Once again, we’re in the thick of cold and flu season. And, once again, millions of parents are eying their sick days and wondering if they can really take any of them, even though they know they should stay out of the office when they’re sick.

Eighty percent of common infections can be spread through the air, water, food, and via contact with contaminated surfaces, Peter Sheldon, vice president of the commercial cleaning company Coverall, told me.  And the places where people are most likely to pick up germs aren’t as obvious as you might think.
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A good friend once told me that she thinks it’s hilarious that I write about work-life balance when I  have so little of it myself. I tell them that I really write about juggling work and life, my full-time career and full-on family, which means that when it comes to balance, I’m the fulcrum on which it rests, not the one who actually achieves it.

But still, she’s right. And now that my primary office is inside my own house, the scales have tipped way over to the work side of things. Which means that I need to do a better job of going from “work mode” to “home mode.”
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Now that my main office is inside my house, I spend more time on Facebook than I used to when I was commuting to work 40 miles away. It’s become my water cooler in a lot of ways, the place I go to catch up with coworkers, vet story ideas, and chat about the latest news.

But Facebook seems to change in some tiny way or another every few weeks. Between trying to navigate a new timeline to figuring out whether you follow your friends and their status feeds, it’s easy to forget to check your privacy settings. And Facebook counts on that, to some extent.
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A recent study of 1,364 new mothers found that, over the course of about a decade, the moms who worked at least part time were healthier and happier than those who decided to stay home with their kids — especially when their kids were very young.

It sounds like the latest battle in the ongoing Mommy Wars, but it doesn’t have to be. The health benefits, the happiness… I think it all boils down to whether you’re doing what you really want to be doing.
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