This is my last post for FWW, and all good writers have been taught that your conclusion should link back to your introduction.

I introduced myself to the FWW community with a post about song titles that captured my mood and philosophy about life as a single-again woman.

So in my last post (do Americans know "the last post" a very significant tune for returned soldiers that is iconic in Australia? Anyway, it amuses me....) I am returning to song titles that capture my mood.

I ain't gonna go to rehab either, Amy. I am going to continue to live my life my way and not feel the need to conform to the expectations of others. I will do it My Way, indeed.

I am trying hard to be more G.L.A.M.O.R.O.U.S. Even just as glamorous as I used to be would be enough, but it's hard when you have so much to do. Maybe in my future, somewhere over the rainbow, when housework and the need to feed children doesn't get between me and the pot of gold.

I can't help humming "I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman" just as I did in that first post. It is an anthem for women living their lives without the support of a partner.

And I often think how lucky I am that I am, in fact, strong and invincible, because my life will continue to be — I am very sure — a "thriller."

Good-bye, FWW readers!

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?

Oprah is one of life's great sources of the stuff you need to know. I am trying to set my life up so I can watch it every day.

Last summer, the show featured a book called Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus. It offered great insight into the role of women in societies.

The book is the story of Yunus's invention of micro-credit, which is basically lending money to the poorest members of a community, the ones without collateral and the ability to fill out paperwork. He started it in his native Bangladesh and now it operates around the world.

The loans are often for $5 or $1, and they enable people to own the means of production, turning them from poorly paid employees to business owners. Oh, and micro-credit is extended to just women. Yep, women only.

Yunus believes that women run families and households and will ensure that the money well spent and repaid.

There is no bias about the marital status of the women except maybe to favor women who are the single heads of families. Everyone relies on them, and they are dependable. They have to be, simply by the nature of their situations.

This book is a great read for anyone, but it is especially affirming for divorcing or divorced women going it alone. I highly recommend it.

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 have a card on the mantel in my office that my sister gave me when I launched my book.

It says "Life may not be the party we've hoped for but while we're here we might as well dance."

I love it for lots of reasons. Partly because for me it is ridiculous. There is nothing that could make me dance or do karaoke. Public spectacle making is not my thing.

But I love the card because it is somehow hopeful and melancholy, accepting and optimistic at the same time. It acknowledges how hard it is to be upbeat all the time, even for the naturally optimistic like me.

Life may not be the party we've hoped for. Maybe not right now, but we're not giving up on "ever." This too shall pass. Meanwhile, let's dance a little. Let's make the most of right now and be grateful for what we have.

Nobody would describe my life right now as a party, and if they did, they'd really need to get out more (and dance a little).

But life up to your eyebrows with children — and their meals and their baths and the places they need to be and the homework they need help with — is joyous in itself, while setting up the expectation that children are not children for long. And maybe life can be the party we've hoped for when they're a little more independent.

I won't be dancing, but my party will take the form of an airplane ticket somewhere exotic. Somewhere without karaoke. Hold the dancing and go heavy on the palm trees and margaritas.

For a while there, being divorced defined me. I didn't do it or even let it happen on purpose, it just managed to sneak into everything I did.

When introducing myself, in both personal and professional situations, I would work the D-word in early. Not sure if it was me being my usual ‘tell you anything, no secrets' me or whether I wanted to deal with it early. Was I trying to avoid messy questions? Or was I pretending it was something I was proud of?

I used to squirm as I imagined people assuming I must not be very nice if someone divorced me or that I failed at marriage or that I imposed something ugly on my kids by putting my own needs ahead of theirs.

In actual fact, that wasn't just my imagination. People can be incredibly blunt, and I have been told all of the above. Still, I announced my divorced status to anyone who would listen. (How boring!) How stupid.

The thing is, I am thinking back as I write this. I have moved on and it has only just occurred to me. Now when I introduce myself, I define myself in terms of my work and tell almost everyone I have three children. (They're not boring.)

I feel liberated by this development, like a return to when I was married or engaged or dating and didn't feel the need to announce my relationship status to define me.

Divorced is not who I am. It never was. But for a while I let it be. (Big mistake.)

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.

Do non-Australians understand the word "yobbo"? If not, it's a description of someone who is extremely laid back and a bit rough around the edges. Some people would consider it a compliment and others an insult. Normally a yobbo is an Aussie bloke but sometimes they can be women.

Anyway, there is an ad on TV here at the moment that I hate. It features a single mother who introduces herself as such in a yobbo accent that suggests she is a real "battler", another Australianism for someone who is poor and battling to make ends meet.

The point the advertiser is making is that even people as poor as single mothers can still get on in life if they use their service. The ad is for renting household equipment.

The poor stereotype is bad enough but the characterisation also suggests this woman isn't very well-educated and that people should both feel sorry for her and look down on her. Gee if she can rent a computer, maybe we can too.

I also read somewhere the other day that a factor in poverty is being a woman as we are more likely than men to lose out in divorce and have to cope with the incredible expense of raising children alone.

No doubt all of these descriptors are accurate to an extent. But I wonder whom they help? I would like to see the woman on the ad say "I researched a lot of deals on financing computers and this is the best available. Why not benefit from the homework I put in?"

Not just because it's a more positive portrayal of single mothers but also because it's more accurate. Single women are resourceful, frugal and survivors. Aren't we?

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.