Working from home

Natalie has issues with me working for a living. Like most kids her age, she wishes daddy could be home all the time. Understandable, though sometimes I think she wants a butler more than a father figure. But that's another blog entry.

Recently my wife and I have begun making plans to build an addition to our home. We decided that, among other things, a separate room to serve as an office was a necessity. Given that I had to remove a Fisher-Price Little People Dragon, five miscellaneous Mega-Blocs, and a naked Barbie doll from my desk before I could get to the keyboard and start writing, I'm sure you could understand. Of course, all but the Barbie gets tossed in the toy pile. She stays by the desk lamp.

So once Natalie heard we were adding an office, natalie was very excited. "You mean daddy won't have to go to work any more?" she was devastated when we told her that wouldn't be the case.

A few weeks back, I helped a new employee move into an apartment in the area. when I told Natalie that he would be working for me, she said, "Great, he can do the work so you don't have to go anymore!" Again I started to tell her that this wasn't the...wait a minute, maybe she's on to something....

Recently her desire to have more of me around manifested itself in a different way. She decided to hang out a shingle for herself. Anyone who's been in our home recently knows that, in the living room, we have two crappy couches in an L-shape. At the corner of the L is a small corner table. Natalie has turned that table into her "office." We discovered this when we started noticing certain regular office supplies missing. Post-Its, the stapler, stamps, tape, the phone...all these things mysteriously disappearing. One day we discovered all these items neatly lined up on this end table, with her Winnie-The-Pooh chair tucked in and ready for the next day of work. Inside the cigar humidor (a box that I use to hold remotes) was almost a full ream of paper, with random scribbles on it representing her note-taking for the day.

Gee, maybe I need to take some time off?