I had one of my killer day-trips to LA yesterday. The trips last from 6 AM (an early flight) till sometime around midnight, when normally, I slip my key into my front door and stagger, saggy kneed and bleary like a drunken old man, into my bed.

Most normal business women would stay the night in LA, of course, it’s a two hour flight from here and it’s semi absurd to pack in four meetings and traffic in one day. But for me, it’s necessary. I need to get home for my son. Bonus: it saves my company hotel fees! And, it provides Grandparents with a little extra Nolan time.

It normally kills me dead, trashes my body and messes with my sleep patterns. But last night, though I arrived home from the airport at around 1:00, I slept like a baby and felt fine all day today. And I think it’s because, after nearly two dozen trips this year, I am starting to get organized on the business trip front. It’s about time, I know.

Here are my top 5 trips for a smooth, frazzle-free business trip.

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This past weekend, I lined up a play date for Nolan with an adorably chubby-cheeked three-year-old from his daycare. I was actually really looking forward to it: I knew Marco’s Mom was an advertising sales executive too, and I thought we’d have lots in common. In my neighborhood, full-time working Moms are rare, and it was sweet relief to chat about the impossibility of steady work/life balance with a woman who understood.

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I arrived home from four nights in San Francisco, bedraggled and more than slightly crotchety. The flight had been delayed, the man next to me had some serious garlic breath, and I somehow lost an awesome little organic shirt I’d bought as a gift for my son. It was the longest stretch of time I’d ever been away from my son.

My Mom had sent me little updates, of course, as she always does. She titles them “Dear Sweetpea” and provides little details about the toasted tomato sandwiches she and Nolan ate for lunch, how he thrilled to touch a white jellyfish at the beach near the house. She tells me he is mostly happy and just gets a little teary at night, when he asks how many sleeps till I come home. I had a fantastic time at the BlogHer Conference - professionally and personally - but my heart was left in the hands of a little boy searching for skittering crabs under barnacled rocks and I couldn’t wait to get home.

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I sprinted up to the United Airlines counter, passport and boarding pass soaked with sweat in my left hand, one high heel wedge sticking haphazardly out of my oversized purse. I lost my grip on my laptop bag and twisted my ankle a little on the freshly washed lemon-vinegar floors of the late evening airport and when I screeched to a bedraggled halt in front of the coiffed man at the counter, he looked thoroughly unimpressed.

I looked at my boarding pass: 8:20 boarding for an 8:55 PM flight. We both looked at his large silver watch: 8:42 PM.

“Oh, man, I missed it, didn’t I?” I was aware that I looked like I’d just rolled out of a filthy livestock bus, with all the running hysterically through the noxious fumes and consuming fury of LAX, and I didn’t even try to charm him.

He looked to the attendant to his right and frowned.

“Ms. Darguzas?”

“Yes!” There was hope.

“Next flight leaves tomorrow morning at 9:30 AM. You’ll have to get a hotel.”

I slumped against the counter, letting my head rest on the cool marble. My Mom had arrived at my house at 5 AM that morning, I had been on a 6:30 flight and I’d finished four business meetings. And then been steamrolled by LA traffic before being punched in the face by the Red Tape at the car rental place. I knew my brother was looking after my son, but even on the flight I was supposed to be on, I wouldn’t have been back home till after midnight. Tomorrow was too late. My son expected me to be there when he woke up. Not to mention what staying the night in LA would do to my work load the next day.

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It’s 4:37 AM and the streets are pitch black, the birds silent and the house completely still. I’ve blow dried my hair and guzzled my third cup of coffee, vainly hoping that the caffeine will shoot up into my face and do something about those godforsaken black bags, hanging limply underneath my eyes like old-lady stockings.

At 4:47 AM, there is a quiet, purposeful knock at the front door and I tiptoe down in my bare feet to get it. My Mom stands there, immaculately coiffed as always. The fact that she only got three hours sleep is only evident underneath her eyes: her sacks match mine.

“Hi. Thank you, Mom,” I say, and I am wracked with guilt again, as always.”He went to bed late, so hopefully he’ll sleep in till at least six — I put some pillows on the couch and the coffee’s on. Can you rest?”

I have my laptop, my business cards, my small box of schwag for potential customers.  I slip on my Serious Business heels and slip my trusty black ballet flats in my purse and check one last time for my passport.

“We’ll be good,”my mom insists,”He’s a joy, don’t worry, I’ll email you and let you know how our day goes.  You’ll have your Blackberry?”

I nod and slip out the door into the silent almost-morning, and watch as my Mom sits in front of the TV.  She won’t sleep, I know.

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My business meeting checklist:

• Macbook (remember projector adapter and charger in case the laptop starts to fade mid-presentation)
• Blackberry (remember to sync with calendar before getting on the plane; I’ll undoubtedly need the phone number of the media buyer of the second meeting or to triple-check the time of my fourth meeting)
• A pair of flats in case I find myself lost in heels (San Francisco is hilly)
• My engagement ring

One of these things is not like the other, of course, and it comes in the form of a still-sparkly solitaire that was worn for a painfully short period of time.

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When I moved out of the house I shared with my son’s father, I took two things: a cherry wood desk and a faded brown couch. I didn’t want the pots and pans and bed sheets, the reminders of shared spaghetti dinners and intertwined nights as a cohesive family unit.

I needed to start fresh: to use my limited funds and my vast imagination to build a new abode for my smaller family unit: a home that was child-friendly and tranquil. I needed a room of my own, separate from the memories that were still so fresh and raw.

I went to second-hand shops and examined floor model armchairs: under-the-chair rips and chipped wood could be easily replaced and a little creativity could make that old hassock look new. As I built my Single Mama home, I kept thinking of a conversation I’d had with a good friend who’d recently become a single Mom herself. She had two young boys, a career in telecom, and a relatively amicable divorce.

“I don’t know how you do it,”I’d said, in a tone twinged with admiration and sympathy, a small thread of thank god you’re not me.

“I just do it,”she said,”I don’t think about it. You take what life throws at you and you weave it into something doable. When there’s no option, you’re forced to take the best way, because there is no other. ”

Those words have stuck with me. I’m often asked how I manage to pay the bills, care for my son, thrive in a career (truthfully: I work two demanding jobs at all times, sometimes three), clean the toilet and brush my hair. I reply that I don’t sleep much, and that’s very true. But what the uninitiated don’t know about single Motherhood is that there is also a very glossy silver lining.

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I had arranged my overnight business trip to LA to coincide with my son’s visit with his Dad, so I could meet with clients and host lunch meetings without feeling that lurking, creeping business Mom’s guilt: get back to the child or he will be messed up for life.

I had packed his snacks, his Hot Wheels, his favorite books and rolled his tiny jeans into cinnamon bun curls in his custom luggage. I had wrapped his hand in mine on the ferry to go see his Daddy, explaining that I would see him in just a few days. And oh, look, sweetie, there’s a whale! And Mommy will miss you, and see you in just a little while.

By the time I dropped him off and took the ferry back and staggered in my front door, it was close to midnight. So I glanced balefully at my pyjamas, strewn at the foot of my bed, and did what I always do: sat at my computer to write, to propose, to sell: to squeeze my brain into emails and strategies with the knowledge that my career will provide everything my son needs. When I was done with my inbox, the sun was a dim pink light, slicing through the trees. It was time to get to the airport.

I had some time in LA between client meetings, and I pulled my rental car into a shaded Starbuck’s lot, fighting the urge to recline my seat and close my eyes for a few minutes. Business trips as a single Mom, for me, are a tangled concoction of elation, focus, guilt, fatigue, and pride that I am somehow juggling this, making it happen. And I want to keep getting better at it.

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