Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Little Girls: Then and When

January 12, 2012 by oncealittlegirl

Believe it or not!  I started blogging almost two years and 200 posts, and 200,000 words ago.  I created Once a Little Girl for two reasons:  to share my life experience with my kids and grand-kids and to give myself a warm-up for my real writing, my novel.   Subscribers from as far away as Australia and India surprise and delight me.  I feel connected to all of you.  Across the generations and around the globe Little Girls everywhere have an awful lot in common. New friends, like Linda Lowen at About.com and Bob Lamb, writer and editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution urge me to convert Once a Little Girl to a Memoire.  (Mom’s been telling me that for two years, but she has to love me, she’s my Mom.)

Enough about me, already.  It’s  time to hear about some other little girls. Besides that, 200,000 words, holy mackerel, that’s enough words to fill two books.  Previous posts will soon be password protected.  If you are already a subscriber, just e-mail me and I’ll give you the password.  Faithful Supporters, you earned your reading rights.

Click on the tab “Little Girls Then and When” for interviews with generations of little girls.

So, keep your fingers crossed and offer up some prayers for me.  Oh, I almost forgot:  for those of you waiting for my novel, I’m almost finished!  The working title is A Land of Milk and Honey.  

Posted in faith, family, Inspiration, memories, sprituality | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments »

Change is Welling Up

January 9, 2012 by oncealittlegirl

When I got to be a grown up girl, but not quite ready to believe it, I got a job for the summer.  I was in charge of a water survey for the Huron County Health Department.  My job was to ask businesses, those businesses who served water to people, some questions:

  • Do you have a well?  (I knew what a well was, that one was easy.)
  • Where is your wells?  How deep?  Where is it?  Do you have a well log?
  • Is the welll casing grouted?  (Isn’t grout that stuff between the bathroom tiles that’s so darned hard to clean?)
  • Do you have a submersible pump?
  • Where is your pump?  Can I see it?
  • Do you have a pitless adapter?  (Huh?)

My  training was one day of riding around the county with an Sanitarian Tom, while he inspected sewage systems.   “Tomorrow you are on your own,”  Sanitarian Tom said.  What?  My heart skipped a beat.  It didn’t know a pitless adapter from a hole in the ground.

The next morning, Sanitarian Ed, a much more compassionate fellow advised me, “Start out at Coral Gables.  It’s close by, and the owner, Bill Baily, is a good guy.  If you get stuck, you can come back here, and ask questions.”   That was before cell-phones, lap-tops, e-mails, or text-messaging.  That was back when self-carbon paper was a great innovation.  I clamped official looking metal clipboard under my arm and headed for my Huron County Health Department car; a blue Ford sedan; no air-conditioning and no radio.  Tax-payers didn’t want government workers to be driving around the county in the lap of luxury.

Indeed, Bill Baily at Coral Gables was a good guy.  He offered me Continue Reading »

Posted in family | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Changes Coming Soon

December 19, 2011 by oncealittlegirl

When I was a little girl, I loved stories.  First, I listened to Grandpa’s and Dad’s and Uncle Merle’s, and Uncle Frank’s and Uncle Gerald’s stories.  Mom read me stories; some lasted weeks because she just read a chapter a day.  I started to make up stories of my own.  Sometimes I did that with my best friend and blood-sister, Connie; those stories were about fairies and magical cities.

I still love stories. Real life stories and made up stories.  The past few mornings I woke up at 4:00 AM with the same brand new idea in my head.  Because the idea is so persistent that it invades my sleep, you will be seeing some changes to this blog soon.  I just passed post number 200; that’s about 200,000 words.  Wheee!!!

Merry Christmas everyone!  You will hear from me again after the new year.  (Maybe before, but I have 8 pair of pajamas to make before then, so maybe not.)

Christmas Pajamas, 2010

Posted in family | Leave a Comment »

Celebrations fit for a King: Giving from the Heart

December 16, 2011 by oncealittlegirl

I often wonder why so often families have such a hard time getting together for the holidays.  Somehow all five of Dad’s brothers and his sister got together over the Christmas holidays.  Of course, they did all live within sixty or so miles of each other.  Still, I think it was important to them to get their families together.  Besides that, they all seemed to like each other so much.  So did all the kids.

Grandma loved Christmas.  She sewed and embroidered and crocheted away all fall, just to have something nice for everybody.  She made me pajamas for my doll, Jonsi-Belle, a dresser scarf and lots of embroidered handkerchiefs, and once she gave me a little triangular box that fit right in the corner of my dresser drawer.  My nose dripped all the time, which is probably why she thought I needed hankies, but those things were tough on the nose, especially the way Mom starched everything.  I kept a handful of Kleenex in my pocket instead; those were way softer.  That little corner box was great, though.  For one thing, red was my favorite color. For another thing I had all kinds of  treasures to keep in there:  my rosary and scapula, my key to the box Grandpa Z made for me, some convex and concave lenses, and that rock Dad told me was a petrified potato.  That last one turned out to be Continue Reading »

Posted in family, Inspiration, memories, sprituality | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Wishing and a-Hoping, Hoping and a-Praying: Your Dream Can Come True

December 8, 2011 by oncealittlegirl

When I was a little girl, I couldn’t draw worth beans.  I colored pictures like nobody’s business, but my luck at real art was, well, really, really horrid.  You know that poem about the little girl with the curl.  For sure, that was me.  When I was good, I was really, really good:  making up stories, playing my flute, getting good grades, and playing with Little Kids.  I loved those things.  Just like that little girl with the curl, when I was bad, I was horrid:  drawing, painting, making things out of clay.  Oh my.  The worst part was, I really, really wanted to do those things.  And I made such a mess whenever I tried.

I was super-good at stories.  When I was a really little girl, I even got one published in the Wide Awake Club.  Here is what I wrote:

Orphans

Once there were three little children who didn’t have a mother or a father, they were orphans.

The didn’t know where the orphan home was.  The decided to pack their clothes and try to find the orphanage.

As they were going along, all of a sudden they met a big black thing. They didn’t know what it was and they were real scared.

They began to run and run.  Soon they saw a big gate and thought that must be the orphanage.

They climbed the gate and on the other side they found a mother and father, and they lived happily ever after.

Okay, Mom wrote the words down in the squiggly writing she learned Continue Reading »

Posted in faith, family, Inspiration, sprituality | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Older Posts »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 173 other followers