PAULA NEAL MOONEY

by Paula Neal Mooney A teacher at my child’s pre-school peeked into my minivan as I stopped in the driveway to let my daughter out and took advantage of my few seconds of stillness to put the finishing touches of crimson polish on the acrylic nail covering my thumb. "Mom is multi-tasking," she observed. "Always," I answered, before zipping back down West Market Street with my driver’s side window and sunroof ajar, drying my nails in the 30-degree weather. I had only a few minutes to devote to wet nails – for once home I’d hit it again: back on the computer, typing in my drafty sitting room as the sun beamed brightly beyond the bay window through the trees. I Know How I Do It… …‘cause I know I’m not really the one doing all the miraculous tasks that make up my days, flowing smooth as melted butter. Take one day last December, for instance, when I raced my son into his classroom with around 100 seconds to spare, then traipsed with my daughter over to WalMart to buy a ...

by Paula Neal Mooney It's been eons -- well, since 2004 exactly -- since I held a "real job" from a "real desk" in corporate America. That was before I began this blog, so these days I often wonder: Do people update their personal blogs on the job? And like Fantasy Football fanatics, how much is this "fleece-blogging" costing companies? Of course, I'm not talking about corporate bloggers nor freelance bloggers for which blogging is part of the work day deal. I'm wonder how many "regular folk" like financial analysts, accountants, librarians, etc. are out there blogging using their office computers. I was, after all, a master at monkeying around on the job. My sister reminds me of the day I was so happy when I figured out how to write my magnum opus novel in invisible type on Microsoft Word so no colleagues could see what I was doing. (I shouldn't even mention the extended lunch hours I used to take, some days working out and hangi...