Work From Home Couple

My wife’s put in an enormous amount of time working on the costumes for a musical production of A Christmas Carol being put on by a local community theater. Last night, at last, was opening night.

Here’s what my wife has had to tackle for this play: The cast includes 30 actors, many of whom are young children. It also includes duplicates of many parts. You can’t expect the same 7-year-old to play Tiny Tim every night. This means fitting costumes so they fit one Tiny Tim who’s five inches taller than the next.

So it’s been a lot of work. Still, my wife has reached the finish line.

But then, during opening night, the director complained to my wife that she wasn’t fond of all the caroler’s hats. To my wife, it was a slap in the face. Here she’d put in countless hours arranging costumes, altering them to fit every cast member and hunting down old-style gloves, hats and scarves. She even spray painted several ghost costumes so that they’d glow in the dark. She’s been at late-night rehearsals every night for the last two weeks. And the director is complaining about a couple of hats for a couple of extremely minor characters?

That’s the problem with too many bosses: They find the one thing they don’t like and then focus on that.

If you’re a boss, take heed of this: While it’s fair to offer constructive criticism, don’t forget the praise every once in a while. Don’t forget to recognize that your employees are working hard, often for very little reward.

No wonder no one cares about Bosses’ Day.

I used to love the Chicago Tribune, my hometown newspaper. But the powers that be at the proud, old paper have redesigned the thing. Now the paper reads like USA Today: lots of graphs, short stories and dumbed-down news.

I was reminded of this when I opened the paper this morning to be greeted by a big front-page story on the challenges parents are having telling their children that they won’t be getting quite as many Christmas presents this year because of the rough economy. Parents, it seems, can’t spend as much on their kids this year as they’ve been able to when the economy’s been more robust.

OK, maybe I’m a bit heartless. But this is a front-page story? This is big news? Kids have been spoiled for years on Christmas. This one time they might not get every single present they want? I’m sorry, but this story doesn’t exactly turn on the waterworks for me.

Maybe these parents need to remind themselves and their children that there are people suffering from very real problems this holiday season. Many don’t have enough to eat. Many have lost their jobs. Some are on the verge of losing their homes. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I don’t mean to be a killjoy. I do like Christmas. And like any parent, I love to give my sons their favorite gifts on Christmas morning. But my sons also won’t be crushed if they don’t get the exact present they want. It’s time we all grew up a bit.

When you and your spouse both work from home, there’s no such thing as a true holiday. It’s one of the drawbacks of working from your house.

We will be celebrating Thanksgiving today, of course. The plan is to drive down to my parents. We’ll be returning with an extra kid, though only temporarily. My niece will be spending a few days with us over the holiday weekend. We’ll be making homemade lollipops, watching our town’s holiday parade, playing games and basically just hanging out.

But in between all this, we will be working. My deadlines don’t change just because Thanksgiving gets in the way. A Nov. 28 deadline is still a Nov. 28 deadline, turkey feast or not. And the play that my wife is costuming opens the day after Thanksgiving. She still has last-minute alterations to do. Not to mention that she has to find three carolers hats that look like they actually came from the days when Ebenezeer Scrooge was running around shouting “Humbug!”

So we’ll enjoy our holiday. But it won’t be a true vacation from work. The funny thing is, employers worry so much about their employees who work from home. Will they goof off more than those in the office? But the opposite is true. When you work from home, it’s so tempting to plop down in front of that computer to spit out one more paragraph or one more report. When you’re an office worker and you’re out of the office, you’re much more likely to take a true break from work.

We suffered a death in the family today. After two years of battling cancer, one of the truly nice guys, my brother’s father-in-law, passed away today.

I’d gotten to know this man only a bit during the last three years. But he was always brave, always ready with a quip and always quick to smile, even as his cancer grew worse and worse.

My sister-in-law’s family will bury him this weekend, after the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s a terrible way to spend the holiday. Fortunately, the family members had made their peace, and were prepared, as much as you can be, for the sad day.

It’s hard to stay motivated when someone you care about dies. Even if that person isn’t a close relation, it feels somehow fake to work. Does something as final and powerful as death expose how truly inconsequential most of what we do at work is?

That may be a depressing thought, but it’s a hard one to avoid. I write a lot of stories for magazines and newspapers that I know have little to no impact on anyone’s lives. They’re there to fill up the space around the ads. This usually doesn’t bother me until something truly important — like the passing of a good man — occurs.

But the bills do need to be paid, so work will progress. I suppose that’s how it happens with all of us: We grieve, we reflect and we get back to our lives. And work, briefly exposed as being rather hollow, becomes important again.

My family and I were driving down the highway last week when we saw a billboard advertising the Enchanted Forest at Menards. The sign called this a holiday tradition. Later, on the radio, we heard one of those amazingly shrill Menards ads. It mentioned the Enchanted Forest, too, and, again, referred to it as a holiday tradition.

The Enchanted Forest, from what I can tell, is basically several rows of decorated Christmas trees. And trundling off to Menards has apparently become a beloved holiday tradition. This must have happened when I wasn’t paying attention, because I don’t ever remember suggesting to my wife that we spend Christmas Eve strolling through our local Menards.

In fact, I would rather stroll through Hell than take a walk through Menards. I know, soon as I enter a Menards — or a Home Depot or Lowe’s — that I’m going to be spending way too much money on something that I’m going to hate and that I’m not going to be good at.

I’m not handy. At all. My toolbox should contain one tool: The phone book. That way, when something breaks down I can quickly call the plumber, electrician or handyman.

So, this Enchanted Forest. Has anyone ever planned a trip the hardware store as a family outing? And if you have, has your family forgiven you?

The Christmas season gets ridiculous rather fast. Because I work from home, there’s little escape from it. Now that Menard’s has replaced caroling, eggnog and trimming the tree as beloved holiday traditions, I just may work from my bed until Dec. 26.

I’m fairly anal about my writing schedule. I like to do the same things at the same time day after day after day. I find that it helps keep me on track, and allows me to meet all my deadlines.

Unfortunately, the outside world sometimes interferes.

Take today. My wife will be gone most of the day in Chicago, picking up costumes for the play she is costuming this holiday season. At the same time, our school district decided that our children would benefit from an entire week off for the Thanksgiving holiday. That means both kids are our home today.

Then there’s our dog. He spent the weekend at his sitters while we traveled to Michigan for an early Thanksgiving celebration. I was supposed to pick up him at 10 a.m. Unfortunately, our sitter called and asked if we could push that back to noon.

That may not seem like a big deal to you normal folks. But for someone as schedule-obsessed as I am, it is. And as soon as I get the dog home, it’s time to run off to the school for today’s scheduled parent-teacher conference.

When you work from home, you get days like these, days where no one cares about your schedule. It’s just one day, and I will survive it. But still … I keep looking at those “to do”s on my agenda. Not enough of them are disappearing.

My wife and I heard the world’s worst Christmas song while driving to my in-laws for an early Thanksgiving dinner, “Christmas with a Capital ‘C’.” I must say, the song was so bad my ears almost fell off.

Apparently, the song’s been around for a while. It’s by a group called Go Fish, who, I guess, put out music for kids. This song, though, appeared aimed squarely at all the adult goofs who think there really is a war on Christmas. (Personally, I think we have more than enough real wars going on to waste time inventing false ones.)

You can read more about the Go Fish guys here.

Their Christmas song, though, rails against those people who have the nerve to actually say Happy Holidays this time of year. You know the kind, the kind of person who’s actually smart enough to realize that not everyone celebrates Christmas, that some people are actually marking other holidays this time of year. For some reason, this really bugs a lot of people.

There are snippets from a sermon near the end of the song. The person preaching mentions that no one says Happy Holidays during February, which, like December, does have more than one holiday. Of course, this line of logic ignores the fact that no one ever says “Happy Lincoln’s Birthday.” It also ignores the fact that Lincoln’s Birthday, Groundhog Day and Valentine’s Day aren’t religious holidays.

As much as the “Merry Christmas” police don’t want to admit it, we live in a country where not everyone believes that Jesus is God’s son. A lot of people in this country don’t even believe there is such a thing as God.

Maybe we should require shoppers to tell their cashiers what holiday they are celebrating. Then, the cashier can say “Happy Kwanzaa,” or whatever holiday is the shoppers’ personal favorite. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s easiest to just say “Happy Holidays” to cover all of the holidays.

Today was my 9-year-old son’s last day of school for nine whole days. Now, I’m not complaining. I like having my son home. He’s a great help when we need someone to keep on eye on our 14-month-old for a minute or two. And my 9-year-old is really a pleasure to be around. I’m biased, of course, but he’s one funny, sweet guy.

But … I don’t ever remember getting an entire week off of school for Thanksgiving break. I do remember getting Thanksgiving itself off, of course, and then Friday and the weekend. That’s four days, a big difference from the nine days of freedom my son is starting to enjoy this morning.

My son’s funny: He does well in school, and he has plenty of buddies in his classroom, but he’d much rather do just about anything but go to school. (He’s not a big fan of going to church whenever we visit his one grandmother, but that’s a different post.) Then when he tells me what he actually did on any given day in school — computers, floor hockey games, puzzles, spelling bees, science experiments — I’m amazed that anyone could find that boring. I want to go to his school.

Thanksgiving break will put a crimp in the work schedules of myself and my wife, of course. We’ll still get some work done. But with both kids home, I always feel like a schmuck if I spend too much time chained to my computer. Being a dad is the most important job I have, so I’ll break out the playing cards, the board games and, weather permitting, the football and have some fun this week. I’ll work, too, just at odd hours, early in the morning, late in the evening. That’s another benefit of working from home. You’re flexible enough to spend time with your kids and still get your work done.

You just have to give up on sleep.

One of my main work-from-home jobs (well, four days of the week, at least) involves editing a trade magazine that covers commercial real estate. It’s a drag, to be honest. And these days, it’s even more of a burden because everyone in the commercial real estate industry is struggling. As bad as it is for residential real estate agents, that’s how bad it’s becoming for commercial real estate brokers.

The one part of the commercial industry that’s really struggling is retail. Seems that no one wants to fill those strip malls with mattress shops, mobile phone stores or submarine sandwich huts anymore. Instead, the strip malls are attracting a lot of “For Lease” signs.

It’s hard to feel too broken up about this. Personally, I’m awfully tired of submarine sandwich, mattress and cell phone shops, especially because I seem to drive past at least one of them every two blocks in the Chicago suburb in which I live.

It’s the same thing if you travel to other mid- to large-size cities across the country. Everyone has the same shops. If there’s a Target, you can bet there’s a Kohls nearby. If there’s a Home Depot, you can bet that a Lowe’s isn’t too far away.

Why, why, why most every single city have the same exact retailers? If I plopped you down on the suburban edges of Cleveland, you’d have no idea you weren’t in Indianapolis or Minneapolis or Milwaukee.

Now, the downtowns of these cities are a different story. Here you can still find variety. But once you leave the downtown hub? You might as well be in Anywhere, USA.

To me, this is part of the reason why retailers today are struggling. We’re burnt out of seeing a Red Lobster in every city we go to. We’re tired of running into Denny’s after Denny’s after Denny’s.

Let’s have some originality back. Let’s seek out the homegrown options, the local joints and the places that don’t have giant “M”s plastered all over them.

Sometimes you need a break from work. Lately, those breaks have been harder to come by in our house. I’m writing more stories than ever — thanks to lower-paying publications and Web sites — to make my monthly income goals. My wife is down to the last few days before all of the costumes she designed for our local theater’s presentation of A Christmas Carol are due.

So everyone’s been a little busy lately.

But this afternoon, everyone sort of crashed. We all plopped on the couch and watched The Incredible Shrinking Man on DVD. My 9-year-old son loved it. My 14-month-old son had a great time playing with blocks and making me read Goodnight Moon about 30 times during the film.

If you’ve never seen the movie, let me tell you, you’re missing out. The 1957 film, as its name suggests, focuses on a man who can’t stop shrinking. Eventually, he shrinks enough so that the lovable house cat, not to mention a spider in the basement, become real threats. The ending is a bit philosophical, too, giving us all something to think about. Trust me. Rent it from Netflix. You’ll be glad you did.

Anyway, watching the movie provided a much-needed respite from sitting in front of the computer and tracking down sources. My wife needed the break, too.

There is a lesson here. Too often, when we work from home, we never stop working. It’s too easy to write one more paragraph, to hem one more dress. That’s the risk where there is no real boundary between home and office. Sometimes you have to force yourself to stop working.

Trust me, the break will do you good.