Sure, hard work always pays off, as the saying goes. It just seems like sometimes it pays a lot less than it used to. When the work piles up and I can’t get it done during the work day, instead of automatically bringing it home with me I find myself calculating the dwindling dollars and cents of my hourly wage and deciding that I’m more than willing to do it on company time, for pay, but not at home, for free.

To be honest, I was a little reluctant to write that last sentence there. It just smacks of having a bad attitude, doesn’t it? I don’t mean it that way — I’m not trying to “stick it to the man” or anything. No… my point is that I’ve noticed that the more I’m willing to do for less, the more I’m expected to do for less. It’s a vicious cycle.

It also plays into a topic that Mir tackled at The Cornered Office a couple of years ago (on the post that first brought me to Work It, Mom!, as a matter of fact): “You deserve a decent wage for your work, and settling for less makes it harder for every working writer out there to get it.”

So, is it ever OK to work for free? In spite of my griping, and in spite of Mir’s great point, I have to say… yes. Sometimes, it is.

I recently took on a project that turned out to be a major time suck. It was voluntary, and I wasn’t getting paid, and it got complicated, but you know what? It was worth it, because it allowed me to give back to a community that I’ve wished I could do more for over the years. So… working for free is OK when it’s your way of donating something to a community or company you value.

I also think it’s OK if you’re being compensated in other ways — like directing traffic to your website or creating clips for your brand-new, I’m-still-getting-experience portfolio. Then it’s more like bartering; you might not be getting paid in money, but you’re still being compensated for your work.

I’m a journalist, and I know that writing and editing are strange beasts in the working world. So I’m curious… in your profession, whatever it is, do you ever work for free? Why or why not?

But not if I’ve magically transformed them into something else first.

Here are five tricks for using up all of those Halloween treats:

1.) Hot fudge sauce. Measure out two cups of nut-free and krispie-free chocolates from the stash and put them in a microwave-safe glass container, preferably something with a handle and a pouring spout, like a large Pyrex measuring cup. Add about 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Microwave the cream and chocolate at 80-percent power in 20 second bursts, or until the chocolate melts. Remove it (carefully!), stir (carefully!) and then pour it (carefully!) over ice cream — or, ideally, into several sanitized glass jelly jars, so you can give them away to someone else.

2.) Candy Pizza. Press your favorite cookie dough into a pie tin, then cover with a thick pool of melted chocolate candies. Top with whatever chocolate goodies you have left — Raisinets, Reeces Pieces, M&Ms, shattered Heath Bars, crumbled Butterfingers — drizzle with melted Milk Duds, dot with mini marshallows, and bake. Cut into wedges to serve.

3.) Surprise brownies. Chocolate and peanut butter are a perfect match; so is chocolate and mint. Whip up a batch of your favorite brownies, pour half the batter in the pan, and then scatter on a layer of whole peanut-butter cups or Peppermint Patties. Top with the remaining batter and bake.

4.) Fruity Popcorn Balls. OK, I haven’t made these — one of my kids is a fiend for all things fruity, so the Skittles and Starburst disappeared almost immediately. But if you have leftover chewy, fruit-flavored, taffy-like candies lying around, you can try this recipe from Cooks.com: In a saucepan, combine 1/4 cup of light corn syrup, 2 tablespoons water, and 8 ounces of candy fruit chews. Melt over low heat, stirring until smooth, then bring to a boil for five minutes. Cool slightly, pour over 8 cups of already-popped popcorn, spray your hands with non-stick spray, and shape the gooey mixture into balls. My teeth hurt just typing this.

5.) Hard candy “stained glass” cookies. Make (or buy) your favorite sugar cookie dough (or follow this recipe). Roll it out to 1/4-inch thick, and cut out shapes with floured cookie cutters. Trace a smaller version of each shape from each cookie, leaving a 3/4-inch border; cut out the smaller shape. Fill the hole with crushed hard candies — using one color per cookie will result in a neater treat. The candy will melt as the cookie bakes (cool completely before handling)

If all else fails, you can always send the stuff elsewhere. Halloween Candy Buy Back will pay $1 a pound for your kids candy; they ship the sweets to soldiers overseas. Go to halloweencandybuyback.com and plug in your zip code to see if a dentist in your area is participating in the program. You can also ship it directly to OperationGratitude.com by mailing it, no later than Dec. 5, to Operation Gratitude/California Army National Guard, 17330 Victory Blvd., Van Nuys, CA 91406, Attn: Charlie Othold.

What are you doing with your leftover Halloween candy this year?

Case in point: I needed to re-read a book that I’m reviewing, because I loved it but I read it so long ago that can’t figure out how to describe it in 500 words without completely giving away the plot. So what I did I do instead? Wrote a month’s worth of product reviews, cleaned out my work bag — twice – and sorted coupons. (Yes, Kathy Spencer inspired me, too!)

Another example: this very blog post. I should have written it last night, but I’ve been soloparenting while my husband is away and after I got home from work I hung out with my kids and fed them dinner and put them to bed and stumbled downstairs and looked at my computer and thought, “Um. Anything I type is not going to be coherent. It might not even contain actual words. Don’t I have a book to reread for that review?” 

Which meant that today, I was running out of items with which to procrastinate. If you’ve been procrastinating for a while, eventually you come to the big thing on your to-do list, the one you were trying to avoid to begin with. And there’s nothing left to do but tackle that item head-on.

This post is not that item. The thing I’m really trying to avoid is cleaning my house in advance of my youngest child’s 3rd birthday party, which is taking place this weekend. Which means that I’ve suddenly discovered a few other things I can get done before I can’t procrastinate about the cleaning any longer.

I have to admit, I don’t really see the point in the snark about this. For all I disagree with her politics, the former governor is super savvy when it comes to social networking. And smart women know the importance of social networking.

I’ve been trying to use Facebook solely for socializing, and LinkedIn solely for business, but I have to admit that it’s become really difficult to keep things separate. For one thing, the line between work and the rest of your life gets blurry when you’re friendly with your former colleagues. How can you refuse to ask your boss to be friends with you on Facebook when you’re Facebook friends with your former supervisor — who used to be his boss?

(I don’t use MySpace at all. If LinkedIn is to Facebook as your business card is to a scrap of paper with your name and phone number scrawled on it, then MySpace is akin to writing your nickname on someone’s arm with a magic marker. I don’t really know yet where Twitter falls on the networking spectrum, but I use it and I like it — for marketing, for meeting new contacts, for finding out what’s going on.)

Regardless of which site you choose to use for networking, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1.) Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want to be asked about — or held against you — in an interview.

2.) Toot your own horn. It’s not like a paper resume, where you’re encouraged to keep the information to a single page. Take the opportunity to detail as much as you can, and go as far back into the past as is relevant — you’re not limited to your most-current experiences. Keep the language professional, but feel free to add your awards, accolades, and additional skills — this is your chance to shine.

3.) Gather recommendations. On LinkedIn, recommendations are like those references you’re supposed to provide upon request — except that they’ve visible for all to see, all the time. On Facebook, create a fan page for your work, and ask your friends to join. You’d be surprised at how many people know — and like — what you do.

4.) If you have a professional blog, link to it. Think of it as a chance to show off your online portfolio. If you don’t have a professional blog, link to examples of your work instead. Linking to your current company’s website is fine, especially if it showcases some of your accomplishments. Linking to your family’s online photo album is not.

5.) Direct people to your LinkedIn profile or Facebook page. Don’t just use the default URL that came with your profile — change it to something easily recognizable, like your name, and use it along with your signature at the bottom of emails.

What social networking sites to you use and why?

The study by the UCL Institute of Child Heath (ICH) focused on the families of 12,500 5-year-olds; the same children took part in an earlier study which found that those with working mothers were more likely to be obese or overweight by the age of 3.

So, let me get this straight: The new study “discovered” that the same kids who were likely to be obese or overweight by the age of 3 were also less likely to lead healthy lives at age 5? And that it’s all mom’s fault for working outside the home?

Sorry, BBC and ICH. I’m calling foul on this one.

Among the findings:

• 5-year-olds whose mothers worked part-time or full-time were more likely to primarily consume sweetened drinks between meals.
• 5-year-olds with working mothers used their computers or watched television for at least two hours a day.
• Kids with working moms were more likely to be driven to school compared to the children of “stay at home” mothers who tended to walk or cycle.

Among the loopholes:

• Working outside of the home doesn’t automatically make you buy cookies and soda when you’re stocking the pantry; sounds like more of an education issue than an employment one to me. Also: These studies took place Great Britain, where the schools are notorious for serving nutritionally bankrupt food to students (check out chef Jamie Oliver’s efforts to change this). How is that the fault of working mothers?
• A Harvard Medical School study earlier this year found that while TV time isn’t beneficial for kids, it’s not necessarily harmful either. While spending tons of time in front of the tube isn’t good for anyone, what your kids are watching has much more of an impact than the fact that the TV is on. (As for the computer, there are plenty of great educational sites for kids out there.)
• For goodness sake, are moms really the only ones responsible for taking kids to school in the morning?

Professor Catherine Law, who led the new study, theorized that working moms may not have enough time to provide healthy foods or opportunities for physical activity, but insisted that the results of the study “do not imply that mothers should not work.” (No… the British Institute for Economic and Social Research took care of that with their 2003 study, which concluded that ”going back to work after the birth of a child can have a negative impact on a child’s development - unless you have lots of money.”) Instead, Law says, her study shows that there need to be more policies and programs to help support parents (which, presumably, mothers would be too busy to participate in because of all that detrimental working they insist on doing instead of being at home where they belong).

The ICH study did not look at fathers and their employment levels, because their numbers have remained stable while the number of moms in the workforce has “increased dramatically.” Here is a brief list of other things that have also ”increased dramatically” but are not taken into account in the study, in my opinion:

• Household expenses, making working outside of the home less of a choice and more of a necessity for many people.
• The availability and marketing of processed foods, making it more expensive — and, for some people, more difficult — to buy the wholesome foods that are actually good for you.
• Nostalgia and the belief that old gender stereotypes are the only way to go, making “working mom guilt” more widespread than ever.

The embers of the Mommy Wars must have gone dim for a second. Lucky thing this study came along to fan the flames.

Their sons, Henry Gunther Ademola Dashtu Samuel, 3, and Johan Riley Fyodor Taiwo Samuel, 2, already have Seal’s last name, as does their baby daughter, Lou Sulola Samuel. (No word on whether their oldest child, 5-year-old Helene “Leni” Klum — who is the biological daughter of Klum’s ex, Flavio Briatore, but was legally adopted at birth by Seal – will change her name as well.)

Like many working women, I kept my name when I got married. Which means that I have a different last name than my children. But, unlike Heidi, I’m not changing my name to match theirs.

I have thought about it, though. I married my stepkids the same day I married my husband and, when they were small, I’d tack my husband’s last name on to the end of my signature when signing permission slips or homework assignments, as if having the same last name would somehow increase my parental authority with people I didn’t know. At soccer games in their town, I introduced myself using “my” married name, even though I’d never legally taken it, because how else would other parents know to which pint-size soccer player I belonged?

At work, though, the idea of changing my name to match my husband’s never crossed my mind. I had nothing to prove, no new role to take on, no authority to establish with strangers who knew his last name but not mine. When you’re a journalist, your clips are your currency; changing bylines is like starting over, to an extent. I’d built a career and a reputation using my name — why change it now?

A few years later, when we decided to have another child — two, actually — the issue of last names came up again. Should these children have my last name? Hyphenate? Use just my husband’s? How would I feel about being “Ms. Alphonse” when everyone else in my family, by marriage and by birth, shared a different last name?

We decided that they’d have two last names — no hyphen — which worked fine until the first time I took my baby daughter to the pediatrician, and they couldn’t find her file because it wasn’t with her older siblings’. So she and our youngest son use just their dad’s last name, like their big brother and sisters do. I am the only Alphonse in my household. And I guess a decade has made a difference, because I’m fine with that.

Did you keep your name when you got married? Did your feelings about having done so change after you had children?

Why? Well, even if you’ve gotten the vaccine, it can take as long as two weeks for your body to produce enough antibodies to protect you, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. And the flu shot only protects against flu — if you catch one of the many, many non-influenza viruses out there, you can exhibit miserable flu-like symptoms but not actually have the flu.

This isn’t a post about whether or not to get the flu shot. (Want to discuss that anyway? You’re in luck — this one is!). But if you’re looking for a drug-free way to ease the misery at home, regardless of the state of your immunizations, check out these options:

Hot packs. For some reason, even if my fever is high enough that my kids are taking turns using me as their own personal heater, I feel shiveringly cold. Not to mention really, really achy. Fill a small cloth bag with raw rice or millet and zap it in the microwave for a minute or two for instant heat that won’t leak all of your bed the way an improperly sealed hot-water bottle can. (Not that I’d know anything about that. Ahem). In my house, we call them “Smelly Pillows” because they have a handful of lavender flowers mixed in with the millet. You can call them something more normal-sounding at your house.

Chicken soup. Your Grandmother was right: Chicken soup really does help. I usually have a stash of homemade broth in the freezer (and you can, too! Do more with less!), but any kind of broth will do. Go easy on the spices and chunky things — trust me. Clear broth stays down more easily, if you know what I mean.

Ginger tea. I make mine do double duty as a cough soother by adding a ton of honey, but if you’re making it for a grownup, a nip of rum can make this tea even more soothing.  Boil a kettle of water, chop up a small handful of crystallized ginger, and put it into a huge mug along with the honey, a bag of Chamomile tea, and a splash of lemon or lime juice. Fill the mug with water. Breathe in the steam while you wait for it to steep. Eat the candied ginger when you’re done.

Apple cider vinegar. I gave up salt-water gargles for apple cider vinegar a few years ago, and have not looked back since. Mix the vinegar half and half with warm water and gargle it, trying to keep it up against your enormous tonsils for as many seconds as you can (warning: you can’t do it for long). Spit it out into the sink, dry heave, and do it again. Tastes nasty, but it fixes my sore throat like nothing else.

And don’t forget the old adage: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You can minimize your chances of getting the flu — or any other virus — by taking these simple steps, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics:

1.) Covering your mouth and nose when you sneeze.

2.) Washing your hands or using alcohol-based hand sanitizing gel frequently.

3.) Avoiding touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.

4.) Not shoving that used tissue back in your pocket. (Come on, Moms… we all do it, especially if the nose we’ve just wiped belongs to one of our kids.)

5.) Staying home from work when you’re sick. (I know, I know… we live in a world where not everyone has sick days, and in this economy, none of us can really afford to miss work. But one can dream.)

How do you cope with cold and flu season?

I waited. Made another cup of coffee. Tidied up the dining table — I mean my desk. It was still there.

I shut the machine down, rebooted, got back to work. And minutes later, it happened again, but with a horrible grinding sound.

My hard drive was dying. I pulled as much info off it as I could — family photos, calendars, addresses, files all went onto whatever thumb drives I could find around the house, booting up over and over again to try and salvage what I could. Finally, it wouldn’t even boot up.

“This,” I thought, “is not going to be good for my work-life balance.”

But actually… it kind of has been.

Aside from the major PITA (Pain In The, um, behind) of having to recreate the notes and images to go with more than one project for more than one client, the crash and the loss of my computer has actually done wonders for my productivity.

It’s a lot harder to procrastinate when your computer time is limited to the hours you spend at the office. Sure, I can swipe my husband’s computer late at night, but since his concept of work-life balance is even worse than mine, it’s usually in use. The kids’ desktop PC is ancient and runs a bizarre operating system that I can’t even spell right; it’s great for keeping viruses and malware at bay and for limiting my tween’s access to certain sites, but it’s not compatible with my company’s tunneling software and so slow that, believe it or not, it’s faster to type on my iPhone, peering at a screen the size of a business card. Which is what I’m doing right now.

It should be fixed next week, they hope, and then I can get back to my usual business of working and juggling and procrastinating. But until then, the decrease in connectivity comes hand-in-hand with an increase in productivity, and I’m just going to embrace that while I can.

What you don’t hear or read as much about is how technology has helped those of us who have to parent from a distance.

For divorced parents, non-custodial parents, parents who have to travel often for business, and parents of kids who are away at college, being able to video-chat via Skype, check a teen’s status updates on Facebook, or fire off a midnight email has helped to ease some of the pain of separation. Text messaging, in particular, seems to be the easiest way to stay in touch.

A quick survey of the college-age interns in my office confirmed that busy young adults find it easier to text than talk — a fact that the two teenage girls in my household quickly confirmed. It takes seconds. you don’t have to be chained to a computer (the horrors!), and it lets your parents know you’re OK without having to devote 30 minutes to a phone call. In the case of kids who travel between their mom’s and their dad’s houses, texting is an easy way to let the other parent know you’re safe, or to have a private chat. (Too much texting can be disruptive, however — and yes, I’m speaking from experience here – so be sure to set limits with your child, if you can’t with your ex.)

Of course, a video chat via webcam is no substitute for face time, and even a marathon texting session can’t take the place of a real conversation. But it’s a way to keep the lines of communication open — and maybe even make your work-life juggle a little less difficult.

How do you stay in touch with your kids when you can’t be there?

According to the newest data from the United States General Social Survey, women today are less happy then they were back in 1972. Moreover, the survey found, women today become increasingly unhappy as they age compared to men, whose happiness levels trended upward as they got older.

It would be easy to dismiss it as another All-Is-Crap-With-The-Economy statistic if not for the fact that the General Social Survey has been asking the same question — “How happy are you, on a scale of 1 to 3, with 3 being very happy, and 1 being not too happy?”– to 1,500 men and women, of all ages, income levels, educational backgrounds, and marital statuses since 1972. And that the survey’s findings jibe with the results of six other major, long-term happiness studies around the world — more than 1.3 million men and women surveyed over the last 40 years, and in every study, the greater the opportunities women have the less happy they are over time, as compared to men.

But you know what? I think you have to choose to be happy. And that being able to consider personal happiness is a privilege afforded to those for whom the basic necessities — food, clothing, shelter — aren’t an issue. And that surveys, even ones as broad and as far-reaching as these, are still full of holes.One hole is that these surveys didn’t put the question to the same women year after year. I don’t know about you or your family, but if someone asked my mom in 1972 whether she was happy — at home, married for just over a year, her two Masters degrees collecting dust and a squalling newborn (me) who refused to nap (sorry, Mom) spitting up over everything (really, really sorry, Mom) — I doubt she would have been singing with joy. Ask her now? She’s probably happier in many ways. But ask me instead of her, and compare the data? Her increase in happiness probably isn’t reflected in my response.

In fact, it’s likely that I’m just as stressed out as she was in ‘72 — possibly more so. But the stressors are very, very different. I’m a different person, for one thing. And I’ve made very different choices in my life.

In an article at The Huffington Post, Marcus Buckingham suggests that the very fact that women have more choices available to them today has contributed to their unhappiness. He writes:

The hard-won rights, opportunities, and advantages were supposed to have netted women more than just another burdensome role to play — “you at work.” They were supposed to have fostered in each woman feelings of fulfillment and happiness, and even, for the special few, the sustained thrill of living of an authentic life.

This hasn’t happened. Over the last 40 years or so, life is not trending toward more fulfillment for women; life is, in most ways we can measure, becoming more draining instead. To use Thomas Jefferson’s words, though women now have the liberty to choose whichever life they’d like, many are struggling in their pursuit of a happy life.

At The New York Times, op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd is a bit more blunt about it, asking, “Did the feminist revolution end up benefiting men more than women?” She continues:

“When women stepped into male-dominated realms, they put more demands — and stress — on themselves. If they once judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens and dinner parties, now they judge themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens, dinner parties — and grad school, work, office deadlines and meshing a two-career marriage.”

I see their points, but I take issue with the whole “women have brought this upon themselves” premise. (Not to mention the idea that a woman’s happiness depends on how she fares compared to her friends in various frivolous, material, or social-networking categories. Come on… that’s not feminism.)

Here’s my take on it: I think we’re wrongly equating temporary stress with long-term unhappiness. As I’ve mentioned before, there are four different types of stress, and some of it can even be positive. But it’s rare that we’re on a constant eustress high — which means that when we’re stressed out, we’re unhappy, but that unhappiness isn’t necessarily permanent.

I also think we’re confusing “happiness” with “satisfaction.” On the whole, women worldwide have become more aware. We know what’s available to us, and can compare it (favorably or unfavorably) to what’s available to other women in other places. We know what we want, and we know whether it’s within our grasps. We are more ambitious, more competitive, and more selective. We simply want more from life. If ignorance is bliss, it’s no wonder that women are less happy now than they were nearly 40 years ago.