FAQs: About me

Perhaps a little narcissistic.. but each week I keep seeing my page hits go higher and higher, and I'm guessing I've got a lot of readers out there who are new and don't really know me personally. So here goes. Some stuff about me.

Who am I?
Of course there's more to me than my little blurb on the "A mama and her family" tab. Let's see. I'm Bianca. I live in the PNW with my family of 5 - Adam {husband}, Penelope {Pierogie}, and two hounds - Romeo and Squirt. I have a degree in Sociology, focusing on family/marriage, with some demography and race/ethnicity sprinkled in. I'm 26 years old, I was born in Canada but would really more consider myself Polish-American than Canadian-American. More about that later. I love to travel, spend time outdoors (be it hiking, skiing, ATVing, boating, or something as simple as taking a stroll with my daughter and dogs), bake and cook, and have recently become semi-crafty.

Tell me more about your family.
My blog features little snippets about each of my family members, mostly Penelope because she's the cutest one. Adam and I met towards the end of college and it was completely random. If either of us had been 15 seconds early or late, we would have never met. And you wouldn't be here reading this wonderful blog. Penelope is our first child, and pretty much the best thing that ever happened to us. Her middle name is Helena, after my Polish maternal grandmother (there's that darn teaser about being Polish again.. hmm you still have to wait!). The furry members of our family, Romeo and Squirt, are also pretty awesome.  Romeo is our 12 year old samoyed-retriever, whom I've had all of his life. He is the best old dog ever. Squirt is a 3 year old miniature Australian shepherd with a heart that aims to please.

What is your strangest fear?
I wouldn't say that I am fearless, but I would say that I am willing to try almost everything, within reason, at least once. One of the things that I absolutely will never, ever, do is underwater spelunking. It scares the living crap out of me. I don't know why, and I'm not sure what ever brought this fear around. I've been in several caves before, including the Ape Caves at Mount St. Helens, the Cave of the Winds in Colorado Springs, and a cave system in Palma de Majorca that I can't remember what the name of it is now. I'm not claustrophobic or scared of the dark. I would love to learn how to dive. But I just have no desire to be in a position where I can't come up for air if I need to. It's not that irrational, really.

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would it be?
That's sort of a silly question because I have every intention of going to pretty much all the places that I dream of going. A short list of future travels include (not in order): a cruise to Alaska, Banff, Costa Rica, Hawaii, Egypt, Prague, Venice, return to southern Italy, Greek Isles, Australia/New Zealand. Being that I plan on living for hopefully another 60 years, I think that's manageable. Two places that I'd like to visit but am not sure if it will happen are Morocco and India. Mainly because those two cultures are so foreign to me and I am afraid that I'd get lost in all of the people. Plus, Adam is not quite as adventurous in his traveling as I am so it would take a lot of prep work to convince him to go to either of those places.

What is your favorite beauty product?
I'm not really one for getting super glammed up, I don't really do my hair (I'd love to, but don't have the patience and my hair pretty much returns back to it's normal wave within a few hours) and my clothing style is.. comfortable.. with a camp counselor kind of feel. Lol. That's the best way I can explain it. My typical ensemble is a button up shirts, jeans, flip flips, fitted tees. I don't wear a lot of makeup..because I don't have to. I've been blessed with pretty good skin, so any make up that I wear is just as an accent. So, that is limited to some eye shadow, eye liner and mascara. Yep, that's it. But, back to the question - my favorite beauty product of all time is hot oil for your hair. I normally use V05's hot oil, but I've been experimenting with some home recipes and am still tweaking it. I swam all 4 years in high school and hot oil was my only saving grace for my hair.

Ok, so that question about being Polish. What gives?
Both of my parents were born and raised in different parts of Poland, and immigrated to Calgary in the 80's, and met there. They had me, my dad took a job as an environmental engineer in the States and we moved south when I was 3. My little brother was born when I was 5. I'd say that we spoke exclusively Polish at home until I was about 10 or so. After that, I started sneaking some into sentances and my parents really couldn't stop me from there. But my mom would cook traditional Polish meals almost each night. I've been to Poland a handful of times, the most recent being about 11 years ago. It's about time to go back. So because being Polish and having that Polish culture in my childhood was much more a part of my life than being Canadian on my passport, that's why I say I consider myself to be more Polish-American and Canadian-American.

What are your priorities in life?1. Take care of my family, starting with Penny and my husband. I do this physically, emotionally, mentally.
2. Delight in the Lord. I became a thoughtful/intentional Christian shortly after Adam and I started dating, and this faith has brought me through a lot of troubled and happy times. I don't talk too much about it openly because it's something very personal and close to my heart..many times I don't really have the words to describe how I feel. But it's there.
3.  Always be learning something new. My husband's favorite thing to say about college (and I whole heartedly agree) is that going to college fundamentally teaches us how to learn; not just teaches us the facts/theories about what we are majoring in. For as long as I can remember I've always been researching something new, and in the end I feel like I know a little bit about a wide range of things. This blog has been a great platform in doing so.
4.  Live presently in each day. Especially after Penelope was born, I knew that it would be so easy to just "get through" each day because of exhaustion or busyness. But this is what life is about! So I try to be sure not to zone out or get into a rut in my life, marriage or relationship with my daughter. It's not that hard because I am so thankful for the life that I have!

Pet Peeves -Go:
1. People who don't know the difference between "your" and "you're," "there" "their" "they're". Another thing is when you see this on a grocery store sign: $.02. It's not wrong, but why not just write 2¢?
2. People who complain about their kids. You're lucky to have them, so be the best parent you can be and quit your whining.
3. Talking to other cars while you're driving (my husband does this all the time). "Thanks subaru for cutting in front of me."
4. Not taking the trash out before visitors come over. Not sure why, but it just bothers me.
5. Booger tracks under kids' noses. I know it's not their fault, and often times there's just nothing to be done about it.. but will someone just clean their face for them??
6. Facebook status posts that are like "Ok facebook I'm going to take a shower.. see you later". This is a guaranteed way to have you be removed from my feed, if not my friends.
7. Texting like "R U OK?" or ebonics like "boi"
*this by no means is an exhaustive list.. just what I was feeling at the moment :)

Ok.. So .. I think that's pretty much all I can think of for now.  If you have any questions about me, email me and maybe I'll include it on a follow up post in the future!