Here’s a career tip for single moms everywhere:

Don’t cry over the dead mouse under your desk.

Yeah, I made that move. 

The poor little guy looked like he was sleeping. Except he was wrapped in a cobweb. Which meant he’d been resting in peace by my foot for quite a while.

It happened during the early days of the marriage coming apart, and something about that little fella sent me over the edge. I’d been holding it together pretty well at the office until I came in one morning and found him.

O, wee, dead mouse. You did me in.
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Dear Politicians,

I voted today.

But the answer to everything else?

Today, the answer is no.

I won’t write another letter today.

I won’t call another five friends today.

I won’t stand on the corner with a sign today.

I won’t update my Facebook status for you today.

I won’t call my senator today.

I won’t send you another $25 today, because I don’t know what you did with the first $25.

I could have bought a lot of juiceboxes and kids’ socks for $25. 

Earn it. Don’t milk me dry.
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Tonight, I feel like the Carrie Bradshaw of the Single Moms at Work set.

No cosmopolitans, no $400 Dolce & Gabbana pumps, no Mr. Big waiting under on 500-count Egyptian cotton sheets. Just me—alone—sitting cross-legged in my own place, tapping away on my laptop with my hair piled on the top of my head. (Carrie Bradshaw would not have had American Idol on the tube, but she had her constant cigarettes, so our bad habits balance out.)

As I do every Tuesday night for Work It, Mom!, I’m musing about this not-new-anymore life I’m living, but still can’t quite claim as mine. I’m staring at my laptop screen, trying to channel my inner Carrie. 

As you guys know, Carrie Bradshaw proposed a question each week in the Big Apple, and did her sassy, excellent, honest best to come up with a well-researched answer, about sex, relationships and the single life.

But she got out of the house more than I do. She had the shoes for it.
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My mother started it, bless her, with the simple words, “Mommy has something maybe growing in her tummy and the doctors have to do some tests.”

Oh, bless her.

This sweet statement—designed to allay the possible fears about hospital tests I need to undergo tomorrow—had an entirely different effect on my daughters.

They accosted me in the bathroom immediately.

“Are you PREGNANT?”

I spit my water in the sink but wound up hitting my toes.

“WHAAAAT???”

“Babci said you had something growing in your tummy so we thought maybe it was a baby.”

Gah. 

“Are you sure it’s not a baby?”
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