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?

Boytoys fascinate me. And not for the reason you would think.

I just don't get the appeal of them. Whenever I see an official boytoy, like poor Ashton Kutcher, husband of 43-year-old Demi Moore, my first thought tends to be, "What does his dad looks like?" The father of someone young enough to be boytoy material for me, seems about right.

Why is that? Why, those who fancy boytoys aside, does our taste in the opposite gender tend to age with us? Why at nearly 43 do I think men in their late 40s are the supreme examples of the male of the species? Certainly, that hasn't always been the case!

My kids are fascinated by this phenomenon. Partly because they are repulsed by the idea that anyone could find someone over say, oh, 30 attractive. But partly because they see me as so out of touch with today's attractive men, like Jake Gyllenhaal and Zac Efron.

When they see a man they think is good-looking they point him out to me. My response is invariably, "I wonder what his dad looks like?"

The other day, one of my sons declared in desperation that he would need to take me shopping for a boyfriend in a nursing home if my taste in men got any older.

But I expect it will. And maybe he should. If I was in the market for a boyfriend that is.

I was talking to some people the other day about lifestyles. Most people's idea of lifestyle seemed to be the café society-type, where we flit from a café latte meeting in town to one at the beach.

Apparently, living the life is about eating out and globe trotting.

The other people in the conversation told me, sympathetically, that I would get a lifestyle again in a few years when my children are older, or sooner if I would just allow myself to date. Man equals lifestyle too, apparently.

It really made me think. Being confronted with nonsense will do that. I decided that I have a great lifestyle and it is very much the one I chose for myself. It didn't just befall me.

My lifestyle is based around being the mother of three children. We do everything together and for now at least I do not pine for a man, John Travolta fantasies notwithstanding. We eat out together — we are part way through our plan to eat a different type of food for every letter of the alphabet. We travel together and love to plan our next adventure while we're still on the current one.

Everything I want to do with my life, I am doing. With my kids. It's great.

I certainly don't need the sympathy of onlookers thinking I need their idea of a lifestyle, which in their minds always seems to include a man. I think my moving beyond divorce lifestyle is so great there would be millions of women around the world who would love to walk a mile in my shoes.

Thank goodness the parties are over. Whatever festive feelings I can ever muster, and they are limited, are largely quashed by holiday parties.

Now I can relax. The next round doesn't start for the best part of another year.

It doesn't seem that long ago that seeing cute men at a party would be a good thing. Not anymore. The cute men at this year's Christmas parties might have been interesting but I can't talk to them to find out.

I can almost hear the David Attenborough voiceover commentating "... and she approaches the man not with the desire for a pleasant social exchange but as if she has not eaten for many days and plans to devour him. The females of the pack stop what they are doing and watch her every move."

Being a divorced woman makes me a predator, apparently, and it's exhausting as you have to work the room at a number of levels. You need to check out the men very quickly, looking for safe bets. Those you might consider safe to talk to. Those not attached to a woman. You need to look sideways as that's where the women are, glancing back at you, protecting their turf. And you have to do all of this while greeting the hosts enthusiastically and getting yourself a drink.

For the above reasons, a man can't offer you a drink and a woman is more likely to want to throw it at you.

There is an additional Australian complication. We call it the "Aussie barbecue" and basically it's the phenomenon at parties where the men congregate in one corner or in the backyard and the women are in another corner or huddled in the kitchen.

What this means for divorced, single women is hanging out with the women, who for the above reasons are unfriendly, and maybe never talking to a man at a party again.

A shame really. I quite like men. No wonder I don't feel festive.

Life after divorce is never better than when I — the no-one-else-to-negotiate-with-parent — get to plan and book a family adventure trip.

This week we're going to Cambodia. I'm so excited, and my children, who are 15, 13 and 11, can hardly wait. It is their first trip to Asia, and listening to them talk about their anticipation of the language differences and the way people live is intriguing.

Last year I took them to California and that was a culture shock for my Melbourne-born kids. Different accents, different foods, different sights. Imagine their reaction to Phnom Penh!

We are going to see Angkor Wat and the Killing Fields and probably the odd swimming pool in a more-than-comfortable resort. So they will learn some history and religion, have to deal with some of the atrocities the world has dealt itself and be confronted by the reality that their life goes swimmingly while others really suffer.

I think we'll be better off for the experience.

While it is obviously not easy to finance overseas family adventures on one parent's resources, it is my priority, and we make lots of sacrifices throughout the year with this in mind.

I doubt my kids would have this opportunity if I was still married, as planning the trip would probably get bogged down in negotiations. As a single woman, I just decide we're going to do it and set the course toward making it happen. I am not suggesting my kids would rather have parents who are divorced. But since not having divorced parents isn't an option, going on adventures with their solo mum, isn't so bad.

The TV miniseries "The Starter Wife," starring Debra Messing, started in Australia this week and introduced me to an expression I had not heard before. If it is used at all here," starter wife" is not a well-known concept.

I love Debra Messing from "Will and Grace," and the previews made the show look like watching it would be like reading a magazine — picture perfect, styled and glossy — and it delivered when I tuned in. I loved it.

But the notion of the "starter wife" for an Australian house blogger for a U.S. Web site using the term "first wife" was especially intriguing, and I'd love to hear how the term is used there and what it implies.

Does it suggest the marriage was a sham? That there was another woman involved — one for performing the role of wife at parties and one for fun? Is it meant to be insulting or demeaning? Does it mean the "starter" is traded in for a new model?

Whatever the implication, I'm pretty sure I wasn't one. But I'm not sure whether I wish I was. At the end of the first episode, it looked like Debra Messing's starter wife was in for some fun. That could be good.

So, my American divorced counterparts, tell me. Starter wife: To be or not to be?

Sometimes I think I owe my sanity to my love of books. Reading is my most special friend.It is meditative, reflective, relaxing, or energizing — whichever I need it to be. It’s deeply personal, and on a practical level, it’s portable and inexpensive. I read as many as 200 books a year and am constantly frustrated that I can’t keep up with all of the books I would like to be reading. The satisfaction of finishing a book is one of my great joys. At the moment I am reading a book that was published in 1994 and regretting that I didn’t read it then. Ah, the lost years. The book is the loftily titled “I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It Was. Discover what you really want — and how to get it,” by Barbara Sher. I picked it up because I thought it would be good for my coaching work, and it is, but I have discovered it is also great for me. How nice of the author to name a whole chapter after me: “I want too many things.” There I am. All of my personality predilections captured in a chapter title and then explained to me in the chapter that follows it, as if Ms. Sher was sitting down and analyzing me personally. I’ve learned that I’m a scanner — a creative type with lots of interests and lots of long lists of things I desperately want to get done. Well, actually, I knew most of that, but now I know that maybe instead of seeking ways of doing things more quickly so I can get through the lists faster, I can take a 20-year view of things and do one thing after another. Strategic and logical, who knew?

A few days ago was my baby boy’s birthday. He turned 11. When I said to him — like all mothers of youngest children before me — that I couldn’t believe my baby was 11, he misheard me and thought I said “a legend” rather than “eleven.” It’s fair to say that we had to agree he was both.

We had a party at a 10-pin bowling alley with his friends and it was a great success: jug after jug of Coke, plates of fries, loud music and a strobe-like light show whose novelty wore off quickly if you happened to be over 11. Oh, and they bowled.

Although they’re obviously not always at bowling alleys, it looked like every other birthday party my kids have had. A quick calculation suggests I’ve hosted about 34 birthday parties! My kids’ father, whether my husband or my ex-husband, has been at them too. We arrive in different cars from different homes these days, but everything looks the same when we’re there.

Not every part of life after divorce changes. There are still events, moments — arguments even — that recur year after year. They help to define what family life looks like for us these days. Sometimes it’s no picnic. Neither is life always so in anyone’s household, marriage, or family. Life after divorce can shine a spotlight on the cracks that led to the breakdown of the marriage, but at least some of the time, things happen just as they always did. Whole parts of life look just the same as they did before.

There is a comfort about that sameness that I hope is creating memories for my children, whose lives are changed forever by their parents’ failure to stay married.

I was at the home of my daughter’s friend last week, talking to her parents, who had just come home from an amazing three-month trip to Europe with their three children.

I was jealous, of course. Travel is one of the things I care about more than anything else, and we started trading travel stories. It is probably more true to say that I was lobbing my own travel stories in a desperate bid to somehow feel closer to the experiences they had just had.

I was saying where we had been and where we plan to go next and thinking out loud how I would get my children to Europe while they’re still children. The other woman acknowledged their good fortune, but it wasn’t long before the talk led to domestic matters. Their need for some home renovations came up and she said that with the trip behind them, that would be their next project.

Again I was jealous, as I fleetingly imagined the delights of a dishwasher and a bath big enough to luxuriate in. My plans, I had to admit, put airline tickets way ahead of household niceties.

The man said I was talking his language. His wife said he was bitten with the travel bug but they had enjoyed a great trip and it was time now for other priorities.

I could only think that one of the great things about being single is there is no one to negotiate with.