Especially on Sundays

I am not a spontaneous person. I tend to do things on the spur of the hour.

Inbox blues

What if you had a coworker who sneaked into your cubicle every time your back was turned and stacked more work on your desk?

You wouldn't stand for it, right? You'd complain to the boss, or have words with the coworker or give him a deserved thrashing.

But that very scenario happens all the time. With e-mail.

Whenever you're not looking (and sometimes right before your very eyes), e-mail slips into your computer and deposits work assignments there. There's no stopping it. There's no arguing with e-mail. You can't even beat it up.

Sure, you can turn off your e-mail, even turn off the whole computer, but many of us can't do our work without a computer. And shutting off e-mail means cutting yourself off from the world. Eventually, you're forced to turn it back on. And guess what? The work will be there waiting for you.

All this came to mind recently after I finished a big project. I was so happy to be done, I met my wife for lunch to celebrate. Finally finished! After months of daily striving. Now I could catch my breath. I could take a few days off. My time was my own. I could take a nap or read a book or go for a stroll.

I went home to my computer, eager to send an e-mail to my best friend, to crow about finishing my big project and getting some time off.

You guessed it. Waiting in my inbox were three e-mails from people who needed me to do some work or make some decisions. Right away. So much for a nap. I had another hour of work to do.

Remember the days when you could be unavailable? No e-mail, no cell phones, no laptops. You could take the weekend off, even take a vacation, and your employers wouldn't call unless there was a dire emergency. Now, the work never stops coming.

Your boss gets an idea on the golf course on Saturday, zips it to you via e-mail, and you're expected to have a full proposal ready by Monday morning. You spend a quiet evening at home with the family, but make the mistake at looking at your e-mail just before bedtime; whoops, you're working until 2 a.m.

Work delivered by e-mail is impersonal and uncaring. If your boss tries to shovel a big, steaming pile of work onto your desk in person, he might pick up some cues. He might notice that you're already overwhelmed, extremely annoyed, even homicidal. With e-mail, he can zip that work your way without worrying that you might club him with a paperweight.

Just maintaining one's inboxes presents a ton of work. Sorting out the spam and the porn and the greeting cards and the Nigerian money scams can gobble up hours every day. Hiding among all those jokes and gibberish and attachments will be more work, lying in wait, snickering.

I don't know about you, but I'm ready to give my computer a good thrashing. Soon as I answer these e-mails.

FAQ on BBQ: Call 911, go to ER

Any fool can hurt himself in a modern kitchen, but to really get some third-degree burns, you need a barbecue grill.

Summertime is cookout season. Time to go out in the yard, stand under the broiling sun, and char some artery-clogging meat. Create a mushroom cloud of oily smoke that'll have your neighbors dialing 911. Enjoy the sizzle of spattering grease hitting your howling dinner guests.

For eons now, since the day our humble ancestors discovered fire, people have used open flames to turn simple animal flesh into crunchy, bleeding, chew-proof repasts. Cavemen squatted around fires on the ground, but we've come so far since then. Now we have barbecue grills, which stand on legs, putting the flames even closer to your face and other anatomical regions that react poorly to burning.

The barbecue grill was invented by the ancient Romans. In fact, the word "barbecue" comes from the Latin "barbecus," which translates to "my apron is on fire." Those fun-loving Romans knew nothing makes a meal more enjoyable than watching the host prance around in flames.

In contemporary times, cookouts have become synonymous with summer, as American as apple pie and fireworks and paper plates. When it's already 100 degrees outside, why not go out and start a big, hot fire? Heat stroke is a good excuse for steaks that are poorly cooked.

Outdoor grilling has become the province of men. Big, sweaty guys who wouldn't be caught dead whipping up something in the kitchen will push others out of the way to get to a barbecue grill.
Why? Because of the element of risk involved. There's something manly about poking and prodding among roaring blazes. Men bring their charred offerings to the table, their chests puffed out, the hair singed off their arms, and they feel they've proven something. They've proven they can produce a meal without setting the lawn on fire -- this time.

At our house, my wife has taken over the grilling chores. It's part of our whole role-reversal thing, plus it gives her the opportunity to cook burgers that don't come out like hockey pucks. This resolves a conflict that has plagued us through our married life: I like meat well-done to the point of inedibility, she wants rare, rare, rare. Her idea of cooking a steak is to show an unlit match to a live cow.

I don't feel usurped now that she's the one sweating over the grill. Better for me to sit in a lawn chair a safe distance away, swilling beer and offering advice such as: "Hon, your hair's on fire."

There may be those among you who haven't yet savored the joys of cooking outdoors. What follows is advice on properly using a grill. Take this advice seriously. I'm a barbecue veteran, and I've got the scars to prove it.

Choosing a grill

Barbecue grills come in a vast array of sizes and styles, from the big Cadillac models with side burners and aloe vera plants, down to the lowly "hibachi," (from the Japanese for "my kimono's on fire.") When selecting your grill, the main question will be: charcoal or gas? Gas grills are easier to use, but they're essentially just outdoor stoves. Charcoal gives meat a wonderful smoky flavor, and the risk is high. Ask any impatient cook who's decided a little more charcoal starter should be spritzed onto the sputtering coals. Nothing's as satisfying as the whoompf of sudden flames 20 feet high.

Cleaning your grill

You're supposed to clean them? Haha, just kidding. A wire brush does a nice job of removing ash and blackened meat bits. Don't worry about cleaning the outside of the grill. Just leave it outdoors over the winter and let Mother Nature do the work. Once it rusts out, it's time to get a new one.

Grill safety

Surely it's clear by now that "safe grilling" is an oxymoron. You want safe, you should go to a restaurant. Tell the waiter you want your steak just like you eat them at home: Black on the outside, bloody on the inside, covered in ashes and bugs. While you're at it, see if you can get him to set his apron on fire.

Brand-new day

You often hear busy adults say there "just aren't enough days in the week" to get everything done.

The solution, clearly, is to add more days.

I'd suggest that we squeeze another day into our weekends. It could be a day for family members to go their separate ways, pursuing their individual hobbies, sports, etc. We'd call it Scatterday.

Got a better idea? Post your proposed calendar additions in the comments.

Holidays for the housebound

Now that the holiday weekend has drawn to a close, many of us who work at home can take a deep breath and say: What holiday weekend?

Holidays don't mean much to work-at-home spouses. Neither do weekends. No matter how special the time off may be for you regular workaday types, for us they're just more of the same. Deadlines still must be met, laundry must be done, meals must be cooked, trash must be bagged, kids must be rounded up and hosed off.

Sometimes, the workload even increases on weekends. Spouse and children go into a sloppy who-cares-it's-the-weekend mode, and the spouse-in-charge becomes ever more harried,
trying to keep the household together.

Weekends and holidays are the times when people come to visit. Those people know which spouse is in charge of keeping up the house, so we become hyperaware of the dust bunnies and the dirty socks and the strewn toys. We bustle around, trying to pick up the candy wrappers and newspapers and individual shoes that the other family members shed around the house like dandruff. And there's no way we can keep up because we're outnumbered.

All this, plus we try to pack in recreational activities, so our spouses won't discover we've become total drudges who've forgotten how to have fun.

By the time Monday rolls around, we almost welcome it. Sure, the work has piled up over the weekend, but at least fewer people are underfoot and we can clean and scrape and put away and replenish. This can take several days, particularly if a non-housework project deadline looms, but eventually order is restored to the household. By then it's Friday, and the weekend bedlam hits again.

This nonstop, seven-day-a-week workload is one reason it's so important for at-home workers to occasionally treat themselves to a real day off. Pack the kids off to Grandma's and let them wreck her house for a change. Ignore the clutter and dust and dirty socks. Avoid the computer and the telephone and the fax machine. Take some time just for yourself, luxuriate in the lack of demands, get a massage, go to a movie, read undisturbed. Or just sit quietly, shell-shocked, not quite believing that you have a day to yourself.

How best to spend a day alone? We here at The Home Front have taken an informal poll of housespouses and have ranked the popularity of their suggestions. We offer them to you, as a public service, so you can make the most of those rare days of solitude:

1. Sleep.
2. Nap.
3. Drink beer.
4. Doze.
5. Sit in quiet repose, plotting how to get more days off.
6. Gardening (although this comes dangerously close to working).
7. Lounge by the pool.
8. Sleep by the pool.
9. Treat sunburn.
10. Go to the movies and pig out on popcorn.
11. Watch rented videos and pig out on microwave popcorn.
12. Purge.
13. Indulge in a bubble bath and hours of personal grooming.
14. Stare longingly into the mirror, wishing that grooming made a difference.
15. Go to a park, lie on your back in the soft grass and count clouds. Awaken hours later to treat sunburn and insect bites.
16. Sit in the cool indoors and meditate. Try to ignore squeaky sound the air conditioner suddenly is making.
17. Read good books.
18. Read trashy books.
19. Thumb through magazines.
20. Thumb a ride to the next town so your family can't find you when they get back. .