Working At Home

Okay, Back To Work today. Trying to get organized--where to start? Beyond a long list of house, move, family, work and school issues, including a broken violin string (already!) which must be repaired before Orchestra class tomorrow; a complete lack of anything edible in the house except last night’s Thai leftovers (lunch!); and piles of laundry reaching critical levels (brand-new dryer broke down, actually caught on fire and shorted out, within the first four loads--I am eagerly awaiting the call of my replacement delivery schedule), I am working on a review today, which makes me particularly sensitive to the scale of division among women, between Working Mothers (generally assumed to be working outside the home) and SAHMs (Stay At Home Moms), at the opposite end of the spectrum. I occupy the tremendous gray area between the two extremes, as a WAHM (Work At Home Mom), with all the advantages, benefits, drawbacks, and distractions of trying to work and manage house and family at the same time, in the same place.

As a WAHM, today I have an issue with technology and media at home, my workplace: Why does it all have to be so damn complicated?!

This morning I simply wanted to turn on the TV to CNN or The Weather Channel to track the progress and devastation of Hurricane Katrina. We are very tuned in to hurricane watches and news in Atlanta, with family in Pensacola, Florida, which seems to be on target lately with almost every storm. (The in-laws have already evacuated further inland Florida). I thought turning the TV on and finding a news channel would be a relatively simple task. Confronted with three separate remote control devices and a new cable tv box, I realized I haven’t watched television on my own, without the kids or hubby around to control the beast, since we’ve moved to our new home and switched from DirectTV Satellite to Comcast Cable--and I missed the orientation. There was no remote control with any kind of cable label. Add to that the complication of TiVo, which I LOVE--and I know how to do that!--I couldn’t figure out how to change the channel, or find a “Live TV” news channel. How the hell did it get so complicated???

So I’m listening to the radio, and getting very sketchy news brief updates, but not much info because the radio is set on my husband’s Classic Rock station--and I have no idea how to change the station on this stereo component which is in a room separate from the TV/entertainment center, and has about five dozen little lights and buttons, a zillion different wires coming out of it, and one large control knob, which appears to be the master volume control.

I give up--I’m going grocery shopping.