This was a busy whirl of a week with travel, flirtation, airport fantasies and lots and lots of moms. In 2008 Jennifer Kampmier founded www.IndyBabyExpo.com, after dumping her online dating biz, and falling in love with a baby — her own, of course.

Her baby fair is an extravaganza of merchandise for moms-to-be and new moms with tots. Even though my children are way into high school, Jennifer and I synced up over the whole Mamapalooza and Moms Who Rock phenomenon and decided to team up for Spring 2009 events. So I jetted out to meet her in person.

We connected right away. As we sat on her deck into the wee hours, with the Indiana moon hovering, we spilled our stories of men, marriage, online dating, babies and being women entrepreneurs.

Past midnight and way into drinks our stories came spilling out, and I knew I had found a kindred spirit. For someone in the mothering expo biz, Jenn has made independent choices that I admire and respect.

She's single by choice, and raising her 3-year-old son, Zane, on her own. Long term plans for her mean growing her business and perhaps ultimately moving to far off places so she and Zane could have a chance to experience other cultures.

I met and stayed with her family for the weekend, and got to chat with her delightful parents, who've been married for 36 years.

As self-described flower children in the late 70s, they bought a mobile home and moved their young family around America. Jenn is in her early 30s. I'm 51. Even though, technically, we're different generations, and our choices have led us down different paths, we had both read every single one of the same books on health, wealth, spirit and empowerment.

When our conversation got deep, our philosophies turned to alternative ways of thinking and being.

Mama's time has come. From the hills of Hollywood to the halls of the White House, there are mamas in the limelight. Instead of simply acknowledging the fact that any accolades Mom receives are long overdue, why not join the growing boom of females who insist on everything from paid maternity leave to rock festivals that feature female entertainment?

I refuse to believe the current movement is a response to the 1950s stereotype that kept June Cleaver in the kitchen with her lipstick on. And I keep hoping the momentum is bigger than an angry backlash of feminists who refuse to make room for softer, gentler versions of themselves. 

Most of all, I pray that while the idea of "family values" is of great concern to many of us, those values are not determined by a right-wing government.

We want different things. The point is, for the first time in many years, we are mobilizing to want something. The common thread between us is that we are reaching out to redefine what it is to be a modern mother.

For the first time in (her)story, we are single mothers, rocker mothers, soccer mothers, alpha moms, hot moms, and intellectuals, all taking on new work, new life definitions.

I am totally psyched to see a dialogue begin and, the sensationalistic Mommy wars aside, the truth is that we can all get along.

I started out as a mother and a wife replicating what I had witnessed growing up in middle-America. When my children were born in New York City from 1989 to 1994, there was a dawning of a new consciousness: a network of midwife-assisted births, natural parenting magazines, and higher consciousness baby groups.

There are three guitars strewn around the living room. My band rehearsal ran late and I'm trying to adjust to life at warp speed, because in five minutes the kids will blast through the door.

I play in Housewives on Prozac with four other women. We're all at different stages of relationships, but I'm the only one who's single with four kids. 

Never mind that multi-tasking in my house means every pot in the kitchen is blackened on the bottom.

There's a dangerous pattern developing. Meals keep getting started and end up on fire. Dogs are left outside while the sun goes down. And I'm especially jammed when it comes to any kind of a personal life.

Summer was all about bliss. So this is a good time to ask, Where the heck is the sanity?

I admit it helps to burn off steam by turning things into loud songs. Housewives on Prozac has played PTA fundraisers and large-scale stadium gigs. We did the theme song for the Liberty Girls basketball team at Madison Square Garden.

We've been playing together for 10 years and find tremendous solace and humor in each other. I'm the lead singer, and do most of the song writing.  

Each of the girls brings something unique to the project musically speaking, but, even more, they have been my steadfast friends through all the ups and downs of parenthood, separation, and divorce.

Look at the music from 1997 to 1999, with songs like "BabySlave" and "Rich Man Blues." Then there was a progression in 2000 to "Chemotherapy" and "Two Little Pills." By 2002, we were cultivating our own little cult hits with things like "Eat Your Damn Spaghetti" and "Fuzzy Slippers," and two years ago it was "The Heart Wants What the Heart Wants" and "We're All a Little Crazy."

In my ongoing quest to spend a month happily living solo, I decided to spring for some fresh, fanciful fare.

I've just finished reading French Women Don't Get Fat. It seems the French drink a lot of champagne and that, somehow, ingesting quality ingredients keeps their women from over eating.

I scored beautiful local goat cheese at the Hastings Farmers Market and picked up a lovely pink Brut for under $40.

I don't usually drink alcohol while I'm alone, but I'm in survival mode and the kids don't get back until after Labor Day.

Popping the cork and pouring the Brut into a pink marabou martini glass, purchased at the TJ Maxx bargain rack, life seems sort of okay for the moment.

This was not a reward for spending a month in isolation. I don't need a reward, because I know that a workshop or trip to the Omega Institute is coming up.

However, I'm convinced that every night I spend alone is going to help me be a stronger person.

Admittedly, as I'm having these thoughts, there is a strong craving for a Valium or something else that will make me feel numb.

I used to feel desperate if I didn't have a man in my life. I still feel desperate, but when I compare the relative peace of my little blue house in Hastings to my married life in the mansion, with my over-the-top, angry ex-spouse, I'm satisfied with my decision.

But when I think of the things I gave up to be a hermit, I want to cry. Family and friends from the last 20 years are gathering on Fire Island this month to swim, laugh, and sail together.

Flirting with single guys, and sometimes even the husbands of my friends, chatting with the hunky lifeguards, and making the rounds to Saltaire, Fair Harbor, and Kismet were all part of my married life.

Feeling popular, rich, and loved seemed ingredients for a perfect life. But they're not.

Busy people, who surround themselves with four kids, a husband, a wide social circle, a dog, two cats, and countless gerbils, do it because they don't like to be alone. I am one of those people.

My girlfriends, therefore, called me crazy when I told them I was going to go without a date for the next month.

I had no idea it was going to be so hard. Unplugging the phone and suspending the match.com account has not been without ramifications. The first night was horrible.

It reminded me of the first weeks of being separated.

The first thing I did Friday night after work was turn the lights down and turn the radio up. With the scent of candles wafting through the house, I ran a bath and decided to concentrate on "me" time.

Normally the kids would be watching TV in the living room, asking for second helpings of dinner. On nights when the kids are with their Dad, I'd be out for drinks with friends.

Weekends post-divorce, I'd usually be juggling a man, or two.

But not this month. This is solo month and I'm determined to find out what makes me tick.

There is no choice but to succeed. If I can't wrestle some quiet time into my hectic life, then nothing is going to change from the days when I was married.

By 8 o'clock I'd downed two glasses of wine and was feeling weepy. Wine churning around in an empty stomach, and the silence of a childless house, were enough to make me run screaming from the suburbs.

When the divorce was first under way, I'd thought about getting an apartment in the city. My ex told me that he'd make life with the children impossible if I did that, so I'd reneged, a good choice for the kids, but a tough sacrifice for a middle-age woman alone in a house in the middle of August, with nothing but the crickets chirping outside.

It might as well have been Stephen King's Maine.