these few simple questions, I begin to see that it may be my calling in life to become an advice columnist in the blogosphere. And I am now open for business. One Woman’s Wisdom is about to be a weekly Monday morning feature, and I am ready for your questions. Please address all email queries to onewomansworld@gmail.com. I’ll be waiting.

Also, please understand that though my newfound confidence in my abilities makes me feel highly qualified to spout off my opinion about almost any subject matter, please do not be offended if I don’t choose to respond to your question either because it lies outside of my circle of knowledge, or because the questions I receive are too plentiful.

This is the post where I throw my cyber arms around Karli at Mom On A Wire to thank her for her hard work and beautiful skills all employed to make this new design of One Woman’s World a thing of beauty. She also inspired my original switch to blogsome back in February when I left behind Morceaux de Fromage, and moved on to One Woman’s World. I haven’t regretted the decision. And while we’re on the subject, head on over to her site and CHECK OUT some of the other cool designs she’s been doing recently. And then hire her to re-design yours. She’s amazing.

She did the work. I watched, and oohed, and aahed, and added difficult challenges to her work on this masterpiece. You see, I had to have the picture in the header involved in my design. It’s so important to me, that even though it is a toughie to work around from a design standpoint, Karli made it happen. It’s magic. It’s so much more me than the old generic template.

Why this picture?: Here’s the text soon to go into my “about me” page to help you understand.

Want to know a little more about One Woman’s World. Look at my header. That’s where I want to be right now. On the trail. Heading oh so gently downhill, on my way down from a beautiful hike to the summit of somewhere. Deep in my thoughts on my way back home with my sweetheart, Cody, and my child, who we’ll call Bean.

Where’s my sweetheart? He’s the one taking the picture. He’s hanging back a little bit to watch me cruising on down the trail. He’s busy seeing the beauty in me and the world around me while we explore it together. And where is my child? At the moment this picture was taken, I thought my child was still just a fond hope in my heart. But at that moment, though I was unaware, she, hopefully the first of several children yet to come, was already growing inside of me, preparing to introduce her fabulous self to the world.
That may be the most beautiful part of this picture, to me. That I was unknowingly in the midst of receiving the greatest gift I have ever received.

So there you go. My world. In a picture.

Other parts of my world? I’m a Mormon Canadian French teacher wedding photographer wanna-be novelist stay-at-home mom who loves to read anything from Jane Austen to Shakespeare to L.M. Montgomery to J.K. Rowling to David Eddings. I am a fanatical canner in fall, canning whatever fruit I can get my hands on. I adore crocheting and I hate to scrapbook, unless it’s digital. I could eat tomatoes from the garden until I turn red. I love Ben and Jerry’s Everything But The… and Haagen Daaz almond ice cream bars. I love to cook—except at times when it feels like an unavoidable chore—and learning new recipes is an exciting adventure for me. If it has tomatoes or cheese or pasta in it, I’ll eat it, unfortunately for my hips. I love long hikes with my husband, and my ultimate dream is for us to work for ourselves, writing and taking pictures, and taking long walks and talking forever.

I am the daughter of the best parents and grandparents ever. I love my in-laws, and my family on both sides is a tight-knit, loving group. My faith in God sustains me, my participation in His church fulfills me, and His blessings fill my life.

Sound idyllic enough for you? I can promise my day-to-day life often seems a bit more humdrum. I’m just here, every day to share a bit of my path through motherhood, family life, housework, hobbies, hard work, and laziness. I struggle with many things: changing diapers, losing weight, finding time, finding patience, wading through monotony, reducing stress, managing finances, teaching my daughter, being consistent, and much more. But I also find joy in small, daily moments.

What you’ll find here, if you’ve come to stay, is a view, through many varied windows, of one woman’s world. It’s not the most glamorous. It’s not the most fascinating. Some days, it bores even me, but it’s mine.

C.S. Lewis said, “We read to know we’re not alone.”

And so, please read. A piece of my world. Every day. Sharing how one woman’s world is really not that different from another’s. To connect that woman’s world to yours. To remind us both that we’re not alone as we struggle to fulfill our many roles as women. Laughing. Loving. Living. Working. Escaping. Mothers. Daughters. Wives. Sisters. Friends.

Welcome to my world!

I remember last Christmas when my mother was in town visiting, that Bean began to do a dangerous and toddler-like thing. She was standing up on a high place, and had she remained unchecked, the fall would have been inevitable, as would have been the ensuing tears.

My mother did what any self-respecting grandma would do, and tried to save her grandchild. I’ll not soon forget her words, as she tried to get Bean down from her perilous perch:

“Stand down, Beanie!”

We all laughed at her word choice, having watched one too many police/FBI/spy/CIA drama at the movies and on TV.

It sounded like my mother was the law enforcement officer, and Bean the hardened criminal being busted in the middle of her dastardly lawless activities. I almost expected Bean to raise both of her hands, nice and slow.

Well, my mother’s comment is no longer that funny to me. I really am starting to believe that toddlers and hardened criminals have a lot in common. I have to stop her from doing something life-threatening multiple times a day. I have to quell her fits of “boing boing” on my couch. I have to remove her from tabletops. I’ve even feared she’s going to launch from the crib, stab herself with knives, or drink poison. This child is nearing two, and I believe she is a menace to society.

Honestly, if things don’t change, this kid is going to wind up doing hard “time-out.”

I should have told her to stand down the other day when I was distracted on the phone, and she began to “boing, boing” on my bed. Complete with chanting. I should have stopped her, but it was too late while she was sailing in slow-motion off the bed, and landing with a sickening–to any mother–thud.

Never mind the hilarity when in the midst of hysterical sobs against my neck she inadvertently gave me a zerbert (our family’s word for that crazy sound when you blow on a naked baby stomach) and then couldn’t decide between hysterical laughter and shrieks of woe.

How am I going to survive the two-year-old madness? Stand down, Bean for the love of Pete! Stand down!

I’ve been thinking for awhile about starting up a Cafe Press store for Tee-shirts related to this blog. I’ve got the theme down, but I haven’t yet decided which slogans to put on the shirts.

I want a series of tee-shirts that start with this intro:

“In my world…

And end with:

…mama is always right.
…carbs and chocolate are calorie free.
…???

So here it is, a contest. Finish the phrase with the ending that you’d like to wear on the back of a tee-shirt. If yours is chosen, you get the distinctive honor of being able to purchase said tee-shirt. Highstakes competition, no? Feel free to give several ideas. I love them. I want them. Send the ideas to me!

The Bean will be 2 this month, and tonight she went to sleep in her own big-girl bed. She wailed and wailed when I tried to put her in the crib, crying out for the bed. So that was that. No adjustment period for the moment. She lay right down and went to sleep in her big girl bed, and the crib is empty.

She looks so peaceful in there. Is this the beginning of relinquishing all my control so that she can start learning independance? Will I find her wandering the halls at night. Should I remove everything from her room. Will she be dating boys soon? Will she be calling me for advice about her own babies? How does a mother’s heart take it? I want to cry.

Where is my baby? I want to go snuggle her.

Oh how I love them. I especially love them if I got to know them in weird, strange, or otherwise unusual circumstances. (Yes, I know, I just said three things that all mean the same thing — if you just missed that reference, you don’t watch enough West Wing episodes on DVD with your spouse until late in the night.)

Anyhoo– I spent the most lovely Friday and Saturday with two of the most darling people. We’ll call them Sharee, and Brian. They are two of my former students from back in my days as a French school-teacher in the best High School ever. Friday, Sharee came over and we talked and laughed, and she went on my date with Cody and I to see Pirates! I highly recommend it if you enjoy great acting, good writing, a fabulous score, sweet swordplay, and grotey sea-beasties. I loved it. I think it was every bit as good as the first movie, and deepened a lot of characters in the process of just providing a rousing good time.

Friday during the day, in between making apricot jam, Sharee and I got to discuss theories on Harry Potter and the How Can I Ever Wait For It Book 7. We got to giggle and laugh and read each other’s novels, and read over each other’s shoulders. When I was her teacher and she was the age of my youngest sister, I knew we’d be friends someday in the adult world. I just didn’t know it would be this fun.

That night, after the movie, Brian came over to share in the fun. More laughter and general silliness. More memories. Oh how I love watching who these cool-as-cool teenagers are turning into.

Both of them came over again today. We drank smoothies, ate waffles, played Settlers of Catan. What fun conversation! What a lovely time.

I can’t tell you how honored I am that these and some other delightful students still make me a part of their lives. The student-teacher relationship ended, and I’ve made some life-long friends.

:) I’ve gotta go to bed, but I had to post the smile on my face.