Blooming Women
  • Bl(oom)ing Women Accessory Salon
  • Home + Table of Contents
  • Watch us grow!
  • About Blooming Women
  • About Being a Contributor
  • Contact
  • 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 . . .

if you give a mom a cookie . . . 

By Ida Ratherstay-Anonymus, Guest Contributor
An amusing and altogether uncomfortably realistic twist on the popular stories.


If you give a mom a cookie, she’ll probably split it into three pieces and give one to each of the three screaming toddlers hanging onto her legs.

When she does, she sees the youngest rubbing her eyes and decides to put her down for a nap.

While in the children’s bedroom, she sees that there is a load of laundry that has to be done as soon as possible. 


She takes it to the laundry room and puts it into the washing machine.

When she turns on the washer, she remembers that the water bill was due two days ago and goes to get her checkbook out of her purse and sits down to write out the check.


When she enters the amount into the ledger, she notes that the account is now fifty-four cents overdrawn and goes to the computer to transfer money from savings.


While on the computer, she decides to check her email and remembers that she has a baby shower for a good friend in thirty minutes.   


She wakes up the baby, throws some clean clothes on the other children, and gets them into the car to head to Target to buy a gift.

While she is in Target, she remembers that she is almost out of toilet paper, so she buys a jumbo pack and heads back to the car, toddlers in tow.

When she gets back into the car, she begins to wrap the gift and realizes that she has forgotten tape. 

She hauls everyone back in and purchases the tape and then hauls them back out to the car and buckles them into their car seats.

She finishes wrapping the gift and heads to the shower when she hears the gas gauge ding and sees the idiot light come on.

She stops to pump gas and as she is pumping, she hears number two child wailing that he’s starving. 

She goes into the convenience store and purchases overpriced nitrate-filled meat by-products on processed starch buns and distributes them to each of the children. 

When they finish, she wipes them down with the diaper wipes and arrives at the shower twenty minutes late.

When she walks in, she notices how clean her friend’s house is and silently vows to herself that she will do better at keeping her own castle clean.

When the party is over, she straps everyone in again and heads home. 

On the way home, she nearly hits a dog with the car and it dawns on her that Scruffy’s shots are overdue. 

She calls the vet on her cell phone who tells her to bring him right in.

She pulls into the driveway, leaves the car running, grabs the dog from the sofa, and heads to the vet. 

While she is sitting in the vet’s office waiting with the restless toddlers, she sees a magazine that talks about the magical food that takes off fifteen pounds overnight.

She stops at the grocery store and hauls everyone in again to purchase ridiculously expensive pomegranates and asks herself what in the Sam Hill you do with a pomegranate.

She arrives home and walks in carrying the youngest and smells that he needs his diaper changed and so she goes to the living room floor and kneels down to change him.

When she changes him, she sees how filthy the carpet is and hears the guilt-inducing voice of her mother-in-law whispering to her about how she vacuumed three times a day to keep her children’s environment sanitary. 


She gets the vacuum out and sweeps the carpet thoroughly.

When she is vacuuming, she hears the clink of some foreign object entering the vacuum cleaner and so she stops to dismantle it in a quest to find the object.

When she digs through the bag, she sees that it is her wedding ring that slipped off because she has not had a complete meal in over seven years. 

Realizing how hungry she is, she puts the dusty ring back on, reassembles the sweeper and heads to the kitchen to wash her hands.

She reaches for the cookie jar and grabs a cookie . . . 

Copyright © 2015 by Rent's Due Publications

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, click a button on any page to send email with details of the request.
Proudly powered by Weebly