In my oft-mentioned past life as a M-F 9-5 corporate gal, I would occasionally glance up from my desk and notice that not everyone got up, got pretty, and drove off somewhere to spend the day awash in fluorescent light. Their lives always looked so nice.

I assumed it would reduce the daily workload. Now that a part of my work life is spent in a home office, nary a fluorescent bulb in sight (I’m pasty enough as it is, thank you) I see that in some ways, it merely shuffles the workload and blurs the lines. And…I like it.

My husband recently made the critical error of coming home, exhausted, wearing a quizzical what-did-you-do-today? look. I suppose it was in response to the undone dishes and multi-room havoc inflicted by an active kindergartener with drive, determination, and nothing but time. Had I tossed out self control and answered the unspoken question, it would have been:

I got up at 5 and worked uninterrupted until 7 (bliss), went back to bed until 7:45 (even better), drove my son to school, got a haircut, grocery shopped, got back in time for my 9:30 conference call, worked steadily, stopping only to let in a repairman who charged roughly double what we had budgeted (much pulling out of freshly-cut hair), picked up my little treasure at noon, fed him lunch and me breakfast, put in some laundry, bribed aforementioned treasure to stay quiet for my 3:00 teleconference, sent several emails, wrote a report, returned phone calls, and gave scant thought to dinner preparation.

Here is the bright side: 90 minutes I once spent commuting made for a nice evening watercolor painting session with my son (that was the bribe—he loves to paint). And the dishes did eventually get done. So, as an office worker on the outside looking in, I may have had some misconceptions about working from home, but I was right about one thing: it is so nice.