CAREER - COLLEGE & WORKING MOM

The Girls Guide to Absolutely Everything - by Melissa Kirsch 

Finally, The Girl's Guide to Absolutely Everything!

And I do mean EVERYTHING. Okay, here it is in simple language- everything you've always wanted to know - from unclogging a toilet to health and body image. This being the new year, we're all trying to make changes in our lives, to improve ourselves, to learn new things, and we need a little boost of inspiration and encouragement along the way. The Girls Guide to Everything can be your bible to making that life transition. Got a question about almost anything? The book provides quick and easy answers at your finger tips.

The author Melissa Kirsch gleaned her information from interviews with women ranging in age from 20's to 40's and from all walks of life and ethnicity...asking the question: "What do you know now that you wish you'd known after college and in your 20's that would have made your life a lot less difficult, spared you heartache, generally made the transition to life on your own a heck of a lot easier?" Their responses are compiled in this big book that's full of much needed information, and it's entertaining as well as practical.

What I like about this book is that although there are lots of self-help books out there on this and that, this one has everything a woman needs to know in one compilation. It's a big and beefy book for all the questions you need answered, whether it be about sex and dating, spirituality or your money and finances. It's for every woman - from the just out-of-college young woman looking to make a transition into the real world or for women in their 30's and beyond who want information about the things that pop up in our daily lives. It's also interesting reading about the things you've never even considered.

With well over 150 headings like: Oops, I was inauthentic again, Forget The Nike Tracksuit, Bankruptcy - The Land of the Lost, Tipping Crib Sheets, Considering Therapy, House of The spirit, Kirsch touches all things that are bound to crop up in a woman's life and doesn't bore or weigh you down with long-winded answers. It's like 101 things you've ever wanted to know and then some. This book logs in at well over 450 pages, and it belongs on your book shelf next to the other books labeled self-help, but I can bet that you will be reaching for this one time and time again. It's that useful.

Getting Back on the Career Track - by Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin - Authors of Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay at Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work - Would you like to return to the work world but are concerned about how to find an opportunity that will allow you to fulfill your family or other non-work obligations, nervous about how to “market yourself” to potential employers, or unsure about what type of work you want to do? They took time out to be home with their children, and then re-launched their careers years later. Based upon our experience, and that of the 100+ women they interviewed for this book, as well as the career counselors, recruiters and employers whose advice they sought, they’ve developed a detailed process to help you negotiate this major transition. Returning to the workforce can be a daunting job for full-time moms. Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin understand, because they've been there. And as women who have successfully re-launched their careers, they know it can be done with careful planning, strategizing, and creativity. Now, in Back on the Career Track, they offer a prescriptive, seven-step program that covers such topics as building confidence, assessing career options, updating job skills, preparing for interviews, getting the family on board, networking, and much more.

The Salary Gap Between Women and Men - Sources by Amanda Bach - Back in 1974, few Americans would have been surprised to learn that women earned less money than men. Women who did work outside the home often worked part-time or in lower-paying jobs. Few women entered professions such as law, medicine and accounting. Although women have made significant gains in education, the pay gap between college-educated men and women persists, experts say. While some may label as myth the assertion that 30 years later, in 2006, women still earn less than men, statistical data confirm the reality that a gap continues to exist between salaries earned by men and women. In fact, a 2003 survey by the National Association for Female Executives (NAFE) shows that women who work full-time, year-round, earn 76% of what men earn. According to NAFE, the gap between men's and women's pay narrowed by only 2 percent between 1991 and 2001.

HEALTHY MOM

Boosting Metabolism - By Joy Bauer, MS, RD, CDN with Carol Svec - Authors of Joy Bauer's Food Cures - The ultimate guide to using food as medicine from Today show regular Joy Bauer—whom New York magazine calls "the best nutritionist in New York City." Nutritional healing has gone mainstream and researchers at top universities are publishing studies that show how the right foods can help prevent, manage, and sometimes entirely reverse the defining symptoms of a wide range of health issues. Whether it’s unwanted pounds or high blood sugar, mood swings or digestive trouble, the cure can be what you eat every day. Now Joy Bauer, a nutrition consultant to celebrities from actors to gold-medal winning athletes, explains exactly what to eat to lower high cholesterol and blood pressure, improve skin tone, sharpen memory, sleep better, and take charge of PMS, arthritis, and more. Each chapter focuses on one of the many conditions that drive people to seek Joy’s professional help and simulates a personal consultation. Readers walk away with up-to-the-minute, scientifically researched recommendations on particular foods to seek out and which ones to avoid, plus grocery lists, meal plans, recipes, and supplement recommendations presented in easy-to-follow 4-step prescriptive plans. Metabolism is simply the total of all body processes that burn calories -- your basal metabolic rate plus your activity factor. When it comes to improving your metabolism, there's good news and bad news.

Mothering Through Mid-Life: When Disengagement Entices - by Michele Howe - I had just gotten up and admittedly wasn't quite fully awake when my husband soberly informed me that our eighteen-year-old daughter's car had been vandalized during the night. I stood there in the chilly kitchen trying to take in the specific details of the minor crime...worst was the insulting graffiti written on her windows. A myriad of conflicting thoughts and emotions ran like a freight train through my brain, some of which I am ashamed to confess were of the reprisal sort.

Spice Up Your Treadmill Workout - By Minna Lessig - Author of Tank Top Arms, Bikini Belly, Boy Shorts Bottom - Fitness supermodel and personal trainer Minna Lessig presents a 4-week sculpting program to help women tone their trouble spots—with results in as little as 10 days! An emerging superstar in the fitness field—with credits that include a weekly spot on CBS’s The Early Show, three best-selling fitness DVDs, and more, Minna Lessig has a personal training client list that ranges from busy moms like her to world-class athletes like Yankee baseball star Alex Rodriguez, who attributed a record-breaking season while he was with the Seattle Mariners to Lessig’s off-season strength and conditioning program. In her first book, Tank Top Arms, Bikini Belly, Boy Shorts Bottom, Minna Lessig assembles the most effective time-saving exercises designed to target the arms, abs, and buttocks. This is cutting-edge fitness—a 4-week program that will not only make women look better but also feel healthier, stronger, and more energetic as they go about their everyday activities.

DAY-TO-DAY

Holding Her Head High - by Janine Turner
Actress Janine Turner Inspires Single Mothers
New Book Uncovers Moving Stories of Single Mothers Throughout History

I HEART MY IN-LAWS: Falling in Love with His Family--One Passive-Aggressive, Over-Indulgent, Grandkid-Craving, Streisand-Loving, Bible-Thumping In-Law at a Time - Girlfriends, fiancés, and wives rejoice! Here, at last, is a book you can turn to in times of stress, panic, and family vacations to the smallest cottage ever built on the island of Nantucket. Mirroring the natural progression of a relationship and incorporating interviews from women just like you, this hilarious, savvy guide will help you survive your first meeting with future in-laws, from the holidays, weddings, and new babies, to the day they retire to the house next door because its a great real estate investment. Discover a wide array of sanity-retention techniques and tips on scoring major points with each and every in-law. Learn how to sweet-talk his sister, mollify his mother, and defuse potentially explosive situations like when your pumpkin pie gives Nana a bad case of hives. Stories range from the tragic my father-in-law just pinched my ass and not in that sportsmanship kind of way, to the triumphant I'm now CEO of my grandfather-in-laws cement company Thanks Pup up! Offering handy translation charts with curse words in Persian and compliments in Cantonese, a list of gifts and how to interpret their hidden meaning, tips for reclaiming the holidays one Bastille Day at a time, and your very own set of Mother-in-Law MadLibs, I Heart My In-laws embodies the old saying, Its funny because its true.

More Single Moms Caving in to be the "Cool Mom" - Bestselling author offers first-hand advice for beating solo-parent guilt. Sources by Amanda Bach -  In Knoxville, Tennessee - A recent study by the University of Maryland says today's single mothers, who head 14 million single-parent homes in America, spend less time with their children than mothers did 40 years ago. Bestselling author, nationally acclaimed speaker and single mother, Angela Thomas says a result, women raising families as a single parent are often guilt-ridden. Ask any single mom and she'll say no matter how much she does for her kids, it is never enough. Thomas, whose new book, My Single Mom Life: True Stories & Practical Lessons for Your Journey (Thomas Nelson Inc., May

2007), chronicles her life as a single mom, says these guilty moms often feel pressure to become "cool moms" rather than grounded, string parents. While embracing the "cool moms" image, women are letting parenting roles take the backseat as they also juggle other roles from Tired Mom to Dating Mom, even Financial Mom. The day Angela Thomas sold the only thing she had, the diamond from her engagement ring, to take care of her kids was the day she began to believe they were going to make it. In that decision, the faith she had always talked about became the faith she was going to learn how to live.

An Immeasurable Power -By Radenko Fanuka - 21st Century’s Woman - Author of Reflections: Personalizing Life, Nature, Man and God - In this, 21st century, I believe that a woman will make great, giant contributions, or steps. Our powerful, wounded nature, our freedom, and our health, have for too long been asking us, as well as telling us, some unanswered questions, “Why, and why not? A power, which can make a successful step against MOTHER NATURE’S power, earth’s soil, women and sun, doesn’t exist, and it hasn’t been born yet. This power, earth’s soil, women and sun, is embodied into one body, and it is an inseparable piece, and no matter how it is positioned, or turned, physically or mathematically, it is a piece which holds together all life. It is this power which cannot be separated, or torn apart, unless life on earth is destroyed. This is nothing more, or less, than nature’s power and truth.
True Stories of False Memories - By Carol Tavris and

Elliot Aronson - authors of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) - False memories allow us to forgive ourselves and justify our mistakes, but sometimes at a high price: an inability to take responsibility for our lives. An appreciation of the distortions of memory, a realization that even deeply felt memories might be wrong, might encourage people to hold their memories more lightly, to drop the certainty that their memories are always accurate, and to let go of the appealing impulse to use the past to justify problems of the present. If we are to be careful about what we wish for because it might come true, we must also be careful which memories we select to justify our lives, because then we will have to live by them.
YOUR CHILDREN'S HEALTH

 How to Avoid Kids’ Blood Sugar “Spike and Crash” -By Missy Chase Lapine - Author of  The Sneaky Chef - Kids loveroller coasters. Moms don’t -- well, at least not the ones that take place inside our homes! I’m talking about the “spike and crash” syndrome that describes the rapid ups and downs of children’s blood sugar levels when they eat too much sugar and overly processed carbs, especially on an empty stomach. Foods that are especially high in sugar -- even natural sugar and honey -- are known to cause a very quick rise in blood-sugar levels. They are rated high on the “glycemic index” (GI) -- a measurement of the effect a food has on one’s blood sugar level. The higher the rating on the index, the more rapid the increase in blood sugar level. The spike doesn’t last very long and is followed by a corresponding fast drop in blood-sugar level. (often it drops even lower than it was before we ate). This is commonly referred to as the “spike and crash syndrome.”

 You Can Be Smarter Than a 5th Grader! - By Nonna Joann Bruso - Author of Baby Bites: Transforming a Picky Eater into a Healthy Eater - Denver, Colo.— Forty-nine percent of moms say they have a picky eater. Not willing to “cope” with a picky eater or “hope” a picky eater will someday change, Nonna Joann tackles this ever increasing dilemma. Baby Bites is her breakthrough method incorporating multi-sensory learning. Motivated by her two-and-half-year-old grandson, Joshy, who had been winning every food battle, Nonna Joann found a way to circumvent his extreme resistance to eating healthy foods. She condenses forty years of parenting and grand-parenting, as well as her thirty-year passion and independent study of nutrition, into yummy bite-size pieces. Parents are often out-maneuvered by their preschoolers, and end up giving them the foods they willing eat: junk foods. To their detriment, these foods are directly related to the epidemic of childhood disease and obesity we’re experiencing today. Baby Bites offers practical advice, while providing parents the tools needed to transform their picky eater into a healthy eater. Your child’s health is in your hands. You’re the one who controls the food purchased and stored in your pantry. You’re the one who plans the menu. You’re the one who decides when snacking is permitted.

YOUR CHILDREN

Never Leave Your Child Alone - Sources by Amanda Bach - How Does A Hot Car Affect Kids? From 1996 through 2000, more than 120 children – most of them three and younger – died from heat stroke after being trapped in a vehicle’s passenger compartment. Research conducted by General Motors revealed that these children were left behind in a closed, parked car by parents or caregivers, or that they gained access to the car on their own and could not get out.  This is a serious public health issue, and one that is entirely preventable. General Motors and the National SAFE KIDS Campaign want to end these needless deaths by reminding parents and caregivers about the dangers of leaving children in, or allowing them to play around cars.

Car Seat - 'How To’ Knowledge Retained by Parents - Sources by Amanda Bach - New Study Shows Car Seat Clinics Are Effective, according to Safe Kids Worldwide. Based on data from car seat checkup events conducted in 29 states in February 2005, Safe Kids found that parents successfully changed their behavior and retained their child passenger safety knowledge six weeks after receiving hands-on instruction. At a second child safety seat checkup, 45% more seats were properly installed by the parents than at the first instructional event. Families with older children were also significantly underrepresented in the research. Children who attended checkup events tended to be young—ages 4 and under—even though Safe Kids Worldwide recommends that kids who have outgrown car seats ride on booster seats until they are about 4 feet, 9 inches tall and 80 to 100 pounds. Most children reach this height and weight between the ages of 8 and 12.