Singin' The Single Mom Blues

It was a banner day for Kiki.

Let me preface this by saying that I always admired the "single mom." For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how she did it all so seamlessly. In many cases, like my own, the ratio of parent to child is to 1:2, 1:3 or even 1:4. Beyond that I can't even imagine as visions of straightjackets and Valium take over my brain. In fact, the notion of raising more than one child alone blows my mind.

Yet it actually sunk in the other night that I "am" that woman. I'm the single mom who juggles a household, a full-time job, two children, a dog and a helluva lot more. I actually stopped what I was doing for a moment -- packing lunches, writing a check, dropping dog food into a dish while preparing for a conference call in tandem -- to give myself a pat on the back.

All of these years I had come to believe I was totally inept. And here I was running the show and running it well. But every dog has its day and today was mine. It started about 4 a.m. when the baby wailed for a bottle. She's sick again which means I covet the snot sucker as if it's the key to the lost world.

It's hard to imagine that so much foreign green stuff can come out of such a little nose -- but it does. After hours of sucking her dry and making my own personal mucus collage, she drifted off to asleep until the 4 a.m. wake-up call.

Half-asleep, I poured her a bottle of milk, most of which landed on the kitchen floor. Thank God for dogs. Then I crawled back into bed for an extra hour and a half of sleep. The alarmed sounded and I was once again up and out. I dragged myself out of bed and got dressed in my brand new workout attire, which notably had the amazing ability to cut off my circulation within minutes. I felt like my body had been stuffed into a life-sized rubber band.