It’s a Tuesday and an unexpected day at home due to an early power outage. My schoolteacher husband is here along with my kids, so “working” from home is, well, a challenge.

I rouse my family for lunch and then declare it tidy-time, i.e. pick-up-your-dirty-socks time, and I volunteer to clean the kitchen. By the time I’m finishing, I feel some pressure to get back to “work”—Christmas is coming, after all.

“All done,” I declare to myself with satisfaction, until my daughter wanders through the room. [Read more…]