I was re-doing our budget for the umpteenth time the other night when I noticed that we spend more on gas right now than we do on food.

Once I stopped hyperventilating, I did the math again. And again. With gas hovering around $4 a gallon, my 80-mile round-trip commute costs me about $15 a day. My husband makes the same trip (at different times), which means that we pay about $150 a week just for gas for both of us to get to work. Our food budget, for our family of seven, is about $100 a week.

Insert expletive here.

I clip coupons, I buy in bulk, I cook from scratch, I only grocery shop for perishables and to replenish the pantry, I combine errands to save on gas. There has got to be another way to save gas and/or money (and/or my sanity).

Flextime. Telecommuting. Teleworking. The holy grails of the working mom, the mighty tools of work-life balance — now they’re fiscally and environmentally responsible, too! Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t change my name when I got married.

There are many reasons: I was in my 30s by the time I walked down the aisle, I already had a career in my own name, with a reputation and bylines and even a book. I owned my home and car and other things outright, and changing my name on all of those legal documents was a hassle.

But, most of all, I kept my name because it was my name — I was used to it, and replacing it with my husband’s made me feel like I was faking it, somehow. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been looking for advice, lately.

Summer is just around the corner, and that’s when my work-life juggle really ramps up. My body is telling me that I need more sleep (it lets me know by giving me lovely hints like a double ear infection and an inability to string three words together after midnight, which is usually one of my most-productive times of day — er, night). We’ve got some great things happening here at Work It, Mom!, and I want to spend plenty of time on them. My day job slows down in some ways — there’s rarely a ton of summertime news for a newspaper — but my department handles longer feature stories and summer is THE time for those. And our big kids are with us for nine or 10 weeks, so meals are bigger, groceries need to be purchased more frequently, and there are seven schedules to coordinate instead of the usual four.

But the advice that’s out there — especially advice for working moms — is so one-size-fits-all and obvious and, well, next to impossible for any working mom to actually do that I feel like it’s all a big joke, or maybe a spin-off of that old Monty Python sketch, “How to Rid the World of All Known Diseases”: Read the rest of this entry »

Bedtime is kind of my thing in our household. At first, it was because my husband worked nights and I was the “night-night parent” by default; now, I generally start the routine, hand off one freshly bathed small child to Daddy, and put the other small child to bed before making the rounds with the big three (who are old enough to get ready for bed on their own but still want — or, at least, allow — me to tuck them in and kiss them goodnight; they’ll be parents themselves before they understand how grateful I am for this).

Recently, after I’ve put our 3-year-old to bed and settled in with her for a cuddle, she’s been turning to me and saying, very seriously, “Mama. I can’t go to sleep right now. I have work to do.” Read the rest of this entry »

When I’ve got several articles to write and even more to edit and traffic was ridiculous and the baby is screaming and the big kids are arguing and dinner’s not ready yet and there’s a bill from the orthodontist waiting at home with more than two zeros before the decimal point, I look at the chaos and think, “Man, this might make for a good story.”

The thing about being a journalist is that you tend to be on the look out for story ideas all the time, everywhere. And when you do get around to writing them all up, not everything in your notebook ends up in your story. And then, once your editor has gotten a hold of it, you’ll find that not everything you put in your story ends up in the published version (I’m a newspaper editor in real life, so I can vouch for this — I do a lot of trimming). What are you supposed to do with all of those ideas that you don’t have time to work on yet? Read the rest of this entry »

My home office is tucked into a little alcove near our master bedroom, a gap between my closet and my husband’s, just wide enough for a small desk pushed up against the window. My dinosaur of a computer takes up most of the space under the desk (seriously, the computer is older than three out of our five children — my Palm Pilot has more memory), and my behemoth of a monitor eats up most of the desk top. When I need to scan or print something, I have to rearrange components and put the printer on the floor.

I used to have a proper home office, back when we first bought the house, before our youngest two were born. That room became the nursery. I moved my large desk into a corner of the guest room and took over most of the closet with my file cabinets and, um, crap; then we turned the guest room into our oldest daughter’s bedroom, and I downsized my workspace in order to cram it into that alcove.

I spend a couple or four hours there every night after the little kids are in bed — which is usually about two hours after I get home from my regular full-time job. My at-home nook is quiet, and the window is nice (plenty of natural, um, moonlight, I guess). I was pleased with it for a while — and then our big kids came up for an extended visit and there I was, upstairs, in solitary, shackled to my clunky desktop and my workload when I desperately wanted to be downstairs with them. Read the rest of this entry »

Even if you’re completely happy in your current job, it makes sense to keep your resume up to date. You never know when you might stumble upon your dream job — or, in this economy, have to deal with a nightmarish downsizing. Here are a few tips for readying your resume:

1.) Update your focus. When was the last time you looked at your own resume? Chances are, it’s tailored for the job you already have. Do you want to stay in the field you’re in right now, or do you have other skills you should highlight? Either way, make sure that your most-recent experience is at the top of the page.

2.) Make it email-friendly. Nowadays, companies don’t necessarily want to wait for the postal service. Paper is proper, of course, but make sure you have your resume ready in an easy-to-email format as well. It’s not hard to do: Eliminate the graphic elements that look so good in print and stick with plain text, in a clear font, and use 12-point type. (Also, some people shy away from opening attachments, so copy and paste the text into the body of your email.)

3.) Make it active. Instead of listing your responsibilities, list your achievements. Mention specific projects and goals that you met. As the Penelope Trunk points out on BrazenCareerist.com, “Anyone can do a job. Achievements show you did the job well.”

4.) Keep it short. Remember that you’re pitching an idea to a busy person, and that idea is “Hire me!” and that person is really, really busy. If a prospective employer has to turn the page to read the rest of your resume, chances are that he or she isn’t going to bother reading the rest of your resume. Keep it to a single page.

5.) Rethink your references. You don’t have to put your contacts on your resume — and you don’t even have to include “references on request” because, really, everyone assumes they are — but you should take the time to get in touch with your references and make sure they’re still willing to vouch for you. Do they prefer phone calls or emails? Do you have their correct titles and contact information? Is their input still relevant to the jobs you’re seeking?

We’re all part of the office grapevine, whether we participate or not. I work at a large newspaper and I’ve always felt that, if my co-workers couldn’t figure out what was going on around the office, they weren’t worth spit as reporters. Also: When you work for a newspaper, you tend to assume that everything is on the record. So, I try to be careful about what say and do.

Our kids are not as circumspect. Of course, we don’t really expect them to be. But we try to encourage them to be respectful and to treat others as they’d like to be treated themselves. Right?

And then there’s Gossip Report. Read the rest of this entry »

Until about a year ago, my husband and I worked opposite shifts and traded off with the kids in the middle of the day (usually in the parking lot of our company, where we both work, but sometimes at a nearby park). A lot of times I felt like I was going straight from one full-time job to another, since I was on my own with the kids until my husband got home around 3 a.m. Here are a few of the things I did to prepare myself for my “second shift” each day:

1.) Consider your commute your “me” time. This is harder when you have kids in the car, of course, but at least part of your commute can be all yours. Catch up on the news, listen to books on tape, learn a new language — or just turn off the tunes and enjoy the silence.

2.) Carry portable stress relief with you. Dot some soothing Peace of Mind (from Origin’s Sensory Therapy line) on your temples and feel the tension drain away. Stash a portable back massager in the car (or in your desk at work) to keep the stress from building up in your body; Life Fitness offers a lightweight, battery-operated one that you can strap around your back (you can find it at most CVS stores).

3.) Keep a snack in the car. I mean something healthy that can give you lasting energy — a fruit-and-nut mix, granola bars, an apple, a protein bar. Avoid energy drinks and anything high in refined sugars — you might enjoy a rush of energy for a little while, but the crash that comes afterward will just make your “second shift” more difficult.

4.) Change your clothes as soon as you get home. It’ll help you separate work from home, and may remind you to keep your office issues from creeping into your time with the kids.

5.) Have dinner already ready. Cook in advance and freeze an extra meal or two, or prep everything and have it ready to assemble when you get home after work. Your stress levels will drop dramatically if you don’t have to worry about what to cook for your ravenous crew the instant you get home.