To refresh your memory, Murphy is John Bear’s dog, who happens to be white (Benjamin has been requesting a white dog for months and months). Since then the two have met and I’ve even been watching Murphy during the days while John Bear works. And guess what?

This cat person has fallen for a dog - big time.

I went from completely unable to picture a dog in my life to craving his presence. He’s my little buddy, our little buddy - with his fuzzy paws and even his stinky, drool breath.

In our spare time Murphy and I like to cuddle, go for long walks on the beach and dance…

Murphy’s Dancing Contest

To enter: Tell me who the cutest dude in the video is with a comment and you’ll be entered to win one of five new copies of Michael Buble’s Meet Me in Madison Square Garden CD/DVD pack. It’s coming out soon - watch this awesome YouTube video for a trailer.

Deadline: Friday, July 10th

Congratulations to Abby Carter who won the reusable drinking bottle from Baying Hound. If any of you didn’t win and want one please check out their site. Your purchase will support a local business (a mom with a sweet young one) and one of my advertisers.

Love actually hurts me.

The feeling of feeling (again) raises some kind of pain up inside of me that I can’t shake. And then I start lashing out, sabotaging my relationships, wishing away these butterflies for fear that they will turn into gray, evil moths.

Then I say things I don’t mean.

I hear them coming out of my mouth and I suddenly want to take them back. Rather than learning how to control this it seems to get worse as I age, as I become more cynical, as I become more accustomed to being single and as relationships seem more foreign, more complex and distant than ever.

I can blame that or pms or this awful, awful stress headache I can’t seem to shake but the words are still out there now - in the air, on his mind. I am just hoping he can forgive me or at the very least learn to recognize that like any animal, I may not be wounded anymore but the scars are still there.

The things I have experienced, are fortunately, like nothing he’s ever even had to taste and every once in a while they are right there, fresh again. On top of the deep scarring and baggage I’m hauling around there’s also the pressure.

There are always so many emotions I’m balancing while also trying to make sure everyone in the room walks out of it with warm fuzzy happy family feelings. It can be tiring as hell.

Sometimes I just want to be a bitch and moan and groan until the cows come home. But I can’t. I am the head of my household. I am the person my son’s world revolves around and now I am the one who holds a man’s heart in my hands, one I am so grateful to have, as he holds mine.

The balancing act must be maintained. If not, if I do lose my temper or snap and say something rash, the person on the receiving end is most likely someone who does not deserve to hear it.

So one question.

How do married moms do it? Please, enlighten me.

Because Mrs. Cleaver I am definitely not. Did you take some kind of mind numbing medicine? Or is there some special yoga pose I need to learn?

Perhaps this is why I run away from feeling because being single is easier for me. I don’t want to raise these skeletons from the dead and I’ve never liked cleaning out empty, dark basement corners.

But this time I am going in but I’ll bring a flash light, maybe you guys can hold it and show me the way.

He’s worth it.

And besides, what fun would life be if I didn’t scare myself every once in a while?

Absolutely we can.

Friendships are about a connection or a common bond - at least that’s how mine have all begun. With that said as a single mom I’ve found it harder to make new married mom friends. Maybe it’s just because we don’t swim in the same circles or maybe it’s because it’s hard to meet moms period.

Read this answer posted by Kelli on my single moms forum when I asked, “can single moms really be friends with married moms?”:

I think it’s hard to meet and form friendships with any type of Mom, whether married or single! I don’t know what it is, but I try and try and it is difficult!

We’re all just so busy. I think that’s one of the main reasons my tight circle of friends is now almost entirely made up of single moms. They’re as flexible as I am and very spontaneous. And we can sit around and talk about dating for hours which is huge.

With that said I’ve already met one of John Bear’s friends who happens to be one half of a couple and I love her to death. She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio but I’m already so excited to hang out with she and her husband again. I just loved them. And his sister and brother-in-law too - adored them.

For me, this is huge and I actually feel more of a need now, than ever before, to surround myself with married couples who are happy. Now I need to learn a new set of lessons.

I think that as we change as individuals our friendships stand to change. There are the deeper friendships that last a lifetime, fortunately I have quite a few of those, and there are those of mutual benefit.

My friendship with Mia is one of both. After I write this I’m going to dig through my closet so she has some work pants to wear today and last week when I had bronchitis she drove Benjamin to school every morning. She is like a sister to me. We have been friends since we were five. And now we are both single moms.

Her recent singleness has actually given our friendship a new life. No longer do I have to bite my tongue about her ex and now she has half as much free time to hang out with Benjamin and I. I’m not quite sure what my world would be like without Mia and we’ve been friends and will continue to be friend through whatever life throws at us but now that we’re both single moms we are talking more and seeing each other more.

So when I posed this question to the Momversation panel what I really wanted to know was, aside from those lifelong friendships, after you become a single mom or a married mom are you more inclined to befriend solo or coupled moms?

Watch this awesome discussion on Momversation to find out what they had to say:

And please check out the rest of the comments to the discussion on my single moms forum or leave a new comment here.

The universe of Benjamin, where he must - by now - have realized that he’s kind of cute.

He’s also learning how to play the adults in his life like a fiddle.

With just one pout of those puffy little lips, or one convincing, “newdea” - translation, “new idea” - he can enrapture you with his seemingly true tales of life as a three-year-old.

Somewhere along the road he used this little face to convince his mommy that “daddy said it was okay to pee pee in his diaper” and vice versa. He’s been pinning us both as “diaper push overs” and we’ve both been buying it for weeks.

This next photo, below, this is a photo of his victory smile. It’s the sly little crook of his mouth he whips out after he’s pulled a Don Corleone on your ass.

So if you run into this little man on the street and he starts telling you a tale that has anything to do with ice cream or Transformers and that story involves you or someone you know

whatever you do

do not be distracted by those eyes and that adorable little nose, or his pip squeaking Elmo-esque voice

because this guy has your number (and he knows it).

P.S. Any potty training tips would be appreciated. He’s going #1 just fine but just can’t make the jump to #2. And man, oh man, is this mommy fed up. I’ve tried bribing.  Big bribes. This week John Bear even bought him a Bumble Bee transformer but so far he won’t take the bait.

Check out more pictures from this weekend in my Recently photo album.

—-

It’s been hot out (a contest).

Very hot. The nice, awesome folks at Baying Hound (a locally owned business here in Columbus) gave Benjamin and I some stainless steel drinking bottles so we can drink to our hearts content wherever we may go. I picked Pink Love.

Now it’s your turn.

Pop over to their site and surf through all of their beautiful reusable bottles, then come back here and leave a comment telling me which bottle you would like and if I draw your name - Baying Hound will send you that very bottle.

Good luck! Contest ends on Friday, July 3rd.

I’m forcing myself to take it easy, to breath deeper, to relax.

Until I can write more - keep up by taking a peak at my new round of photos.

Yes, we would. I’m sure of it and I can see their little faces smiling at me  already. They’re definitely cute as hell.

I also have this vision of John Bear, by then fully trained in the ways of kitchen duty, juggling a baby and a spatula, flipping eggs and yelling at the dog - all at the same time.

A studly dad in the kitchen. These are the daydreams of a single mother.

“And if we do ever have kids you’ll probably have twins,” he lays this out like it’s a perk or something.

“You’re kidding, right?”

He shakes his head, “No, there’s a strong twin gene in my family. I’m next in line.” As he’s listing his relatives who have twins I add another child to my kitchen vision.

Now he’s holding two in one arm with their sweet dark tufts of hair and their bright blue eyes, or maybe one of them will have my dark eyes. And then there’s Benjamin. Maybe he’s setting the table.

And where am I? Probably trying to breath somewhere or frantically shopping for nannies.

Having one was hard enough. But as John Bear says, “You wouldn’t be alone this time and you’d have help, a lot of help.”

He’s childless he has no idea what it’s like - newborns are hard, hard, hard work. But he wants to have his own children, he’s as ready as he’ll ever be. And I do too.

We both want two more so why not knock them both out with one pregnancy?

Could be a nice two for one deal.

Twin talk and pillow talk aside, do you want more kids? I started this discussion in the single moms forum the other day and the responses are really passionate. Leave a comment there or here.

And let me know what you think about the idea of me - having twins. I mean what do you do if the love of your life happens to have a twin gene, a fricking twin gene? Just my luck, right? Oh me, oh my.

Any bearers of twins here who have lived to tell about it?

I hate feeling helpless.

I hate being unable to move without pain, this throbbing in my head and my chest.

I had felt it coming on for weeks and ignored it against John Bear’s warning, “You’re going to run yourself into the ground. You have to stop.”

“I know but I can’t stop. You don’t understand,” I’d snap. I do snap, you know… I’m definitely not perfect (just in case any of you thought so). He was right. And now here I am.

And when three days of your life have consisted of staring at this

and this

you begin to wonder… and to think. 

I’m thinking about what got me here and wondering what I can cut out of my life so this doesn’t happen again. There isn’t much to cut so that leaves one option - slowing down and saying “no” when I just can’t fit something in.

I’m also thinking about all of those shoes in my closet, of where they’ve been and of where they’ll go. John Bear and I have been talking about the future and I’m trying to imagine myself wearing just one pair of shoes til death do me part.

I’m just imagining what it would be like, that’s all.

It’s a perfectly logical thought process when you have a child and when you want more. But I’ve been married before so it’s also a scary thought (especially when you’re sick and feeling very vulnerable not even to mention slightly delirious).

My only experience with the institution of marriage was absolute misery and then fighting to get out as fast as I could. What followed was nearly 15-months without one night where I slept for more than 5 hours straight and over three years now of working without a break to give Benjamin a sweet little apartment with cupboards full of food and a room full of toys… and happiness, lots of that.

And even though I know the same scenario would and could never play out with John Bear, my past experiences are still haunting me as I lie in this bed and look at those shoes. These things from that life that I still possess, ghosts of what was, reminders of what I’ve conquered to get here. And then there’s the fact that I like here. A lot.

But here could just keep getting better. Here could have a few additions and even more love.

I’m just sick.

I feel absolutely miserable and all I want is to get out of this room and back to my life, my story without an end. Our story without an end. It’s funny how us single moms, when hurt or injured, go into protective mode just like that.

Or is it just me?

My friend Brad told me on the phone last week, “you know Alaina, maybe because you just quit your job, because you’re starting this new chapter - maybe you’re in like a cocoon right now and when you get better you’ll be shedding some old skin and coming out all new and stuff.”

I love Brad and I’m hoping he’s right.

I’m hoping this is my past grabbing at me, biting at my ankles one last time before I permanently shake the sucker into the ground.

In the meantime you may be waiting a bit for a new post while I mend myself…

The single moms forum is on fire (over 115 of you have joined) so it gives me unbelievable peace of mind knowing all of my single mamas have somewhere to find each other.

As for the rest of you, you’ll just have to be patient while I get myself back up and at ‘em. Over the next few days I’ll be doing a few exciting things despite my bronchitis (I know, but these are musts and require nothing more than me sitting up in bed).

• I’ll be the first guest on the new Single Mom Revolution radio show hosted by Honoree and Morgan. Listen online and please call (347) 637-2242 to join us on the show with your questions. I would love to talk to you and hear some of your voices. That’s at 1:10 pm on Tuesday June 23, 2009. UPDATE - If you missed it, here’s a link to the radio show. Good stuff. I think you’ll be entertained.
• I’ll be taping for an episode of Momversation. Holy crap am I excited about that. The topic is a bit controversial, I’m really hoping I don’t come off like a bitchy single mom. If I do, I’m blaming it on the plague in my lungs.
• And, last but not least, my new Fiesta Movement Mission video is up - check it out here!!

Until next time, be well and be thankful you don’t have bronchitis and if your body is yelling at you to just stop - listen.

You would think I’ve seen it all but I haven’t. Nope. Like this…

This thing Benjamin does when the mood strikes, or when we have a far distance to walk to in a rush. In this case we were dashing to a bush to so he could pee because the church was all locked and there were people praying very loudly in a room near the other bathroom.

So back to the thing.

Benjamin crouches down on all fours, starts growling and then starts leaping like a possessed person. Note the hooked hand that adds an extra special freak out effect.

It really, really creeps me out. And while other parents at the playground or wherever see this and say, “how funny” or “how cute”, I’m standing there like, “seriously? That doesn’t look totally freaky to you?”

And don’t try talking to him when he’s leaping or growling or whatever it is because he will only snarl back at you.

Thankfully when he’s all through my Benjamin comes back but it’s only to laugh at the expression on Mommy’s face.

And then I just want to kiss him up like crazy.

—-

I would write more but I’m still sick. Turns out when you start your own business and become a full time blogger in the span of three weeks your body gets mad at you. The doctor says it’s bronchitis but it feels like the plague.

John Bear is sick too.

Yuck.

In the meantime, my best friend and recent single mom Mia has been writing - find her latest post in the single moms forum.

I took this picture of her last weekend. I just love her so much and it’s so hard to watch her go through this knowing there’s little I can do to actually take away the pain. I can’t tell her it will all be better soon because I know it won’t - it takes time.

And despite the time it takes to heal from what he did, it takes even longer to adjust to single motherhood.

Time though is a wonderful thing because it’s always, always moving. I remember when I would tell myself “just get through the next hour” and then it turned into “just get through the next day” and eventually “the next month”.

Now it’s the opposite, I want time to slow down so I can “enjoy this minute, enjoy this hour, enjoy it all because I’m home free.”

She’ll get there. She will.  And when she does we’ll go out and get shitfaced to celebrate. And I’ll say, “I told you it would all get better,” and she’d say, “I know, I know you did and it’s SO amazing.”

Until then go lend her your ear or your words.

When Glenn Miller came on I’d start dancing all by myself in that smelly, lonely booth. Dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer. How can you not dance to Chattanooga Choo Choo?

My Dad had introduced me to The Glenn Miller Band years earlier.

The first time we’d danced to it we were cleaning and I remember him telling me to drop the broom so we could dance. So I did. And I’ll never forget it, one of those memories you always keep, the kind no one can take away. He was always making those kinds of memories for me - teaching me how to live life, to have fun, to enjoy the little things.

Dancing alone, another little fun thing, kept me awake.

I was working the Saturday early morning shift, it was my first radio job and a chance to hopefully land a shift in the daylight hours someday. Whenever I’d turn the microphone on I’d get chills, up my arms, down my neck and sometimes in my throat. Throat chills or nerves or whatever they were would occasionally cause me to bumble my words or just freeze up entirely. 

Between newscasts and chill sessions I would imagine who had sat in the seat before me, another girl perhaps or maybe a young man who was now old.

They had all warmed the same black bar stool chair with the awkward swiveling motion, they had all pressed their lips up to the microphone and they had all seen that light flick to red -”On Air” - before letting the words fly from their mouth.

If they could do it. I can do it.

I said the same thing when I learned how to drive and then when I learned how to drive a stick four years later.

I had bought the car for myself with a loan co-signed by my father. He had been diagnosed with cancer five months earlier and would be gone in one month.

“I can’t figure it out,” I said on the brink of tears.

I was so impatient, so headstrong and so determined to learn. My father was standing with me in the kitchen. He was so light now, so skinny. He had aged 30 years it seemed in just weeks.

“Let’s go,” he said, “I’ll teach you.”

“But Dad, what if…” I didn’t want to say it out loud, so I thought it - what if he pukes. He had been so sick lately. That’s the thing about cancer, it just gets worse until it eats you alive and in my dad’s case it was eating just about ever organ he had.

“Just go, c’mon,” his voice was stern.

So we went. Out to the car.

He squeezed his long legs, the legs of a man who towered above most, into the back seat of my two-door Nissan Sentra.

“I don’t want you to remember me this way,” he told me between lurches.

“I won’t, Dad, I promise. I swear.”

The car jolted forward, or was it backward? Over and over.

I couldn’t get it quite right. I couldn’t keep the damn clutch from going out. Dad was trying his best to explain, to smile but in the end we had to get her back home quickly so he could get out of that seat and into the bathroom.

I would learn later, when Dad could no longer get out of the house unless he had a wheelchair.

When you know someone is going to die, when you know they won’t be around for much longer you try to think of things to say, things you may hear in a movie or something but the words don’t come as easily as you think.

“I had a good life,” he would say, “I did. I had a beautiful wife, six beautiful children and I loved my job. At least I had everything I ever wanted.”

But he was pissed.

You could see it in his eyes. He was a physician himself and he knew his cancer was the worst kind of cancer. He knew there was no hope, he knew he was going to die and he was pissed that he had to leave us.

That he couldn’t see his children grow up or live out his life with his wife.

He wanted to stay.

When I would hear him telling my mother that the chemo would be a “waste of time” I would try to say things I thought would motivate him to will himself better.

“Dad, please, don’t you want to see me get married some day? Don’t you want to walk me down the aisle?”

I forgive myself now for saying that only because I was a kid, but it still haunts me.

Of course he wanted that, he wanted that more than anything. Words can’t turn some things around. Some things - like adenocarcinoma and three brain tumors - are unstoppable.

—-

I flicked on the microphone for the 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning newscast. But this time was different. There would be no errant chills in my throat because when I looked up, he was there.

My father had taken a detour on the way home from his overnight shift at the Emergency Room to watch me give a live newscast. He had volunteered to come, wanting to see his “daughter on the radio.”

I glanced up between stories and I could see his face through the small tiny glass window of the thick padded door - he was smiling, from ear to ear.

Kind of like he is in this picture.

—-

“Did you make someone smile today, Alaina?”

He asked me this often during my childhood.

“I think so,” I’d say.

“Did you know that when you make someone smile, just once, they’ll be a little bit happier and then they’ll make someone else smile. So for every person you make smile you could make dozens or even hundreds of other people smile.”

I think that was his secret, smiling and making other people smile.

—–
When that awesome story appeared in the Columbus Dispatch this Sunday a lot of you read it, including an old college friend who promptly sent me some photos he’d stumbled upon recently, “profile photos of a great Doctor, and a great man,” he wrote in the e-mail, “one who saved my life a few years earlier when I had a severe allergic reaction to penicillin. I wanted you to have them, as well as the knowledge of how much he garnered my respect and adoration.”

It would have been my father’s 61st birthday this week.

And today, he would want each and every one of you to make someone else smile.

I can’t even begin to thank you all enough. Really. Your passion for my little life is quite extraordinary, and as more and more readers join us (many of them not even single moms) I’m thinking that this blog is transforming into a story for everyone. 

Something I’ve come to realize over the past few months is that Ms. Single Mama isn’t me - she is each of you - all of the single moms who have inspired me to write my thoughts here.

She is every single woman.

She is every single mother.

She, or he, is every person who wants to find themselves and follow their own path. 

But she also has a desire to change and to grow and above all, to make the best of her situation no matter how awful it can be.  As this blog continues to transform I want to make sure the single moms, my single moms, have a place to find each other so I’m launching a single moms forum.

All of the credit goes to John Bear though. He suggested I have a forum, I resisted, he suggested again and then again until finally I said, “okay, let’s try it.”

Then he made it… in just one night, just for us. 

And guess what I have realized?

Prince Charming. 

He does exist. But instead of a sword and a horse he has a laptop and knows code. 

Here’s a video explaining just what in the hell the forum is (John Bear had to explain it to me too and it took him weeks to convince me that this was a good idea, but finally I realized that he is totally right). This forum ROCKS. 

You are all going to love it, I just know it. 

As I mentioned in the video, the next batch of new leaf necklaces are here.

Some of you have said this necklace has a special energy or magic powers… well, that’s what happens when 100 strong women wear something at the same exact time. These are our little charms of strength. Just look at the new leaf photo album, I’m gathering pictures of all the single moms wearing one.

The winner of last week’s believe post (randomly drawn by my closed eyes and wandering finger is Busy Momma 66, who as it turns out is a new single mom with a very, very interesting blog.)   ).