Things that make going to work OK.

[OrmIrian]

1. The coffee fairy. Who ensures there is always coffee, milk and sugar in the kitchen. I have never had to make a mad dash to the corner shop because we've run out.

1. The toilet paper fairy. Same as above. Also applies to paper towels and soap.

1. The cleaning fairy who ensure the toilets, kitchen and the office generally are 20x tidier and pleasanter than home.

1. Clean windows. Never had to stare pointlessly out of the window through smudges and streaks.

1. People are polite. No-one ever grunts at me, ignores me or says 'but it's not fair. X had some', or 'I don't want to do Y'. They might be cross about something but they confine themselves to mildly snotty e-mails copied to someone else. No-one tends to have tantrums and throw things.

1. If I make an effort to scrub up a little no-one says 'Mummy why are you wearing those funny shoes?'. They might think it but they don't say it.

1. People always say please and thankyou, and I never have to say 'what do you say?' when I fix a problem, or e-mail a report.

1. Most of all, whilst I am grateful for all these, I am most grateful of all that these things happen without me having to do anything about it! And it they don't, it's somebody else's fault.

Not having to make up imaginary conversations with inanimate objects in a variety of voices(for DS1 age 3) whilst crawling around on the floor scraping up tomatoes etc after DS2's (age 1) lunch whilst he has a meltdown scores quite highly in my book. Infact, I can spend a whole hour or more on the same thought/task and not have to say anything at all whilst I am doing that in my job. Lovely . Not that I don't love my kids, but I am far more patient and engaged with them if I have not spent all day with them.

not having to interrupt little hands trying to 'recycle' the wastepaper basket

A boss that says, put the dinner tab on me and of course you can work from home, why did you have to ask. . Oh and yep I work in IT too.