Blooming Women
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  • About Blooming Women
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  • Happy Birthday, Blooming Women! One Year Today!
  • Blog—Maniacal Musings—Becky Lyn Rickman, Managing Editor
  • Blog—Jessica's Journey—Jessica VanVactor, Guest Contributor
  • Blog—My Armenia—Carol Rickman's Blog
  • Dealing with miscarriage
  • My Story
  • Circles
  • The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Being Single
  • 5 Stages of divorce recovery
  • The Circus is in Town
  • (You're covered with) The Fingerprints of God
  • Thunder Roared and Love Soared
  • A Period Piece
  • A sneak preview of the Gertie sequel!
  • Six Steps to Cultivate your Femininity in the Business World
  • Chore Zoning or Don't try this at home!
  • The 50 with Meredith Morse—Opera Singer
  • The 50 with Jessica VanVactor
  • Memorizing Joy
  • AT LAST! My interview with Shan White, Life Coach for women in transition
  • Questions and statements we don't care if we never, ever get asked or told again (am I right, girls?)
  • The Date
  • Moonshadow's Spirit
  • Broken Writer + Hypnotherapy = Amazing Trips
  • The "R" Word
  • The 50 with Carol Shepherd Rickman
  • Triumph During Transitions
  • A Kentucky Afternoon
  • Mothers
  • 10 things chemo taught me
  • What if . . .
  • Forgiveness—A poem
  • Mantegories (n. from the Latin; man+categories)
  • Insomnia 101
  • Blooming Bud Interview: Sierra
  • Masterful Mindsets
  • It's in the bag!
  • Important lessons for children: Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can
  • Nursery rhymes, and times, and slimes, and grimes, and crimes
  • Things I learned as a single mom
  • Sadie's Soapbox: Dating
  • The Dress
  • 8 Things That Have Surprised Me About Having a Large Family
  • The gift of longing
  • The Semicolon Project
  • Most embarrassing moments—culinary edition
  • MilitaReality—a brat's perspective
  • About those elusive wisps of thought
  • Being there
  • The Giving Mom
  • How I still haven't learned to keep my smart mouth shut!
  • If you give a mom a cookie . . .
  • Cacti and Geraniums
  • The Three Gardeners
  • Beauty is as beauty does
  • Words for Sabra
  • Arm scratching in Baltimore
  • Pornography didn't kill our love and friendship . . . I did . . . and how we got it back
  • Hardening off our little bloomers
  • The Wonderful, Magical Women of Blooming Television
  • Shake it like a Polaroid picture!
  • 25 Date Nights (that aren't dinner and a movie)
  • Hills Like White Elephants
  • Maryland Beaten Biscuits
  • The night we thought the house was exploding
  • A mysterious case of goosebumps or "What is that on the wall?"
  • Militareality—Real stories of military wives
  • Finding my metal in wood
  • Another blooming bud interview
  • Chariot of Fire
  • Secret gifts of love
  • The best prank I ever pulled was . . .
  • Connie
  • Dating and other hazards
  • Favorite childhood memories
  • When God speaks . . .
  • Zanie gets into another sticky situation
  • No-see-ums: A little useful information
  • I love my kids, but . . .
  • Meg's poem
  • Another blooming bud interview
  • Some of my favorite herbal recipes are . . .
  • I love my cat, but . . .
  • I love all creatures, but . . .
  • The thing all girls and women must see and know . . .
  • The Great Chicken Debacle
  • The Powerful Influence of Brothers
  • How I feel about blooming is . . .
  • Sometimes grandma is up—other times she is simply upside-down
  • Anyone out there as anxious as I am?
  • Some of my funniest childhood memories are . . .
  • You might be addicted to Harry Potter if . . .
  • This month's survey:
  • Another Blooming Bud interview
  • The most valuable life lesson I've learned is . . .
  • The greatest blessing to come out of the most painful thing I ever experienced was . . .
  • The most powerful influence on my life is . . .
  • The thing that could have broken our family, but didn't was . . .
  • The funniest thing that ever happened to me was . . .
  • The time my dad really surprised me was when . . .
  • NEW FEATURE: Interviews with Blooming Buds
  • ANOTHER NEW FEATURE: A survey
  • The most valuable life lesson I've ever learned is . . .
  • My most embarrassing moment was when . . .
  • What really puzzles me is . . .
  • One of the most fun days I ever had was . . .
  • The most scared I've ever been was when . . .
  • The people who have been the biggest influence on me are . . .
  • I like to relax by . . .
  • The best way to do . . .
  • My most embarrassing moment was when . . .
  • The most fun I ever had was when . . .
  • When I grow up, I want to be . . .
  • What really puzzles me is . . .
  • The most amazing bargain I ever found was . . .
  • Those annoying things kids do and what they mean
  • My shameless self-promotion
  • The thing about getting older is . . .

more of my favorite childhood memories

Janah E., Guest Contributor
Janah shares a couple more side-splitting childhood memories with us! See more here.
We moved to a new house in a sprawling rural area when I was about 19-months old. My mother says her washing machine was in the basement. She was terrified that I would fall down the steep concrete stairs while she was hauling laundry up and hanging it on the clothes line. She solved her dilemma by tying a rope to my waist and securing the other end to the clothesline.

On this particular day, she came up the steps and around the corner with another large basket of laundry and glanced up the line expecting to see her busy toddler. To her terror, I had escaped. All she could find of me were the training pants I had lost when I wiggled out of the rope.  She dropped her basket and took off frantically retracing her steps, then running all over our huge farm yard to see if I was behind a tree or under a bush. I was nowhere in sight. She was debating about calling for help when a car carrying her new neighbor from up the road pulled into the driveway and asked if she was missing a little cream and brown puppy.

At first she replied, “No, I don’t own a puppy.”  She was anxious to continue her search for me immediately, but wondered if it were possible that I had been mistaken for a puppy. She thought it just might be, as I was very tan and, by then, wearing not a stitch of clothes. The neighbor had said the "puppy" was in the ditch just up the road.

Mom took off like a mother bear after an errant cub. When she found the “puppy” and discovered it was me, she was, at once, relieved and furious. She cut a little weed and switched my bare bottom all the way back home. Needless to say, I never wandered from the yard again after that. I am sure this was not funny to any of us at the time. However, with the added benefit of many years of parenting myself, I now find it amusing.

My mom has taken great glee in sharing this little story with: first, my new husband, then later, with all my children over the years. I am sure this is one of those little stories that my children will tell their own grandchildren. I thought I would include it here for your enjoyment as well.

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When I was a child and television-watching was a new evening pastime, we all snuggled up under blankets and watched television. My mother and father sat in recliners and all of us children sat on a very long sofa. One night mom started whispering to those around her and pointing very slowly to her feet. There sitting on the footrest of the chair was a small mouse. We all just sat and stared in amazement as it watched TV. The next night it did the same thing. When it was done, it climbed back down her afghan to the floor and ran underneath the chair. I really don’t know whatever happened to the mouse—whether mom got rid of it or what. But it was amazing to see a wild field-mouse climb up her afghan, lie on her foot rest, and watch TV with her.

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One time, when my mom and dad left my oldest brother in charge of his five younger siblings and went to a neighboring town for their short weekly date, something happened that will live on in infamy. 

Each of us—except for my oldest sister—tried very hard to be good, as we had each been promised a small bag of M & M’s of our very own if we were.

At that point in time, we raised guppies in a tank in the living room. My naughty sister really enjoyed developing her talent of twirling two batons at once. Despite the fact that she had been told repeatedly not to twirl her batons in the house, this day she was doing it anyway. She refused to stop when my brother told her to.

Suddenly, she hit the guppy tank, busting it. Guppies, gravel and water seemed to explode everywhere at once. My brother ran and got a gallon pitcher half full of water and bowls and big spoons for each of us. He posted my younger brother, Daniel, as the look-out at the window facing the driveway by sitting him high on the back of the chair so he could see out. Then he set the rest of us to work catching guppies.

Before we could catch them all, Daniel yelled that our parents had pulled in the driveway. This caused each of us to re-double our efforts scooping those guppies up and dumping them into the cereal bowls of water, then running those tiny fish over to the pitcher of water. We looked as if we were having some strange relay race.

This is the scene our parents came home to that evening.  I will never forget the shock on their faces as they watched us crawling around the floor, amid the gravel and broken glass chasing flopping little fish and reaching under chairs with silver spoons to retrieve them all. Mother did not say a word, she just silently went and got her Rainbow vacuum and started sucking up water, and sometimes gravel, out of the carpet. 

Each of us, except for the twirling sister who got a spanking instead, received candy that day, but not until every single tiny guppy was safely swimming in the water pitcher and all the tiny pieces of aquarium gravel were picked up.

None of us had dared to murmur about the extra work though, because we knew there was a bag of M & M’s at the end of the job.  

My mom now smiles when she re-tells this family story and adds, “In those days, my six children would do just about anything to earn a little bag of candy.” 





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