"When I won my Games gold medal I got a street parade and there was a band at the airport. When I won a world bowls gold, my and dad and a couple of friends were there," she joked.
Edwards, preparing for her third Games, will spearhead a New Zealand team aiming to enhance a good record at the Games and in conditions which will be testing. And that raises an interesting question.
Only New Zealand and Australia play on fast greens, where the bowl can run at about 17 seconds. Everywhere else - and most especially in the United Kingdom - the greens are as slow as 10 or 11 seconds.
So who's out of step with who? Those who insist the rest should fall in line with Australasia are out of step but neither party looks likely to budge.
"The hardest thing for us is it's just unnatural. We've all grown up on greens that don't take a lot of effort to get them up there," Liverpool-born, Nelson raised and based Edwards said. "It's like re-learning a sport, changing your technique, skill set, game plan, shot selections. It's like chucking away your last 20 years of knowledge and starting again."
But surely it's just a case of running the bowl with more force in the arm? No.
"It goes from relying on your arm to having to rely on your body because you won't be able to get [the bowls] up if you're just trying to chuck them hard with your arm."
And as for having to play a draw shot, "you can get away with it for an hour but you'll get found out pretty quickly".
For a snapshot on how bowls is changing, consider Edwards has been playing bowls for longer than 19-year-old teammate Selina Goddard has been alive.
She is in her 13th year as a national representative, was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit last month, has twice been a Sportswoman of the Year finalist at the Halberg awards and has a glittering CV of bowls achievement.
Smith - "I'm a bit of a sports nut" - is clearly a sporting allrounder. Talented enough to play for the Football Ferns for six years, Smith got into bowls through a Sport Nelson initiative, called the sporting allrounder.
"It was 17 sports in a month, Wednesday nights and all day Sundays. Everything ranging from indoor cricket to tenpin bowling, netball shots, swimming, biking, running, smallbore rifle and bowls. I was 19 and thought 'how hard can this be?'.
"I chucked a couple [of bowls] up and thought it's a little bit harder than you think.
"My mate Val Smith and I flatted together and thought why not give this bowls a go for a year. That was 22 years ago."
The age change in bowls doesn't concern Edwards, who has always been a believer in the old line that if an athlete is good enough they're old enough to be selected, "but don't just put them in because they're young".
"I do firmly believe experience in life counts for a hell of a lot in sport."
Smith's record is formidable. Four times she has been world indoor champion; she has one World Bowls singles gold and two pairs golds; a world champion of champs singles crown; that Commonwealth Games gold and a national singles title.
"No other athlete has achieved anything like this," Bowls New Zealand chief executive Kerry Clark has said.
She's also the world's No1-ranked woman bowler, kind of. The rankings system was stopped by World Bowls a few months ago. Smith was No 1. But there was a problem. Rankings were done on singles play. That counted out some of the finest players, who only played pairs or fours.
Smith, while chuffed to be ranked at the top, knew the score.
"There's a lot of amazing bowlers out there. Being classed world No 1 was obviously pretty awesome but to me it wasn't a true way of doing it."
So let's settle on her as one of the best bowlers in the game.
Edwards is amiable and a straight-talker, who admits to preferring pairs, but enjoys singles "because it's mentally challenging. There's no excuses. Win or lose, it's you".
The New Zealand team has a target of four medals in Glasgow, arrived at after discussions with High Performance Sport NZ. They've won 35 at past Games, but the past two events produced lean returns - a silver in 2010 (Smith in the singles) and a bronze in 2006 (Jan and Marina Khan in the pairs).
Expectations are high, but bowls is a sport where upsets are commonplace. There's no real hierarchy in place. And that's one of the beauties of the sport.
"No one's an underdog," Edwards said. Least of all this woman for all sporting seasons.
