‘ As I stepped outside today to fetch the mail – no shoes, no shirt, Stella slippin’ out the door just as it opened – I thought for a moment about the lifestyle working from a home office has allowed me to lead.

I walked to the curb in the summer heat and browsed through the mail; no checks, no bills – a wash for any entrepreneur. The sun was warming my back, cooled all morning by the largesse of the AC in my home office. It felt damn good.

I paused. This is one heluva life we’ve carved out here – myself and 20 million other American home-based entrepreneurs. It’s 95% a lifestyle play, 5% because I’m a cheap S.O.B. who wouldn’t want to absorb the overhead of moving my home-based enterprise into some corporate digs.

And why should I anyway? What can I accomplish in a corporate trap that I cannot do in my home office?

For more than 20 years, I’ve dressed in shorts to “go to work.” Shorts, tank top, rarely any footwear to speak of. Maybe flip flops. As a kid raised in South Florida, attire’s always been loose. As an entrepreneur raised in the home office, it’s been even looser – by “traditional” business standards.

I almost had pangs of guilt. My attire was almost too loose — literally. My pants were creeping down just a bit. I felt like some surf punk — or like I do when working in the yard, breaking a sweat, feeling comfortable and unconcerned about appearances.

What would the neighbors think? What would my clients think?

In the immortal words of Alfred E. Newman of Mad Magazine fame, “What, me worry?”

For the bulk of these 20 years (21, actually), I’ve had a dog at my side — Stella, Riley before her, Romeo at the start). Kids have been there, too. My wife has worked part time as a nurse-turned-nurse practitioner.

Amid it all, we’ve endured no early drop-off at pre-school, and no late stay at school. No key on the latch.

We sent our eldest off to college this summer. Eighteen years old, and never a day without Dad in the home office. A generation of home-office-raised kids. That’s some milestone.

It’s now after midnight as I write this. Sitting in my skivvies (hence the site, “MyDaddyWorksInHisUnderwear.com”), this is but another freedom of the home office – the freedom of the time clock.

As that sun beat down upon my back today, Stella did her business. Then she paused, eyes near slits, slight pant to her breathing, seemingly letting the sun warm her cool, black fur. We were in no hurry to get back in. BlackBerry in my pocket, emails would find their way to me as we ambled aimlessly outside. I’d reply when I felt like it. Work would get done.

This feels good, I imagined her thinking – much as I was.

Damn good.

To hear the IRS tell it, the tax-deductible home office must be a place of business. It has to be used “regularly and exclusively” for business purposes, and cannot double as a playroom, guestroom or music studio after hours (unless, of course, your business is music). Does that mean your PC or Mac cannot store a music library or play iTunes? Or you cannot practice music over lunch (if your business is NOT music)?

Lines definitely are blurred.

Tell that to the people at Motormouse. More than some kitschy toy, the Motormouse ($49.95; http://www.motormouse.us.com) fits neatly beneath one’s palm, making it responsive to use. It’s “superbly crafted” (it says so in the press materials) and is available in black, red or silver. The tires are rubber; the scroll wheel is the spare. The trunk even opens to stash two AAA batteries and the USB receiver.

The media kit also says it’s perfect for the décor of almost any car enthusiast or gadget lover. Or home officer?

Truth be told, I use a Wave keyboard with an integrated touch-pad pointing device (a.k.a. mouse). So the Motormouse’s functionality in my home office was rather limited. My son surfs like any teenager. That, coupled with his penchant for Porsches, has made the Motormouse a fixture in his bedroom.

But the question of the gadget in the home office helps define – and blur – the space.

I use a Jabra wireless Bluetooth headset. It’s taken me a while to warm up to Bluetooth. But given the push by cities like San Francisco to get wireless phone companies to fess up about the radio waves their products emit (harmful or harmless I’ll leave to another blog), I found myself wanting to limit wave intrusion nonetheless. Besides, walking Stella and cleaning up after her is much easier in “hands-free” mode.

I’ve used the Jawbone. Plantronics makes a great line of traditional and Bluetooth headsets. Zack uses a Logitech wireless headset for gaming. But the Jabra has caught my fancy of late. It’s freakin’ tiny; I carry it in my pocket when not in use (lest I look like some male Lt. Ohura from Star Trek). Jabra’s products include mono and stereo (A2DP) headsets for music and calls, wireless speakerphone solutions for in-car hands free use and corded headsets for non-Bluetooth® compatible devices. It integrates seamless design with cutting edge audio technology; including sophisticated noise-canceling software, dual microphone systems and digital sound processing.

My measure of a good headset: Do people on the other end of my call complain about call quality?

And as two of my kids use their cell phones like they’re one surgical procedure shy of being part of their physical being, I have to admit concern over distraction, and, yes, radio waves. Research from Jabra notes that 24% of drivers admit they don’t use a hands-free device (even though it’s law in many countries and states).

Other studies show that people are eating (72%), texting (28%), styling their hair or changing clothes (25%), applying make-up (13%), or even performing sex acts (15%) while behind the wheel.

Hopefully, my kids are part of the 85% NOT represented by that last stat. And since I don’t deduct my home office, iTunes, my Fender P-bass, and other toys find their way into my home office.

What I do in my car, well, that’s another story…

Good eatin', but apparently not in New York's PS 9.

New York Times writer Susan Dominus interviewed a woman - MeMe Roth - whose children seemingly are offered enough sugary snacks and candies in school to send them into a diabetic coma - or at least an afternoon sugar crash.

So Ms. Roth has launched a campaign (her second, apparently) against the practice of well-intended parents sending cupcakes to school for a child’s classmates to share in a birthday celebration.

An Atlanta native, apparently the fair Ms. Roth is no Southern Belle. In principle, the concept seems fair: Sugar run amok is contributing to rising obesity, diabetes and other disease, which, in turn, costs our nation untold suffering and billions in healthcare costs.

In the article, she’s been painted as belligerent and confrontational. Some in her school - and previous schools - have seen her rants as self-serving and ill-intended. She reminds me of the woman in the 1990s who railed against Married: With Children, hoping to get Al, Peg and the risque show ditched from the TV line-up.

Viewership spiked.

As the father of three grade-school kids also offered cakes and snacks during school (birthday snacks, holiday treats and the lot — sometimes offered by our family in celebration of our own children’s milestones or events), I can see Ms. Roth’s concern. But frankly, she seems in it for the battle - or notoriety.

A more thoughtful approach, one that probably would serve her children better in their own futures, would be to espouse their saying three words: “No, thank you.”

What do you think…?

“MeMe Roth, a publicist and an Upper West Side mother of two, is getting really, really mad — “and I do not mean angry,” she clarified. “I mean mad, like crazy.” Ms. Roth is being driven mad by Public School 9, where her children are in second and fourth grades, and it seems that P.S. 9, in turn, is being driven mad by Ms. Roth.

Ms. Roth, who runs a group called National Action Against Obesity, has no problem with the school lunches provided at the highly regarded elementary school on Columbus Avenue and 84th Street. What sets her off is the junk food served on special occasions: the cupcakes that come out for every birthday, the doughnuts her children were once given in gym, the sugary “Fun-Dip” packets that some parent provided the whole class on Valentine’s Day.

“I thought I was sending my kid to P.S. 9, not Chuck E. Cheese,” Ms. Roth, a trim, impassioned 40-year-old from Atlanta, said in an interview. “Is there or is there not an obesity and diabetes epidemic in this country?”

When offered any food at school other than the school lunch, Ms. Roth’s children — who shall go nameless since it seems they have enough on, or off, their plates — are instructed to deposit the item into a piece of Tupperware their mother calls a “junk food collector.”

This solution seemed to be working pretty well until Ms. Roth’s daughter dutifully tried to stick a juice pop — a special class treat from her teacher on a hot day — into her plastic container. The teacher told Ms. Roth’s daughter to eat it or lose it, and according to the child pointed out that she had seen the young girl eating the corn chips served with school lunch — did that not count as junk food?

This prompted one of Ms. Roth’s infamous heated e-mail messages to the school. Which, in turn, prompted administrators to pull her daughter out of class to discuss the juice pop incident, which only further infuriated Ms. Roth, who said her daughter felt as if she’d been ambushed.

What followed was the kind of meeting in which bureaucracy masquerades as farce, or maybe it’s the other way around. Ms. Roth and her husband, Ben, say they were told by Helene Moffatt, a school safety official, that if they considered the regular dissemination of junk food a threat to their children’s health and safety — and indeed, they do — they should request a health and safety transfer, something that generally follows threats of violence. That transfer request, they were told, would also require filing a complaint with the police.

“What would that conversation even sound like?” asked Mr. Roth, who works in marketing. “ ‘We know you guys are dealing with stabbings and shootings, but stop everything: We have a cupcake situation’ ?”

Both parents left feeling they were being pushed out of P.S. 9, which they perceive as exhausted by Ms. Roth’s intense lobbying for, among other things, permission slips for any food not on the official lunch menu. It would not be the first time: The Roths previously lived in Millburn, N.J., where, after Ms. Roth waged war on the bagels and Pringles meal served to kids at lunch, received e-mail from one member of the P.T.A. that said, “Please, consider moving.” That was in 2006, and P.S. 9 has been hearing about its transgressions against healthy eating pretty much ever since.

“The community is very concerned,” the principal, Diane Brady, wrote in an e-mail message. At the meeting with Ms. Moffatt, Ms. Brady said that Ms. Roth “was hostile” and “threw candy onto the table and cursed.” It was not the first time, she added, that Ms. Roth had “displayed this hostile behavior.”

Ms. Roth’s message is hardly outlandish: There is an obesity epidemic, and there are probably better ways to celebrate a child’s birth than sending a passel of kids into sugar shock in the middle of math class.

Her extreme methods have earned her attention before: The police were called to a Y.M.C.A. in 2007 when she absconded with the sprinkles and syrups on a table where members were being served ice cream. That was Ms. Roth who called Santa Claus fat on television that Christmas, and she has a continuing campaign against the humble Girl Scout cookies, on the premise that no community activity should promote unhealthy eating.

“She has some valid points, but the way she delivers them is abrasive,” said Jim Stanek, a fellow P.S. 9 parent, who responded angrily to an e-mail message Ms. Roth sent to around 75 parents saying that the physical education teacher who served her children doughnuts probably “couldn’t pass a standardized phys ed. test.”

It is too bad that Ms. Roth’s suggestions come in e-mail messages strung with too many capital letters and undiplomatic, if accurate, scare tactics (on the threat of diabetes—“we’re talking amputations, blindness, endless finger pricking, endless disabilities”). It would probably benefit New York’s students, and no doubt Ms. Roth’s family, if she tried to catch a few flies with honey. Make that agave nectar.

“The dog I’ve grown to know and love Is now in heaven up above.
In his heaven there’s squirrels and trees. He runs through the yard with an easy breeze.

There are couches galore and a pool, too,
And that is most definitely the perfect shaded blue.

There’s excess food and he’s having great fun,
he has so much energy running in the sun.

Maureen is with him once again,
guiding him on his journey, her “Little Man”.

The way he used to bark when you sneezed
or even when you counted: 1, 2, 3.

He also barked when there was a loud boom,
He would always toss his food across the room.

This dog definitely had the most names,
There was Riley, Smurfy, Smurf,
Schnickelfritz, Little Man, Murphey, and Murph.

I’d always play the piano for you when no one was home.
Then we’d go to the kitchen and give you a bone.

You were always there for me when I needed someone to talk to,
Now I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Riley,
I love you with all my heart. You were my best friend, and I know that you will always be there for us if we need you. Rest now my baby, for you are yourself once again.

I love you. So short.”

By Nicole Zbar, April 21, 2009

]]> http://www.mydaddyworksinhisunderwear.com/?feed=rss2&p=42 http://www.mydaddyworksinhisunderwear.com/?p=41 http://www.mydaddyworksinhisunderwear.com/?p=41#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:08:12 +0000 Jeff http://www.mydaddyworksinhisunderwear.com/?p=41 As a work-at-home dad, I once was innocently tagged by my daughter as that dad who “works in his underwear.” Such is my home office lament.

So imagine the surprise when this mom read the subtext of what her child drew about what Mommy does for a living…

Suffice it to say, Mommy felt the need to clear the air…

Dear Mrs. Jones,

I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer. I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit. I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it. Her picture doesn’t show me dancing around a pole. It’s supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot.

From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.

Sincerely, Mrs. Smith

Now, I’ve become quite suspicious of stuff being passed as “truth” on the Internet. But fact or fiction, this is plain funny.

One of those was Josh Lubin, a Web advertising executive in Atlanta. After the birth of his child, Josh spent some time at home on paternity leave. Read about his experiences below or by clicking here….

ATLANTA, Georgia — Going back to work after my wife had our first child was an emotional roller coaster.
The author says that being “Mr. Mom” is appealing, but putting the idea into practice is harder than it looks.

I forced myself out of bed, shaved my beard and got dressed on the morning of my return. I performed these work week rituals while cursing the fact that I matched only one number on my last lottery ticket, so I had to show up that day.

After being out of the office for a little more than two weeks on paternity leave, I knew the transition back to work would be tough. I coped with this fact, like any rational new parent would, by increasing the number of lottery tickets that I purchased.

Saying goodbye took a while. I made several trips up and down the stairs to get one more glimpse of my daughter before succumbing to the inevitable: my commute, fighting traffic and reintegrating to cubicle culture.

I arrived at the office still thinking of my family at home without me. I found myself misty-eyed at the water cooler while I waited for Outlook to load several hundred unread e-mails. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be at home with my daughter.

The idea of being a stay-at-home dad, like Michael Keaton in “Mr. Mom,” always appealed to me. For the uninitiated, the 1983 comedy is about an out-of-work father faced with domestic challenges while his wife gets a job.

A memorable scene has the title character, Jack Butler, trying to sound like he knows what he’s talking about to his wife’s new boss. He tells him that he plans to wire a new wing of his house in “220, 221, whatever it takes.”

I identify with the latter part of his character’s claim. It’s not like me to pretend to know anything about home improvement, but when it comes to caring for my family while balancing my responsibilities at work, I plan on doing whatever it takes.

In 2007, 37 percent of working dads admitted that they would leave their jobs if their family could afford it, according to CareerBuilder.com. The “if” in that statistic is a big one.

Unlike the characters in “Mr. Mom,” my wife and I both need to work. A good sequel to this film may have explored the hijinks that ensued from an overwhelmed parent caring for a newborn while working from home.

Nowadays, there’s support for all of the Jack Butlers out there. Web sites such as AtHomeDad.org and Rebeldad.com have established online communities dedicated to providing tips and resources for fatherhood.

These forums represent a growing fellowship where those with experience can help new dads. Personally, I haven’t utilized them much yet because of that old Groucho Marx joke about not wanting to be a member of a club that would have a person like me as a member.

Available resources and social acceptance for stay-at-home dads have come a long way since “Mr. Mom’s” portrayal of them. In fact, Salary.com calculated that a stay-at-home dad was worth $125,340 a year for the dad portion of his work in 2006. This analysis took into account tasks that range from cooking and cleaning to teaching and serving as a child psychologist.

Since I can’t convince anyone to pay me my estimated worth as an at-home dad — and living on one salary isn’t an option for my family — I’ve considered working from home a couple of hours a week when necessary.

Flexible work schedules make sense because they benefit a company by allowing employees to be more productive on their terms. Nevertheless, working from home may not be for everyone.

I work for a news Web site, facilitating advertisement opportunities. A lot of my job’s communication occurs via e-mail, which is something I can do at home.

I’d worked from home before, but not with a newborn in the house. My first test was only for a couple of hours when the baby was about 3 weeks old.

My wife had an early appointment, and I was going to watch the baby sleep, hopefully, and then go into the office after she got home. I had e-mail to check and two conference calls scheduled back-to-back during that time. I didn’t expect this to be too difficult.

I caught up on the e-mail much earlier than if I had gone into the office that morning. Unfettered from the restriction of the morning rituals, my productivity was already soaring and I was ahead of schedule.

Then disaster struck.

As I called into my first meeting, the baby started to stir, squirm and make her signature sounds (a primal series of grunts, snorts and whimpers). She was telling me that her diaper needed to be changed and that she was probably hungry, too.

So I did what any multi-tasker would do: I put the phone under my ear, stuck her bottle under the tap, muted the phone, ran up the stairs with her in a tucked football position, unmuted the phone, answered a question, muted again, changed her diaper and ran down the stairs to get the bottle.

My wife called while I was juggling the baby, diaper, bottle and meeting to let me know that she was running late. I screamed to myself, “I need help NOW!”

Allowing the nervous breakdown to run its course, I continued to pace across my living room floor — regretting that I hadn’t chosen decaf that morning.

A few minutes later, I jumped out of the first meeting to call into the second. I said, “Hello, this is Josh, I’m here on mute, OK, thanks.”

As I listened in on mute, I shushed my baby to calm her — to no avail. Her cries became increasingly louder. My boss asked, “Josh, are you there?”

I unmuted my phone and right on cue, my daughter screamed at the top of her little lungs.

The conference room on the other end of the phone erupted with laughter, and I told them that I’d have to get back to them.

My wife arrived home shortly after the conference-call debacle. I told her that I didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to work from home anymore.

I realize that the ability to work and be a nanny simultaneously is a skill requiring practice.

One trial run as a telecommuter with a newborn has caused me to question the feasibility of being able to do it on a regular basis.

Perhaps it’s time for me to forget about that old Groucho Marx joke and accept some help. Wait, the baby’s crying, sorry, gotta go.

Salary.com, Inc., the compensation expert, posted a dad version of its popular Mom’s Salary Wizard. Among its top-line findings:

* Dads don’t earn as much overtime as moms for their stay-at-home jobs.

* The typical working dad earned no overtime in his 39.6-hour dad’s work week, while working moms earned, on average, 27% of their “mom salary” in overtime.

* Although their hours differed, all parents had eight jobs in common: Day Care Center Teacher, Laundry Machine Operator, Computer Operator, CEO, Facilities Manager, Psychologist, Van Driver, and Cook.

* Dads had two jobs in their top 10 which moms did not have: General Maintenance Worker and Groundskeeper.

* Moms had two unique counterpart jobs: Janitor and Housekeeper.

* By working long hours in a high-wage area, stay-at-home dads near Silicon Valley in California, clocked in at an annual value greater than $149,000.

* Working fewer “dad hours” in a low wage area, working dads on the rural Texas-New Mexico border rated about $83,500 in dad pay.

What else did the survey discover…?

“We got a lot of feedback from dads, asking ‘What are we worth?’” said Kevin Cuddeback Director of New Product Development at Salary.com, “so we did additional research and calculated $71,160 for working dads and $125,340 for stay-at-home dads-for the ‘dad job’ portion of all their work.”

Salary.com consulted with stay-at-home and working dads, and used the survey results to rank the top 10 jobs that make up a dad’s job description. Next, all 10 titles were assigned a dollar value based on the number of hours the respondents spend on each job, and the annual salary figures were totaled.

Salary.com’s analysis indicates that when asked to define their at-home work, working dads most identify with the following job titles (in order of hours spent per week): Computer Operator, General Maintenance Worker, CEO, Day Care Center Teacher, Laundry Machine Operator, Facilities Manager, Psychologist, Van Driver, Cook and Groundskeeper.

For stay-at-home dads, Day Care Center Teacher moves up to the top spot and General Maintenance Worker remains the number two most time-consuming job. The rest of the top 10 ranking (in order of hours spent per week) is as follows: Cook, Computer Operator, Van Driver, Facilities Manager, CEO, Laundry Machine Operator, Groundskeeper and Psychologist.

Salary.com corroborated the exceptional rarity of stay-at-home dads-fewer than 6 dads in 1,000. “Given that the U.S. Census Bureau estimated only 143,000 dads stayed at home with their children while their spouse worked in 2005, out of 26.4 million married fathers with children living at home, it was difficult to calculate precise statistics on how stay-at-home dads spend their time,” said Cuddeback, “but based on the survey data collected, Salary.com was able to estimate that a stay-at-home dad’s work week totaled 81 hours-approximately ten hours shorter than the work week of a working dad, a working mom, or a stay-at-home mom.”

Dads and their families can visit http://www.salary.com/ and create their own “dad paycheck” with the Dad Salary Wizard®, the first interactive tool that allows anyone to price the “dad job,” based on location and dad’s personal hours worked in each of the 10 roles. Users can create a customized mock dad paycheck and dad pay stub, which can be printed and emailed to family and friends for Father’s Day.

“This analysis shows that dads play a significant role in the at-home duties that keep a family running, and the market value of the work dads perform is certainly worthy of recognition,” said Bill Coleman, Senior Vice President of Compensation at Salary.com. “It’s particularly noteworthy that more than half of dad’s total salary figure comes from contributions to the family outside of dad’s normal work day. Dads clearly play a crucial role in the raising of their children and the running of their households, which should not be overlooked.”

For more salary figures appropriate to a specific city for the stay-at-home and working dad compensation analysis, as well as the Dad Salary Wizard, log onto http://dad.salary.com.

According to a 2007 CareerBuilder.com Working Dads survey, 37 percent of working dads say they’d leave their jobs if their spouse or partner made enough money to support the family. If given the choice, another 38 percent would take a pay-cut to spend more time with their kids.

The CareerBuilder.com survey, “Working Dads 2007,” was conducted from February 15 to March 6, 2007 and included 1,521 men, employed full-time, with children under the age of 18 living at home.

* Nearly one-in-four (24 percent) working dads feel work is negatively impacting their relationship with their children.

* Forty-eight percent have missed a significant event in their child’s life due to work at least once in the last year and nearly one-in-five (18 percent) have missed four or more.

The time working dads spend on work far exceeds the time spent with their children.

* More than one-in-four (27 percent) working dads say they spend more than 50 hours a week on work and nearly one-in-ten (8 percent) spend more than 60 hours.

* In terms of the time they spend with their children, one-in-four (25 percent) working dads spend less than one hour with their kids each day. Forty-two percent spend less than two hours each day.

While more companies today are offering various programs and options to promote work/life balance, some working dads say their employers are lacking in this area. Thirty-six percent of working dads say their company does not offer flexible work arrangements such as flexible schedules, telecommuting, job sharing and more.

Richard Castellini, Vice President of Consumer Marketing at CareerBuilder.com and father of three, offers the following tips to help dads gain a healthy work/life balance:

1. Keep in touch — While you’re at work, make a quick call in between meetings and projects and let your children know they’re top of mind.

2. Plan a kid-friendly potluck — If co-workers in your department have kids, ask your boss if you can have a kid-friendly potluck for lunch on a Friday. Not only does this allow the kids to spend extra time with you, but it also gives the employees in your department time to get to know each other better.

3. Give your undivided attention — When you’re at home spending time with your family, turn off your cell phone, step away from the e-mails and give your undivided attention. If you bring work home, do it after the kids have gone to bed.

4. Keep one calendar — Schedule baseball games and play recitals on the same calendar you use for meetings and travel to make sure you never double-book yourself. Save your vacation days for those special events in your children’s lives, so you’re there and in the front row.

5. Make time — At least once a week, schedule a family activity that involves interaction such as a game, bike ride, trip to the playground, etc. Also, make sure to schedule a date night for you and your significant other.

Survey Methodology
This survey was conducted online by Harris Interactive on behalf of CareerBuilder.com among 1,521 Full-time Employed Fathers (employed full-time; not self employed; with no involvement in hiring decisions) ages 18 and over within the United States between February 15 and March 6, 2007. Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

With a pure probability sample of 1,521 one could say with a ninety-five percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 2.5 percentage points. Sampling error for data from subsamples is higher and varies. However that does not take other sources of error into account. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

About CareerBuilder.com
CareerBuilder.com is the nation’s largest online job site with more than 21 million unique visitors and over 1.5 million jobs. Owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI), Tribune Company (NYSE:TRB), The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), the company offers a vast online and print network to help job seekers connect with employers. CareerBuilder.com powers the career centers for more than 1,000 partners that reach national, local, industry and niche audiences. These include more than 150 newspapers and leading portals such as America Online and MSN. More than 250,000 employers take advantage of CareerBuilder.com’s easy job postings, 20 million-plus resumes, Diversity Channel and more. Millions of job seekers visit the site every month to search for opportunities by industry, location, company and job type, sign up for automatic email job alerts, and get advice on job hunting and career management.

CareerBuilder.com and its subsidiaries operate in Europe, Canada and Asia. For more information, visit http://www.careerbuilder.com.

Lily was in first grade. She was asked to draw a picture of what her parents did for a living, and what she would like to do when she grew up.

During the parent-teacher conference, Kelly and husband Joe say pictures of Joe in a suit at his desk with a computer, Lily as a princess, and Kelly in a night gown with a laptop on a bed.

“I was mortified,” Kelly recalls. “Thank goodness everyone knew me.”That was about a decade ago. We’re chatting on the phone on Black Friday (that day after Thanksgiving when retailers hope consumer sales will propel their businesses into the black for the year). And Lieberman, still handles her 1,100 domains (like Pre-PaidGamecard.com, PrePaidCard.com and AllLiveVideo.com) and manages her family’s real estate holdings from her home office in Overland Park, Kansas.

Actually, these are just the latest home-based businesses Lieberman has run in 22 years as an entrepreneur. She’s had a successful carpet cleaning business, overseen vast commercial and agricultural real estate investments, and handled a variety of other businesses right-sized and ideally suited to the home office. From there, she and husband Joe (no, the other Joe Lieberman) dote on daughter, Lily, 15.

Learn what Kelly’s learned in two decades of home-based work…

Why & When did you start working from home? I began working from home shortly after college when I had an epiphany while selling commercial real estate. I hated the hours, and being at the mercy of the agency. I talked a girlfriend into starting a carpet cleaning business together and literally ordered business cards that afternoon. One year later we were voted “Best Carpet Cleaning Company” in Kansas City and I was doing radio interviews with the talk show host of a popular lawn, garden and home show.  From then on it was one business after the other, all started from a spare bedroom.

What are YOUR Key Benefits of working from home (beyond “balance”)? For me, the best part of working at home is being able to have access to all my work and related equipment, when I feel like working. While I had my carpet cleaning company, I also had other businesses going on simultaneously. So it was great to be able to wake up at 4 in the morning and start work on some new product design for my inventions, or get online after dinner and research Chinese tomb relics for my antique business. The flexibility was enormous!  In 1993 I had a pretty rough pregnancy and was able to still work because I could work from home on bed rest. After Lily was born I could keep working and ease off on my schedule as needed. I sold the carpet cleaning business a year later and devoted more time to inventing.

What are/were the critical pitfalls YOU faced in your home-working experience? There were a number of times I was negotiating some critical contracts with manufacturers or businesses that wanted to license my product when Lily would decide to have a terrible-two moment. But other than that it has been great.

What Must-Have Power Tool(s) that have made home officing successful for you? My laptop and my cell phone. I can work from almost anywhere on the planet as long as I have both.

What about your home office design makes it an ideal workspace for you? (i.e., specific furniture, view, location in the home, etc.)   I take up a very little corner in my kitchen where I have a desk and a few cabinets.  I have most of my antiques at a booth at an antique mall, and because I am now so fascinated with domaining – all of my work is online.

What are YOUR Top Three Tips to successful home officing? First, make a schedule and focus on accomplishing certain tasks each day.  Second, Keep networking, face to face, and online. Third, hire a housekeeping service. Just because you work at home does not mean you have time to tackle all the household chores. Throw in the laundry, empty the dishwasher and call it a day.

What are the Top-Three Hurdles / Lessons Learned YOU had to (or continue to) overcome to find success? My success is determined solely by ME.  I am my own boss, which means I have to pat myself on the back, give myself a raise and fess up to myself when I make mistakes.

How have you seen home officing evolve since you started? Where do you see it going tomorrow…? Back in the day, I was the only one of my peers working at home.  I felt like people did not take me as serious as people do now.  More and more people are finding out that they can make this work – in any kind of business.

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A couple of black eyes and a sore ego seems to be afflicting the group.

Seems that they came out with a campaign that suggested moms who carry their kids in slings, pouches, pappooses (or however those things are spelled) and elsewhere on the female human physique tend to get sore. Read Forbes’ take here. Marketing guy Seth Godin had a POV, too.

“It’s a good kind of pain. It’s for my kid. Plus it totally makes me look like an official mom.”

Not a nanny. Not a surrogate. Not a grandma, a bubbie, a nanna. But an “official mom.”

Avoiding for the moment any discussion surrounding what or who “An Official Mom” may really be, what about an “Official Dad.” Do we count? Does our pain amount to less than that of a mom, or are we so muscle bound and ripped that carrying junior in a papoose is just another weight disc on the barbell?