Holly Lahti is one lucky single mom—she won 190 million dollars in the Mega Millions lottery. But, she didn’t come forward to claim her prize for at least two days and lottery officials announced that Holly wanted the media to please respect her privacy. She’s 29, a single mom to two young children and worked as a bank teller but immediately quit after winning big—and disappeared from the town of Rathdrum, Idaho. Sources say she’s on a beach with her kids thinking things over. What is there to think over? You won big, baby! Not so fast.

There’s a lot of modern parenting taking place on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills—both last night on a pre-taped episode and currently in real time. For those of you who don’t find Bravo’s documentary-style series on real housewives across America a guilty pleasure like me (so true!), I’ll fill you in. Last night’s episode showcased Kyle Richards’ daughter, Farrah’s college graduation. Farrah is via a previous marriage and Kyle is currently married to Mauricio Umansky, who she calls the love of her life. They have 3 daughters together. So, did Farrah’s biological dad show up to her big day?

JD was coughing and had a runny noise all weekend. I didn’t think too much of it, since he’s in school and it’s cold and flu season—and that pretty much means he’s in a constant state of sort-of-sick until Spring. It’s annoying. By lunchtime yesterday, I knew something more intense was brewing because he wouldn’t take one bite of his grilled cheese or even a nibble of his all time fave snack: cherry tomatoes. “I wanna go to bed,” he said pushing his plate away. I made him drink his water/juice and then tucked him in. I sat outside his bedroom, in the living room reading and heard him stirring and coughing for the almost three hours he was down. When he woke up he didn’t come running out as usual, he just sat in his bed and cried. When I went in to get him, I could see that his hair was wet from sweat and his cheeks were flushed. His temperature at this point was just 100 so I gave him some generic Tylenol, but since JD doesn’t take medicine well, I had to mix it with reduced sugar fruit punch (thank God the medicine was fruit flavored) and serve it up in a sippy cup, then play medicine cop for the ten minutes it took him to drink it all.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to spend more time with my friends. I will admit that I hardly ever see my NYC friends. I live and work in NJ, about forty-minutes out of the city. As a single mom, it’s hard to find time to hang in NYC with my friends because it means securing a babysitter for several hours, usually driving in (because in case of an emergency with JD, I don’t want to be stuck waiting for a bus) and of course, not really drinking because I have to drive home, alone. My NYC friends have their careers, friends and boyfriends in NYC, so I understand why they can’t just drop everything and come to NJ to see me, too. It’s a sucky situation and I hope that I can reconnect with the girls who saw me through my pregnancy back in 2007. It's funny, because I don't really miss living in NYC, but I do miss my friends and drinking wine around little tables in cafes in Nolita. To kick off my resolution of spending more time with friends, I invited a few over last night.