Like the one I’m dealing with now… pregnancy. Wasn’t planning to have another baby now; in fact, we were trying hard not to. But this little rascal had its own ideas.

As my husband puts it, we were upset for maybe 20 minutes. The timing is rotten, after all, with him still out of work and a cousin with a son dealing with leukemia. But really, neither of us could be that upset about having another child together. Even if it does mean we need a new car. We only have one right now, and it has 4 seats. The middle of the back seat is plastic cupholders.

I’ve been dealing with plenty of nausea and general exhaustion so far with this pregnancy, which is about 9 weeks along. Finally told the family, so now I can blog it too. It was so hard to post about anything while keeping this secret! That, and I kept catching little bugs from the kids. Having a stomach bug when you’re already nauseous from pregnancy is pretty miserable! Especially when one of the kids throws up. My husband had to take care of that one, even though normally I’m the stronger stomach.

I’m still not past the nausea, but the tiredness is slowly decreasing. That’s a relief, since these past few weeks I’ve hardly gotten ANY work done! I go between starving and not wanting anything to do with food. Cucumbers taste particularly good, which isn’t a bad craving to have. Healthy, at least.

While my due date is in early February, due to the complications I had with my son (C-section, breech and near zero amniotic fluid), my OB wants to do a C-section at 38 weeks, sooner if the amniotic fluid is low again. So I’ve told this baby two things:

1. Please don’t be born too close to Christmas.
2. Never, EVER sneak up like that on me again!

The hardest part about trying to work right now for me is dealing with a changed schedule. Evenings are still my preferred work time, at least out of habit, but they aren’t currently my best work time.

I’m figuring this out bit by bit. It means a lot of changes in how I run my day. I’m thinking I need to blog and work earlier in the day, and read other sites later. That’s rough, as it means trying to blog with the kids awake.

On the plus side, things have been going well for my personal income, if still a bit rough for my family. If I can work things up just a little better, I can keep us in this house despite my husband being unemployed. That would be huge, although the COBRA health coverage is still a big issue for us. He’s looking at some retail jobs just to get some other coverage going, as well as income. I’ve told him to ask for afternoon/evening/weekend hours so that he can still easily interview if a good job comes along. Not good for family time, but for the long run it could be important.

The end of the school year took quite a bit more out of me than I expected this year. It’s not just getting used to having 2 kids in the house rather than 1… that’s easier some ways since they love to play together.

But my kids just had to throw in a stomach bug. And my sister-in-law is in town. And some other stuff I’ll tell you about another day. Gotta tell family first, after all!

So many little things conspired to tire me out so much that these past two weeks I’ve barely worked at all. Ridiculous really, but the combination of recent events has left me completely exhausted.

But I think I can get back to work now.

There are a lot of challenges to working at home. You have a lot to get accomplished in the day and many distractions. It’s easy to have very high expectations of what you will accomplish on a particular day, and it’s not always realistic.

Worse, you probably feel guilty at times for focusing on work rather than on keeping a clean house. You’re home and you may feel like it’s a part of your job to keep that house clean. Traditional duty of the stay at home parent (especially moms) and all that.

But being at home should not mean that it all falls onto your shoulders. You need to look at what the appropriate divisions are.

The struggle often comes from it being unclear how you should divide the work up. If you feel like you aren’t contributing because your home business isn’t bringing in much money yet, you’re going to feel bad if the hours you work keep you away from keeping a perfect house. Yet you can be working long hours trying your best to make it work, and simply not have the time or the energy to do it all yourself.

I know I’m good at giving myself a guilt trip every time the house is a mess and I feel that I’m too busy to clean it up. Sometimes I think feeling guilty is simpler than feeling good about what I’ve achieved. After all, I can always compare myself to people who are doing better.

Somehow it seems to be easier for most of us to compare ourselves to those who do better than to recognize what we have achieved. There are all the things we dream about accomplishing, after all. Looking at what others have managed to do as we struggle along is just the way things go.

One thing all families should do is figure out who will be responsible for what. Working in or out of the home shouldn’t matter so much as the fact that one is working. That’s not always the reality of people’s expectations, but it’s a nice goal.

Get your spouse involved. Get the kids involved. Don’t let all the housework fall on one pair of shoulders.

Figure out what you will do at which times. Housework that needs to be done can be scheduled just like anything in your home business.

How well all of this works can tell you a lot about how supportive your spouse is of your working at home. If you both work a similar number of hours, yet you’re at home and expected to do a significantly larger chunk of the housework, you may need to have a talk to make sure that what you do is being taken seriously. Sometimes it’s not. Other times it will just be that your spouse hasn’t quite realized how much work you’re doing.

And if you’re earning enough and feel so inclined, hire a maid service to come once a week or so to do some of the heavy duty cleaning for you. This can be really helpful. If you’re earning enough it will be well worth the money. Sometimes it’s worth it even if you aren’t earning that much but need a break from feeling like you need to get that housework done.

It’s summer. Time to sign the kids up for a bunch of activities so that they won’t get bored, right?

Maybe. To an extent, perhaps.

Or maybe it’s better to give them some time to be kids. For having fun on their own terms. And yes, to be bored.

I’m not entirely against signing kids up for activities. I’m for limiting them. That’s because I don’t think children need to grow up having someone else always directing them in what they should be doing.

I certainly don’t blame kids for getting bored when they’re told to get out and play. Too many have too few chances to do just that. Most parents today are far more protective than our own parents were of us. My mother considers me to be much too protective at times. Yet I give my kids more freedom than many other parents I know.

One of my favorite things to do is to tell my kids to just go out to the back yard and play. They may grumble, but they’ll do it. And they’ll generally be having a blast in a fairly short amount of time. All I have to do is sit back and keep an ear open for the occasional screams. Meanwhile they’re finding bugs, nibbling as allowed in the garden, digging, getting utterly filthy and having fun.

If you don’t have a fenced in back yard and your kids are too young to play in unfenced areas unsupervised you do still have options. You can go with them and just lightly supervise. No hovering. Encourage the kids to settle their own arguments. Tell them to decide for themselves what is fun.

You’ll have to keep a closer eye if there’s a body of water nearby, of course, or other hazards, but children can play more or less independently even if you’re watching them. You just have to not join in each and every time. Play with them some of the time, of course, but encourage your kids to take the lead and to not always need you to play in order to have fun.

Just think about the things you remember most about growing up. Was it the classes you took, the activities you signed up for? Or was it the stuff you did on your own?

Chances are, it’s a combination. There may have been some classes or activities that really were that special to you, but doing things all on your own is probably a big part of your favorite childhood memories. No pressure, just time to be you.

And that is why I say some activities are fine. They can give kids the memories we want them to have. But the most memorable times are still likely to be just general fun things they did on their own or with friends.

Stop listening to all the people talking about all the activities their kids are in. Plan any activities based on what will work for your family, not on competition with other parents. Let your child learn what it is to win, to lose, to be creative, to get hurt at least a little, to be independent, to get so dirty you immediately throw him or her in the bath, to explore and to just be a kid.

Trust me, they’ll enjoy it. You probably will too.

Oh I’ve been fighting malware,
All the livelong day!
I’ve been fighting malware,
Trying to make it go away!

Can’t I find the files that were
Infected so early in the morn?
Scanning the computer over
and over and over again!

Scanning, what’d it find,
Scanning, what’d it find,
Scanning, what’d it find for meeee?
Scanning, what’d it find,
Scanning, what’d it find,
Oh come on, let this be it!

Think of this as sung to “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”. Probably badly too. It’s been a long day and I still don’t know if I’ve got it. Just glad in a way that it’s my husband’s computer rather than mine. I can at least do something semi-productive while waiting for each scan to finish.

Gas prices just keep going up. This has been going on for a while, but now many areas are breaking $4 a gallon – easily. It’s not a comfortable situation if you have a long commute.

And this is one of the most obvious ways that working outside the home has become more expensive. Many other prices have gone up as well.

I’ve come to realize that more and more people are getting serious about working at home, at least some of the time. They may only be able to telecommute a day or two a week, but the savings are obvious.

The challenge can be getting an employer to agree to let you telecommute. It’s not impossible if your job is suited to telecommuting, and many employers are feeling enough of a pinch from gas prices themselves that they may be more reasonable about it now than in the past.

This is why many others are looking at home business as an option. Most can be worked as you continue with your day job, so that you aren’t starting with no income whatsoever. You can find out if the business is going to be for you.

Starting a home business isn’t something you should do lightly. You should research your options and get several ideas for what you want to do. Then you can figure out which you want to focus on first.

Just one. You shouldn’t try to run multiple businesses right at the start. While there is something to be said for diversifying your income sources, if you try to do that right at the start you risk failing at them all. Learn how to run one business before you try to run several.

The beauty of it is that so many businesses can be run primarily online or entirely online. Even if you’re freelancing and taking on clients you can often do all meetings through email, IM or even VOIP. You may rarely need to meet with someone face to face.

That saves a lot of gas. Not to mention the other expenses.

If you want to consider this option, there are some things you will want to consider first to get a solid look at what you will be saving. It’s not just the gas money, after all.

You’ll cut back on dry cleaning bills, most likely. Most people who work at home don’t dress up for it. Some do feel more comfortable that way. Will you?

Similarly, you’ll probably spend less on your professional wardrobe.

Daycare may or may not be needed. This depends on the age of your children and how willing they will really be to let you work the hours you need. Not every parent who works at home keeps the kids there too.

You’ll probably eat out less. My lunch is often the previous night’s leftovers. Much cheaper than eating out. And of course there are many other fixings so that I can have a good lunch any day.

You can estimate these factors to figure out how much your home business needs to be reliably earning before you can quit your job. For most people this takes a while, and you should expect that. But you can also figure out if there’s a lower income level at which you can switch to a pure home business model.

And of course, figure out what you are willing to spend on a home business. It’s easy to underestimate what a business, particularly an online business, will cost you. Online businesses are relatively cheap to start, and you can start free if you really want to, but it’s often better to spend some money to get things moving a little faster. This means you need to know how much you are willing to risk and how much you will reinvest as you start earning.

If you can come up with ways to use less gas, the continuing rise in gas prices will still hurt, but you can limit its impact. How and where you work are potentially great places to cut back on your gas usage.

You’ve probably seen the ads often on television. Bundle your telephone, cable and internet (or similar services) and save money. Does it really work?

Not always!

In most cases you can do better by picking the best price for each service you want. The bundled price is simply better than if you bought the individual services from the company offering the bundle. They may not be beating the individual prices you can get.

Now prices can vary from one area to another, so it’s hard to say what the best companies will be for you. It can also depend on what level of service you really want. DSL, for example, may be quite acceptable for some people as an internet service, while others will only want cable. If you’re compromising on the quality or features you need, you are not going to be happy with a bundle.

Similarly, you may have had a bad experience with a particular cell phone carrier, or you may not get good reception in your area. And of course you may still be stuck in the middle of a two year contract that it’s not worthwhile to break.

This of course brings us to the point of “do you really need all those services?” And the answer is a very individual thing. You may have a good reason for needing both a land line and cell phone. You may need the high speed internet so that you can work from home more easily. But if you don’t need a service, bundling isn’t going to change that. Don’t use a bundle to add in a service you don’t actually want or need.

These days you have a lot of choices when it comes to land line telephone service. If you shop around, you can often do better outside of a bundle than in one. Similar for cell phones.

Cable television service, on the other hand, you often only have one choice, or else you have to go to satellite which not everyone wants to do.

As you compare, make sure you find out what the prices are after taxes and fees. If you look at your land line telephone bill, for example, you will see a number of fees and taxes added to the cost. These would be an issue when you bundle too.

It can be difficult to get an estimate of the taxes you will pay for some services when you order. It may not be at the customer service representative’s fingertips. But you can estimate based on what you pay for each now and do your best to get more information on the services you would be changing.

The one convenience many people state for bundling is that you get only one bill to pay. For me, that’s not much of a convenience, as bills can be paid automatically. Each still needs to be reviewed, but it’s not like you have to painstakingly write out a check for these services every month unless that’s still the way you prefer to do it.

As with anything else, bundling is only worth it if you’ve shopped around and you know what the deal really is. Don’t assume the commercials will tell you everything.

I can’t tell you how often I’ve had people ask me how they can earn some money online fast. It’s generally about some crisis in their lives, and they just need to earn some money, now!

While I’m not entirely unsympathetic to such needs, I do always mention to these people that very, very few people can manage that, and they are best off getting a regular job if things are so urgent. Or a second one if they already work.

It’s one of the ugly truths of working at home that it’s not so easy as many would claim to make a living. Some do earn money that quickly. More do not.

In a bad situation you should always go for the money you know you can get. That is, a job. And while jobs are somewhat harder to find right now than at other times in many areas, you generally can find something to do. Think about temp agencies, grocery stores, retail, fast food and restaurants if you need a job fairly quickly and earning something is more important than the exact type of job.

But if you need money really, really fast, a job isn’t the answer either.

A garage sale or selling things on eBay is a much better way to bring in some fast money. Almost everyone has some stuff they can sell. It may be hard to part with things you’ve had for years, but if that’s what it takes to get by, sometimes that is quite simply what you have to do.

Think of working at home as a long term strategy. It may pay off in the short run if you do everything right, but you are more likely to go through a significant learning curve. It may be years before you’re earning a living online.

Then again, it could be months. It depends on how well what you’re doing suits you and your customers, and how fast you learn. But don’t expect it to be one month to success.

Perhaps the fastest way to earn money online, if you have the skills, is to freelance. There are a number of sites, such as Guru, eLance and Shelancers where you can find work as a writer, website designer, graphic designer and so forth. It takes some time to get started, but once you have some clients things can go rather nicely. And if you provide a quality service you may get regular clients and word of mouth working for you.

Do not expect others to do all the legwork for you, however. I’ve had many people ask me if there’s such a thing as a real work at home job, when they’ve found me through my site that has a nice long list of jobs. If the resources are there in front of you, take advantage. If you need help figuring out what to do, ask for help and include your interests.

It takes a lot of self-motivation to succeed in any work at home endeavor, whether it be a job or a home business. Keep that in mind even when you ask for help. Your willingness to work should show from the start.