I DO work at home!

If you're like the rest of us with home offices, you've undoubtedly come across the skeptics of the world. You know the ones, the people who smile politely when you answer the questions "what do you do?" and "where do you work?" Despite what some people think, working at home is not a euphemism. So, I get kind of annoyed when people who aren't feeling well tell me how lucky I am that I “work at home.”

Let's face it--we all have days when we just don't feel well. I have days when my head aches, I can't stop coughing and my bones hurt from the chills that are rattling through my body. In traditional work circumstances, I'd be on the phone to my boss, hacking away while I briefed him on the day's agenda because I am definitely staying home. But what am I supposed to do when my office and my sick zone are the same place? Do I tough it out or do I pack it in for the day?

I don't know about you but my deadlines don't disappear because I have a cold. Nor do I have someone who can cover my work for me. So, while today I don't feel lousy (or even sick at all) --the person who called me obviously did and, I'm sorry to say, didn't get a whole lot of sympathy from me—there will be days that I will be sick and working. That's right, working, at home!

What Happened Here: a Sick Mom?

Gotbaum kin's plea before dying: I'm not a terrorist! (NY Daily News headline)


I don't know about anyone else, but this story is disturbing to me. On a whole lot of levels. Maybe not the same levels as everyone else...

The daughter-in-law of one of New York's top officials screamed, "I'm not a terrorist!" and fought with security officials in the Phoenix airport before being wrestled to the ground and handcuffed, witnesses told the Daily News yesterday.

Firstly, if she was trying to get the handcuffs over her head from the back, one would think the news stories would have also mentioned her horribly dislocated shoulders. It's just not possible to do it that way.

Carol Anne Gotbaum, 45, of the upper West Side, died less than an hour later, after cops claim she apparently strangled herself while trying to escape from the handcuffs in a holding cell at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

Secondly, why is there so little attention being paid to the reports that she identified herself as ill?

"I'm not a terrorist! I'm a sick mom! I need help!" yelled the mother of three after she missed the 2:58 p.m. US Airways Express flight to Tucson, said airport workers who witnessed the confrontation Friday.

Why is the important part of this story that she's the daughter-in-law of someone important?

(CNN news story)

Hill said Gotbaum -- the daughter-in-law of longtime New York labor leader Victor Gotbaum -- may have accidentally strangled herself while trying to escape from the handcuffs.

Gotbaum also was the daughter-in-law of longtime New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum.

And, then there's the question of how seven security officers who heard a woman screaming constantly, took so long to "notice" she was "suddenly" silent. Ten minutes is a long time to be without a constant noise before noticing it's absent.

I, unlike, many others the web community today, don't wish to speculate about what really happened to Carol Anne Gotbaum. I'd rather extend my sympathies to her children who are now motherless and just as bewildered as the rest of the nation.