Quickie Books

by Cathy

Since my sixteenth birthday, I've always held jobs where I've worked for "the man"; retail chains, department stores, large ad agencies, local magazines. And now? Now I work with the man. My man, that is.

Yes, that's right.

I'm going outside my comfort zone by dipping my toe in the proverbial entrepreneurial career pool. Even more frightening, I'm electing to spend almost every waking hour with my spouse....working mostly out of our home office.

I bet you're thinking what my friend Patti is thinking. I can practically hear her skepticism sing-song-ing off the computer screen during our Gmail chats. Here are just a few of her comments:

"So...when you're home "helping joe" what do you do? Are you his hot, hot secretary?" This is Patti being subtle. So I play along.

"The boss just got back home and cracking the whip but not in the way I'd hope," I play into the fantasy.

"Perhaps if you would work in your birthday suit you could leverage some of the perks," she shoots back without missing a beat. "Drop a pencil and bend over to pick it up, if you know what i mean ;)"

Yes. This is how I dress to work at home. Duh.

I tell her that I wish it were like that, but in reality, it's a lot of payables, receivables, purchase orders and invoices. Frankly, I'm on Quickbooks more than I'm on him.

"Okay," she continues unconvinced. "I'll let you go so you can "work". WORK IT GIRL."

I can see why she would think that I'm always "working it" instead of literally working. Ideally, it would seem that a husband and wife working from home, while the kids are at school all day would provide plentiful opportunity to luxuriate in lengthy, decadent afternoon delights; massaging, feeding each other grapes and gazing deep into each others' eyes as we twirl ourselves up in silk sheets. Right. That's not us. That's the soap opera not playing on the television because it's tuned to ESPN or CNN or the 24-hour French news channel as background noise.

Sadly, this concept is something better "romanticized" in theory but not reality. Don't get me wrong; every now and then we do snap out of work mode and have a moment of clarity where we realize that the house is completely empty of kids and the distractions that follow them. There will be no knocking on doors or requests to fetch a snack or something off the top shelf, to find iPhones, iPads or chargers, to fix the television cable channel mix-up, or find a particular tank top. There will be no audible distractions either like the sound of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody reruns blaring from YouTube, or FaceTime conversations had by Ari and her friends while simultaneously playing Club Penguin online.

So do we take advantage of these rare moments at times? We are, after all, smart, grab-an-opportunity-when-you-can, humans who happen to be parents (and we know what that means when it comes to having time alone) after all. So, yeah.

- Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
- Yeah, this Quickbooks thing is a pain in the ass.

However, lest you think that you can quit your job and start a home-office business with your significant other for the anytime "perks" and "benefits" and general "woo hoo party time!!!" euphoria this will provide, think again. You might be able to randomly book a quickie, but in the end, you'll always get screwed by Quickbooks.