Disclaimer - I wrote this awhile back and never posted it.

1. Addie does not like orange Gatorade. Or red. Or yellow. Or Blue. Only pink. And if she does not have pink, she would rather stay dehydrated and scare me to death by retching and turning a rather nasty shade of green.
2. Jake thinks the process of vomiting is absolutely fascinating, and can't wait 'til Addie gives it another hurl. Yuck.
3. Landers hates it when no one is answering his phone - especially when he is the one calling it. Thank heavens he is giving me some leeway since I had a sick kid and we had not formally agreed on how to handle emergencies.
4. I cannot work when the kids are sick. If I try, I end up hanging up on customers and freaking out about both the sick kid and the substandard work at the same time.
5. I can take time off for sick kids. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to ask. If I had an office job, I would have called out for the day. Being a VA is a type of "office job" as well even though the office is in my house. I need to remember to treat it that way. Landers said he'd always rather me call in sick so that he can answer the phones or change the outgoing message than try to handle a family emergency and the business at once.

The past 24 hours have really shown me that I've lost perspective on this job. I was so busy avoiding Landers that I seriously thought about just hanging everything up, saying I couldn't care for the kids adequately with this job and going back to just staying at home with Jake. I even talked to Tom about it, who - surprise, surprise - said he thought I should think carefully before I made that decision. I thought he'd be overjoyed. But he said that not only does the money help, but it seems like I've been happier working at home than I was before. He suggested that I talk to Landers next week about how to better delineate my work time and my home time, maybe even putting some regulation on how and when I answer the phones.

I'm doing good work, and more than I was hired to do. That's fine, but I need to make sure that the work is still worth it.