Miss Mom: Time Flies When You're Having Fun

On September, 2008, I completed what was destined to be my very first Miss Mom column. When Steve Shanafelt invited me to become a regular writer for the Spark, I was honored and found a new challenge. It is a bit hard for me to realize that a year has gone by already, and that my column is a year old. Time flies when you’re having fun.

Each week, I’ve invited you to read about myself and my family viewed the the quirkiness of my way with words. I’ve shared with you the transitions our family has gone through, the adventures of being under the complete fur-filled control of my three cats, and I’ve told stories about my kids and myself that I thought was amusing.

Sometimes I took on more serious topics that were important for families everywhere, even if they may not be directly related to the adventure that is being a part of the Galloway home. Every once in a while I’d delve into something completely different, like last Christmas were I reworked a popular Christmas song to demonstrate what three felines can do to a seven foot artificial tree.

I have enjoyed writing every single word that has appeared over the past year. Thankfully, my children have helped me edit, and what they miss, our esteemed editor usually catches. That’s a good thing, because, shhhhh, I never finished college, so I am still a writer with a huge learning curve. Along the way I think I’ve learned a thing or two about using words and phrases more creatively. I still can’t quite over come the run on sentence monster. Maybe this next year.

Miss Mom isn’t the first venture for me as a columnist, but I didn’t have the support and resources that I have now. Then I didn’t have very good internet access and all the tools there are to be found on the world wide web. I didn’t have Facebook or Blogger accounts, and it wasn’t until the end of my tenure that we were able to give the small publication I used to write for some internet presence.

Today, I have a small, and hopefully growing fan base from all over the country, and at least one locale across a rather large ocean. My friends and family have urged me on, and I have had more then one reader make suggestions for future columns. Keep those ideas coming guys, Sylvie suffers from frequent bouts of brain malfunction making it hard to remember what day it is, much less thinking of something worth writing about.

So what is next year going to hold for Miss Mom? We’ll see. There are a lot of things happening in our family, including a son-in-law in the army going through training. Ashley, his wife, is going through morning sickness as we await big sister status for Helene, which will be some time in April. The adjustment to Army life will be huge for that young family.

My youngest will still be in college, my son still working in Houston, my husband still delivering goods around the nation. I will still find myself knee-deep in human hair at work, and cat hairballs at home. Every week, something will come up that will prompt me to sit down at my messy desk and share with all of you something about the world of parenting, kids, grand kids and all that goes with it.

Like the following.

I was cleaning my bathroom, when I left the room to check on dinner. Ashley and Helene were over. Ashley was napping and Helene was mostly watching the movie I had put on for her. I went to check on dinner. I didn’t notice if the toddler was still in the living room when I walked back through a few minutes later.

I have let my granddaughter Helene “help me” clean the toilet in the past. That means I let her swish the toilet brush around the bowl for a moment. As I was walking back to the bathroom I heard a sound from within. There stood my granddaughter, toilet brush in one hand, hairbrush in the other. “Helping Nana!” she announced. Thankfully it was an old hairbrush.. We washed her hands up to her elbows. Then I let her flush the toilet, but only after she put in a small square of toilet paper into the bowl, on her insistence. She knows there is a use for toilet paper, it usually involves your bottom, but you must first put that paper in the bowl before flushing.

It is little vignettes that keep me with plenty to write about. I look forward to the next year of Miss Mom. I hope you will as well.