In classroom exercise this week, we had to share a secret. It made me think. I wasn't sure I had any secrets.

Here's what I came up with: I watch a lot of television.

As a single mother of three children who works a couple of jobs as well as runs a couple of businesses, I figure I probably don't have time for secrets anymore exotic than TV.

Equally true, though, is that I probably shouldn't have time to be a big TV watcher. But I like it. I love the story-telling and the escapism and especially love hour-long character-based shows. An hour somewhere else is seductive.

Without much time for a social life, TV is my escape, my treat, and my indulgence. When I am at home, the TV is on for breakfast shows, then morning chat shows, then Oprah and Doctor Phil — and someone surely has to do something about afternoon programming. Even I don't bother.

My kids and I watch whatever reality/aspirational program is on after dinner and then I watch late-night TV when they're in bed and I am at my desk or flaked and exhausted, on the couch.

Educated people are not supposed to watch as much TV as I do, and we are supposed to restrict our children's viewing. I encourage it. Relaxation and thinking time are healthy when everything else is in check.

I wonder about other single women's secrets. Are there any other closet TV watchers out there?

One of my jobs is teaching. I take some day classes and some night classes. This year, the first class for a new course I'm teaching falls tonight — on Valentine's Day night.

One of my young, smug, newly married colleagues asked me if I was so bitter that I didn't have a ″valentine″ that I scheduled the class so other people would miss out on celebrating the event. (Why do people feel the need to be so rude?)

I protest on two levels. One, I am not bitter at all and don't even want a valentine, which is quite different from just not having one. Two, it's a Thursday night class. I don't choose the date of special celebrations — they just fall where they land.

The reaction to the scheduling of the class from the students who should be there was amazing. The young and in love already had restaurant bookings and their faces just dropped at the orientation day discussion of their timetable.

There was only one thing to do. I've cancelled the class and we will start our learning journey together next week.

The upside for me is that I will get to be home with my kids tonight instead of working. I will get to tuck my own little valentines into bed and kiss them goodnight. I'm sure my 15-year-old will really appreciate that!

We have just survived back to school in Australia, where we have our big break over Christmas and January — our summer. Two of my kids went back one day and the third a couple of days later which meant we had a practice run before we went live with all three.

Chaos! The second day we slept in, not long enough for them to be late, just enough for all usual procedures to go out the window and panic to settle in.

All I could think of is 'how do I normally do all of this?' When do I have time to do the washing? How does the food for the school lunches — 30 pieces of fruit per week for starters — find its way into the kitchen? Surely I don't have time.

I couldn't help but wonder how, before the holidays, I ever got everything done — the uniform washing and ironing, the lunches and the after school activities.

These are the things that I focus on, leaving ‘optional extras' like dusting and weeding to the lists of people with priorities different to mine. So not being able to get these basics done means failing in my responsibilities and big time.

Maybe I just need to get my hand in again. It's a short term this year though, as Easter is early. I hope I get on top of the challenge before my efforts are interrupted by the next round of holidays and I go back to the beginning again.

My baby girl is growing up. I just came home from picking her up from her first paid job. It was just waitressing at a friend of mine's party but she is only 13 so the saltmines came a little earlier than I had in mind. Her 14-year-old friend worked alongside her and they were there until 11 p.m. Lucky it's not a school night.

Is there something transformational that happens when your child goes out to work? Is there a wand waved somewhere making parents instantly behave like their own parents? I felt the need to scrutinise the clothes the girls were wearing. They held up dresses that I earnestly thought were tops and asked what they were planning to wear with them. I insisted they wear shorts as well.

I was thinking through the likely scenarios as the pretty young things wearing practically nothing had to offer food to young men getting increasingly intoxicated as the night went on and chatted to the girls on the way about how to handle it.

I worried the whole time they were gone.

In the car on the way home, I discovered that these girls didn't need any help from me in handling themselves. They had given everyone at the party code nicknames to amuse themselves, quoted examples of the wit they had used to rebut the drunken nonsense as the party got older and had ranked the partygoers in terms of "hotness" and then changed their rankings based on the behaviour of the ‘hotties' as they had a few more drinks.

They were savvy, funny and amused at the so-called adult behaviour they had witnessed. It will be a few years before they actually attend parties like that, but boy will they be ready.

I hope their mothers are.

Because making time for yourself is one of the themes of my book, one of our newspapers interviewed me for a story they were writing about work/life balance for dads.

I don't profess to be any particular authority on dads per se, not being one and all, but I think I know something about parenting which is all being a dad is. It was weird answering the questions, almost like an out of body experience in that I felt like in talking about dads I was describing my own issues and my own life.

Yes there are similarities between the roles of mums and dads — they are both obviously parenting functions. But the weirdness for me came from my feeling that as a single parent I am not just a single mother but, despite my children seeing their dad regularly, a single father too. I had not thought about myself before as the father as well. But everything I said about the parenting and life balance issues for dads was exactly the same as it is for me.

One of the challenges for dads is finding a balance between financially supporting your family and being with your family. That is me, but I am the breadwinner and the nurturer. Married dads (and that is who the article was about) have someone else providing the nurturing while they are bringing home the bacon.

Another dad challenge is getting away from work to attend sports and dance practices, not just swan in at the end of the year for the final or the concert. Yep, that's my challenge too, and I wash the muddy sportsclothes and ferry the kids to and from sport and sew on the sequins and the numbers on the back of the footy jumpers, usually after midnight after the washing and the dishes.

And yet another dad challenge is finding some time for himself and his mates and my book emphasises the importance of this. But this isn't a dad-exclusive thing either.

Cambodian marriages have a recipe for success. The woman is in charge. Excuse me while I pack my bags.

Seriously, the woman controls the money, makes the purchasing decisions, raises the family and is recognized as the matriarch. Both parties know it going in and it works really well.

In his imperfect English, one happily married Cambodian man told me that men go to work and bring home the money to their wives. Any man seen to be holding any money back for himself, other than lunch money at work, is seen by his male peers as "soft" or "you know, a bit gay." Good men bring home the bacon.

In describing how marriages work, he said that if a married couple were buying a new car and the woman wanted a red one and the man wanted a black one, they would buy a red one and everyone would be happy.

Part of the reason for the success of this traditional role-sharing arrangement is that Cambodian men really value the contribution of the homemaker. The fact that they come home from work to a house, a wife, children, clean clothes and meals is wonderful to them. Like most single working women, I think it sounds pretty good too!

I am not sure why all recipients of such an arrangement don't just appreciate it rather than feel the need to critique it like so many western men do.

This traditional role breakdown also works because it is communicated well. Both parties understand what their rights and responsibilities are and they work together as a couple rather than two individuals.

Of course, the fact that many women aren't educated for any vocation other than marriage conditions them to this way of life. And the fact that education for women is becoming a more accepted and even encouraged aspect of Cambodian life will make this nation interesting to observe over time.

We're just back from our family adventure to Cambodia and apart from all of the wonderful tourist things we did, surprisingly, there were insights into marriage and divorce along the way.

As I was traveling alone with my three kids, we didn't fit the eastern expectation of a family unit. Or the western perhaps?

My kids were often asked "Where's your papa?" and "Is your dad in Australia?" and this made me think how bad that must be for families whose fathers have died. Based on the reactions I got when I explained that I am divorced, I am sure it was similar to saying that I am from another planet and my children are robots.

One of my sons is 15 and at 6'4" is very tall. There were many comical situations where he was described as "very high", but as he still has the baby face of a four-year-old, him being offered the wine list and assumed to be the dad was as insightful as it was amusing.

Cambodia is overrun with western tourists so I was surprised by the extent of their shock at our single parent family. I thought they would be used to western families in all their guises. Maybe it's as simple as not many single parents travel with their kids. If you can create the chance to do it, put Cambodia on your list. It's amazing.

If there is anything I worry about, it's that something will get in the way of me fulfilling my responsibility to my children.

Already I have brought them into the world promising them everything I could muster and delivered to them a single parent home. I didn't do this single-handedly of course, but everything that has happened since has been my single-handed doing, as it will be in the future.

I feel the responsibility of being the adult in my children's lives so intensely that occasionally, it's a problem.

I was sick the other day. The kind of in pain, nauseated and vomiting that I was expertly told the day after should have seen me call an ambulance and go to hospital. I didn't. I suffered through the pain and it did eventually pass.

All I could think of was how whatever was wrong with me might affect our overseas trip. There were two scenarios. One, that I would end up in hospital that night having surgery — it really did hurt! — and that would affect us going away as we were leaving in six days. The second was the pain would pass but that I would relapse overseas and as the only adult with three children, I couldn't be responsible for them if I was in hospital over there.

Neither has happened and I am recovered from whatever the problem was — doctor's best guess was a burst ovarian cyst — but my responsibility issues are a problem for a number of reasons.

My greatest responsibility is to my own health if I'm to be responsible for my children. I needed to call a doctor to deal with my problem, not worry about how it might affect our trip. As if ignoring it or toughing through it would help somehow! I was stupid.

The pressure of the responsibility is causing cracks in my defences. I need to acknowledge it at least. I should have been more worried about me needing treatment in a Cambodian hospital than anything else!

We are going overseas in a few days and I suspect I have too many things to do between now and the plane taking off.

It will be interesting to see if I just acknowledge that and leave some things undone or whether the impossible might somehow be possible in the build up to a trip. Personal success guru Zig Ziglar calls that phenomenon "working like it's your last day before vacation" and believes we are at our most focused and efficient when we are trying to leave our desks clean and our minds empty of anything other than time off.

In my case, I'm trying to leave my desk clean, my house habitable, not too many clothes in the laundry to ferment while I'm away, no leftover food in the fridge but petrol in my car for when I'm back and broke and the beds made and the floors vacuumed to create some sense of welcome on our return.

And I'm doing that while I'm trying to pack clothes for 10 days for my kids and just the right straight-from-the-fashion-pages mix and match travel wardrobe for myself, organize cash and travellers' cheques, ensure our travel documents are all copied and correct and actually enjoy the anticipation of a wonderful family excursion to Asia.

I have always said that the best part of going away is the moment you sit in your seat on the plane and you know that you have remembered everything important because they let you on the plane — and we don't have any important medications or anything to worry about — and the holiday has begun. Anything forgotten is forgotten or bought when you get there if necessary.

If I had a husband, would this pre-travel process be easier or would I just have another person to be responsible for?

My kids are really funny. They regularly make me laugh out loud. Sometimes it's cute jokes. What do you call a man with a spade on his head? Doug. What do you call a man without a spade on his head? Douglas. He he he!

Sometimes it's impersonations of people or monologues delivered in caricature or stories from their day at school.

As they get older though, I laugh at their insights into what goes on around them and how they interpret, through their own perspectives, the things that look mundane to me.

We were talking over dinner and I mentioned that I had blogged about the TV show "The Starter Wife" — that we had all watched together and had posed some questions about what the term "starter wife" implied in the States, as it's not well-used in Australia.

"Nice one, Mum, making money out of watching TV."

"So do you have to watch that for homework now?"

"Hey Mum, that might mean you've a chance with (my all-time heart throb) John Travolta. His wife might just be a starter."

"So if we all have to keep watching that show, can we get chocolate and make it our family show?"

"Is the guy she's going to date in that show hot? Yuk, he's like maybe 40 or 50!"

If the TV scouts are considering a show about three Australian kids and their single mum — and why wouldn't they be? — ours will be a sitcom, not a drama.