After six years working full time outside the home, I started working part time from home in the summer of 2008. I spent the other half the week developing marketing campaigns for a very small property management company downtown. When I went on maternity leave, they went out of business. Instead [...]]]>

After six years working full time outside the home, I started working part time from home in the summer of 2008. I spent the other half the week developing marketing campaigns for a very small property management company downtown. When I went on maternity leave, they went out of business. Instead of looking for another part time job, I started working full time from home.

My setup:

I started out with a little bill-paying desk from Wal-Mart. It didn’t cut it for the amount of random shit I apparently need all around me in order to work and pay bills and keep the kid’s stuff organized in one space. When Ikea finally opened I got one of their long plain desks (they’re a great deal, but the laminate is super cheap) and a wire set of drawers. I also have a little shelf for my printer. I picked it up at a garage sale for two dollars.

I work on a MacBook Pro, circa 2006. I bought it used from an employer. His name (the MacBook, not my employer) is Enrique, and he was a tentacle monster in a former life. (In case you were curious.) He’s on his last legs and really wishes I’d never installed Snow Leopard. I also have an external monitor. It makes it easier to work in Photoshop and much easier to work on articles. (I leave my references open on one monitor while I type on the other.)

1. The cork board.  Mostly full of pictures, some jewelry, and my son’s school calender.
2. Water cup.  Stupidly near my laptop.  I need to stop doing that.
3. Enrique.
4. My external monitor and a necklace I love.
5. Quapus Quapus Space, the murderous dwarf frog.
6. The Out of Sync Child and You’re Not the Boss of Me and Healthy Child, Healthy World.
7. Why the hell do I have this stupid Scrabble box on my desk?  My son begged me to bring it home from my mom’s and then left it here and here it stays.  Apparently.
8. School paperwork, a headband I took off because it was hurting my head, UP on DVD, a dirty fork, Soulless by Gail Carriger, a pen, another necklace, my alarm system bill, my camera cable and a Mickey Mouse plate that formerly held bagels.
9. My phone and the keyboard tray I installed all by myself!  You can also kind of see my new wireless keyboard.  It is wee and sexy and wonderful.

I work in front of a window the faces our driveway and front stoop. My desk is in the “master bedroom,” but we use it as a den/office because it used to be the garage and we can watch TV or play Rockband or whatever without waking the kids up at night. It has a small room attached to it that George uses for an office. It’s his man cave.

The window is awesome. When I worked in Tampa, I could almost see out a window if I stood up and leaned over my monitor and looked into another employee’s office. We were on the eighth floor and I hated not being able to enjoy the view or know if it was raining or not. People were cutthroat about windows and views and privacy. The situation sucked. Here in my home office, I get the window seat. Two years later, I still don’t take it for granted. Especially when a storm approaches and I can sit back and breathe, just watching the dark clouds start to tower on the horizon.

My routine:

Now that school has started, I leave the house with both boys at 8:30. I drop Chipmunk off at preschool and then drive Moose over to my mom’s. She brings them both home at 2:00. Moose naps for about two hours and Chipmunk chills out with a snack and Discovery Kids while I wrap up my work day. The hardest part of this schedule is that I often hit my stride around 4 pm right when the baby wakes up and it’s time to figure out dinner. I have a hard time unplugging and often end up obsessively checking my email on my phone or running back into my office every five minutes until George gets home from work at either 6:30 or 7:45 depending on the day.

Having to head to school keeps me from wearing my pajamas all day. Bonus! Staying in my PJ’s is only liberating like 3% of the time. The rest of the time it makes me feel lazy and socially isolated.

My work:

My actual work routine varies day to day, but usually involves a mix of writing, some design work and a little blogging. Actually sometimes way too much blogging and time on Twitter. It’s easy for me to get distracted by socializing and I have a tendency to procrastinate real work by writing a blog post. Once in a while I have conference calls or consulting calls. I try to schedule these for times when the boys are definitely out of the house.

My scattered work routine can be overwhelming sometimes, but I love being able to change directions depending on my mood. I have trouble writing when I’m tired or I have a headache, but I can almost always jump into a design project. I get bored with tedious code and design stuff sometimes, but I can switch gears and work on a writing project. Almost all of my paid writing work is marketing and SEO related. Not fun. But right now I have a couple of ghostwriting projects and they’re actually really engaging.

This year, I’d like to become more organized as far as tracking my own productivity and ensuring that I spend more time on billable work and less time being a spider monkey on the Internet.

© Mommy Melee, 2010. | Permalink | One comment |
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A small church in Gainesville is planning to burn the Quran on 9/11. You can read about it here if you haven’t already seen it on the news.

I lived in Gainesville for six years. I consider them the most formative six years of my life. [...]]]> I don’t get political here often. Or ever.

A small church in Gainesville is planning to burn the Quran on 9/11. You can read about it here if you haven’t already seen it on the news.

I lived in Gainesville for six years. I consider them the most formative six years of my life. I met my husband there. I went to school. I rented my first apartment, lost my virginity, met most of my best friends, got my first job, wrote poetry, swam naked in the Santa Fe River. It was great to be a Florida Gator.

Gainesville is kind of in the middle of nowhere. It’s surrounded by forests and swamps and farms and lots and lots of rural places that most Floridians never visit. But the city itself is electric. A current runs through it, a political current, a unified sense of change, progression, a current of grief and of hope.  Protests are frequent.  It’s impossible to walk across the university campus without stepping over a message in colorful chalk or hearing the bellowing voice of a campus preacher.

It’s impossible not to react to the kind of hate that inspires an act as reckless and disrespectful as the burning of a holy book. Last month, Karen Walrond gathered images of peace and photobombed the church with a simple package full of love.

The Dove World Outreach Center has taken their messages digital. You know, to Twitter. Where a lot of us spend a significant portion of time arguing over reality show spoilers and how to raise kids and just about anything you can possibly imagine arguing over.

I propose this: Instead of giving in to the instinct to pop off some angry message in 140 characters or less. Instead of inviting your friends and followers to attack and protest the church’s Twitter account, just breathe.

And send them some love. Some peace. Some tolerance. Some joy. Something to balance the ugliness, anything to push something positive into the fray. Find a picture that makes you smile, that comforts you, that illustrates love.

Love burns brighter.

Want to add to the message? Reply with @iiotd with a photo and the hashtag #loveburnsbrighter.

© Mommy Melee, 2010. | Permalink | 36 comments |
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People tell you your kids will be different, but it’s impossible to understand that until you’re living it.  They look similar.  They’re clearly siblings.  But beyond that, it’s hard to imagine they [...]]]>
My Moose is 22-month-old or so now.  He’s the age Chipmunk was when I got pregnant.  I find this absolutely mind-boggling.

People tell you your kids will be different, but it’s impossible to understand that until you’re living it.  They look similar.  They’re clearly siblings.  But beyond that, it’s hard to imagine they came from the same set of parents.  This is the coolest thing ever, as far as I’m concerned.  I feel like I get to experience more as a parent.  Two entirely different types of tantrums even!  (No but seriously, they’re both so entertaining and wonderful to me in different ways.)

It’s hard not to describe Moose as a set of contrasting qualities.  Reckless, not cautious.  Plays imaginatively, instead of with structure.  Outgoing, not shy.

And that isn’t fair.  He’s simply his own person.  A small, willful little person who grabs you by the hand and says “COME ON!” and makes you do his bidding.  And you can’t help it because the curls, oh man the curls.

Yesterday my landlord asked (and I am not joking), “Are his curls natural?”

I answered, “Yeah!” Before it sunk in how batshit crazy that question was.  Then my landlord’s wife shook her head and said, “He really should have been a girl.”

(I love my landlords but man they are funny.)

Some Moose facts:

• He knows all his letters.  Don’t ask me how. I’m guessing it’s from the Letter Factory LeapFrog DVD and from the LeapFrog toy we’ve had since 2006.  It’s some kind of mix of a DJ table and, I have no idea.  It’s covered with tiny letters.  He calls letters the “EEE EFF GEES!”
• He slaps his nuts when you change his diaper and says “Bah! Bah! Bah!” And no one can figure out why.
• He loves Woody, Dora, “annnnnnnd BOOTS!”, and Backpack.
• He says, “Ni Hao!”
• He climbs on everything, jumps on everything, and in general gives me heart attacks constantly.
• He loves milk and food.  As soon as he smells dinner cooking he starts saying “EAT! EAT! EAT!  PEEEEEEEESE.  YUMMA YUMMA.  EAT. EAT.  EAT. EAT. EAT.”  For as long as it takes to make dinner.  So you can blame the frozen dinners on him.
• He really likes yogurt.

I’m pretty sure he knows how funny he is too.

© Mommy Melee, 2010. | Permalink | 16 comments |
If you are reading this anywhere else, some douchenozzle has scraped my feed.