Empty Bed, Full Heart- A Single Mother's Journey

Full disclosure here: When I was little, I was the girl who spent all day Saturday locked in her room reading. I actually got in trouble at school for reading when I was supposed to be paying attention to the teacher.  I would smell books. New books. Old books. I'd open the volumes and inhale the scent like it was fresh pine. I would spend hours of the day roaming Barnes and Noble, picking books off the shelves and reading their covers, rifling through classics, reading beginning chapters to decide if I should buy the book or not. Since I've become a mom, my reading time has been significantly cut down. To give you some perspective on how much time it takes to be a parent, I mowed down War and Peace while I was working full time and student teaching;but after my eldest was born, I was lucky to make it through a recipe without being interrupted. It goes without saying (but apparently I'm going to say it anyway) that I miss reading immensely. So I've tried to pick it up...

I'm a single gal. So even though I'm about as emotionally available as an avocado, I do have a dating profile on both Match.com and eHarmony.com. Occasionally, my brain has said, "I think you are ready to jump back into the dating pool!" and I end up wasting $100 on 6 months of service and going on exactly zero dates. However, I browse around, like a kid in the produce aisle, looking for something that might be moderately appealing and friends, I'm here to tell you that you can do better. Come on, guys. Your profiles are awful. I may not want to date right now, but I can tell you what makes me think you are interesting and what makes me not want to touch you with a ten foot pole. So, from me to you, here are some tips on getting dates (and possibly even finding true love). * Feel free to bookmark this and take notes. 1) The Picture : I'm going to drop a hard truth bomb on you right now, fellas. She wants to see what you look like. What you really look ...

Mother's Day was this Sunday and it was a hard one. My beautiful little girl brought home a lovely gift that she made for me at school, along with one that her new step mom helped her make. While it was very nice of step mom to do that, my raw emotions couldn't quite process it in a healthy way, so I'm still not sure what exactly to think. What was more painful, though, was the Mother's Day gift from school. It was a place mat with my daughter's handprints on it and it had little "facts" about her "mommy". Every year, I get something like this that makes me feel special and loved in a way that no one else can be, because no one else gets the privilege of being her mommy. My little six year old is the sweetest girl on the planet, and it is to her credit that, not wanting her step mom to feel left out, there in her backpack was a second place mat for step mom, complete with the "facts" about "my mommy". My Mother's Day w...

Dear Person in Charge of Important Things, Hey you. The middle-age white male with the $2,000 suit. You're probably a CEO or lawyer or tobacco exec who brings in more money when he sneezes than I do all year. You've worked hard your whole life and you don't think the middle class has it so bad. All they'd have to do is work hard, like you did, and they can be rich, too! It's the American Dream, right up there with going to the moon and all day passes to Disney World. I am writing to inform you that, no, dear possibly-an-oil-tycoon, my middle class life isn't as charmed as you like to think. I'd like to break it down for you, in terms that you can understand (monetary ones) to try to show you what the reality of a middle class income living the American Dream really looks like. I'm a single mom, so I have one income, and I have three lovely children. I make approximately $40k a year as a teacher, which is awesome because I have the summers off, righ...

One of my long term goals in life has always been to live debt free. My parents raised me to be a good steward of my money and after a lot of hard work, working almost full time while student teaching, and putting my teaching career on hold for a few years while I had a baby and created a financial foundation for my family (alliteration BONUS points!), I was able to make that a reality. At age 25, my student loans were paid off and the only piece of debt my family had was the mortgage on our house. No hospital bills. No credit cards. No retainers. Then, the divorce happened. I credit my ability to stay afloat amidst the sea of lawyer's fees and doctor's bills in small part to the nest egg that was burned through at mach speed; I credit a slightly bigger part to my painstakingly shiny credit score, and the biggest part to my parents' financial support. As someone to whom financial independence is right up there with oxygen and a well-rounded diet, this last part was a par...