Mommy's Helper - Giving WAHMommies a Helping Hand

Raggedy vs. Pentium
By Julianne Johnson

As the arrival of my first child imminently approaches, my husband and I are trying to turn our dinky second bedroom from office to baby's room. If anyone has an extra fairy godmother or a leprechaun lying around, please send them our way. Their assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Having lived in New York City style apartments all my life, I am well accustomed to the duality that can exist in any given space. We keep our bikes hanging in the bedroom and camping gear stored with the Christmas ornaments and winter coats. Actually, the winter coats, we just leave at the cleaners till spring. They don't seem to mind! But nothing in my urban upbringing has prepared me for this convergence of two worlds. Just how to you merge Raggedy Ann and Andy with your Pentium 3 processor?

We had the usual concerns while rearranging our home office. The location of our computer desk too close to the radiator was one such concern. Normally, a paragon of safety issues, I found myself insisting that we shove the desk as close to the radiator as it would go. I'll just put an extra smoke alarm right over the area sometime soon.

The flow of the room is now completely changed with the desk on one side and crib on the other. If I stretch hard, I can reach the baby and respond to email at the same time. But, isn't this is the point, really? As I will be earning my living through our home computer now, I had better be ambidextrous, to say the least.

And then there is the carpet. We bought a new carpet remnant for the baby's office, as we have taken to calling it. The carpet, a lovely shade of blue, works nicely with the blue of Raggedy's apron, but it doesn't cover the entire floor. While arranging, the rug, we thought, this set up was ideal, as our office chair will not glide so well on carpeting. Well, we have left ourselves a perfect 2 foot square with which to maneuver the chair. It no longer matters that the chair is on wheels, you have to pick it up and move it yourself if you want to go further then say, the keyboard.

And did I mention the modem connections? We are a very computer literate household, so of course our computer connection is the fastest it can possibly be. However fast, we discovered somewhat latently, that it still needs to be connected to the wall! Shocking that neither my Online Producer of a husband nor myself thought that through. Now, we have the cable running out of the wall, under the carpet, through the 2 foot square allotted for the chair and into the computer. Hey, if I can log onto Yahoo, we're doing something right.

At the very least, now everything is functional albeit awkward. Still, I'm thinking of getting the baby an email address. I figure, she/he can just hop on line from the crib whenever so moved!