Anne M. Plant is a recent widow with two young daughters, 13 and 8, who traded their E! entourage lifestyle in Los Angeles for stability and structure in a provincial town on the Virginian peninsula. Now here's the true unfolding story of how Anne's sister and Army officer brother-in-law opened up their home. They have three children of their own; a girl, 13, a boy who's 10 and Baby Binkles, who is one. Taking in Anne and her two makes eight! The melding together of these two families is Operation Brady Bunch and it is high adventure.

Wise old Solomon wrote, "Beautiful women obtain wealth and violent men get rich." We all know exactly how each sex maximizes their "talents" and what was true almost 3,000 years ago, remains true today. Beauty may acquire wealth and it may also attract love, but neither love nor money is a guarantor of everlasting happiness or security. Destiny is indifferent to such buffers. I learned that the day my husband died. The nourishing goodness we sowed together in blood, sweat and tears would no longer be reaped. With him, life as we built it together, ended. Now, for the sake of my two daughters as well as myself, I've made a new life's resolution. I will till fresh soil, preparing a terra firma, such as I can, for us to live upon. This will require booty as well as brains.

Famed psychologist, Abraham Maslow, developed a hierarchy of human needs. At the very base is food and water. This is followed immediately by security. As dreamy as it might seem, you cannot count on a man to provide security. After all, they are only human and even the noblest die. So, you'd better have a contingency plan. Creating security involves brain power. Fortunately I had remained in the work force outside the home. My time and my brain had been fully engaged in product development in a boutique firm where creativity flourished and deadlines could demand your all. Unfortunately with no back up at home anymore, I'm the only parent left on the planet and I need to be available for my daughters. Deadlines wait for no one. I need a flexible career where I can control my own destiny and projects don't fail because I will choose my children first. I now need to work smarter, not harder.

My brain development strategy includes earning my master's degree. After two years of study I will graduate as a licensed marriage and family therapist. I figure I have already completed some on-the-job-training in childbirth, toddlers, teenagers, marriage and death. Classes begin at the end of this month and I am more than a little anxious to be competing against smart 22-year-olds with no responsibilities other than to ferret out the cheapest pizza joint and practice safe sex. Compounding my anxiety are the hours and hours of hounding I administered to my 13-year-old daughter in an effort to bring home the "A." Now I had better deliver the grades myself. Building brain power is my strategy for securing resources.

The next basic need in Maslow's triangle is love. Brains are of little value in attracting love. While I am interested in men with big brains, they are interested in women with little booties. They do not evaluate a women based upon her ability to secure resources. They seek other assets. I really wish this wasn't so, but I know too many very bright men who fell for dimmer bulbs and theirs is a happy union. Intelligence just isn't the trigger for most men. My brother-in-law, Uncle Foxy, would indignantly interject here. He would say, "You have to at least be able to talk to her." I would consider him the redeemer, but he is only parroting a lifesaving warning he received while dating some bimbo before he married my sister. So, my new life's resolution tackles cellulite as well as cerebrum.

I have begun exercising and it is quite adventurous. My new routine involves a morning jog from the pool after I drop the kids off for swim practice. On the first day of jogging I begin to soak my shirt with perspiration. I get a real boost out of the thought that I look like a Bally's Total Fitness Gym model, all hot and wet from working out, although the real cause is the damn humidity! Three quarters of a mile down the road, I am well into my runners high, light headed from fantasies, oxygen debt and fluid loss. From the periphery, my subconscious mental scan notes a small black strip to the right and enters the information as "a radial strip from a tire alongside the highway." However, my friend-or-foe filter kicks back this initial identification with a yellow warning signal. That's not a piece of tire -- that's a snake! It is an all black snake which, to quell the panic, I tell myself is an ordinary garden variety. I speed up my 15 minute mile pace to 13 and make a mental note to consider jogging with a bite kit.

The next time I go jogging I do not bring the kit, but I do don a tight white tank top appropriate for the African-like summer steam we have here in Virginia. As on the previous day, sultry glistening moisture soon beads upon my skin, only this time it isn't from the humidity. It is because of a sudden jungle downpour. I do not look like a well-oiled goddess from a gym ad, I look more like a Dove Real Beauty model, perhaps clean and healthy, but definitely not hard nor "hot". The rain continues and I cannot. I am drenched as I walk the remainder of my route. By the time I reach the pool, my white shirt is completely soaked as is my white bra. It's one thing to appear with your headlights on, but another to arrive in living color. As far as first impressions might go, I went from the snob from LA to the slut of VA in a simple turn of inclement weather.

Since the start of my new life's resolution to improve my booty and my brains, I've made some progress. While exercising I've learned to stay cool and covered and I can sometimes go three times the original distance I couldn't before complete. School has yet to begin, so there are no grades to report. It's a long journey before my cellulite and cerebral goals have been met -- and even when they are achieved, there will be more work ahead. I had a good life with Mr. Plant and it required hard work on both our parts. I will settle for nothing less than what I had and I dare to hope for more. My daughters and I will need a man who's interested in more than how I look in a thong and I will need to develop a career that allows for me to save for retirement. Love and money, these are the challenges we all face; every woman and every man. We must decide where to put our effort, where the lasting value lies. The question is how to fully achieve on both fronts and not to fall in the trap of either. I'm too experienced to think we can live on love and, likewise, too experienced to live for money.