I’m writing this on my laptop in the waiting area at my sons’ dentist’s office so that later we can hang out at the lake together. I won’t bring my laptop to the lake, and not just because I don’t want to get sand between the keys. Because I’ve carved out that time to be with my kids.

I’ve managed to build a home-based (and sometimes, dentist’s office-based) business around my kids’ schedules, but it takes a lot of orchestrating and rearranging. Without technology, though, I couldn’t do this at all. Yet I’m very careful not to cross over to the dark side.

It’d be easy to fill the hours between the end of school and dinnertime with work, but I rarely do. I just don’t want my kids’ after-school memories to be of the back of my head in front of a computer screen while I shush them. I’d much rather spend that time handing out ice pops to a posse of sweaty, filthy boys who are playing soccer in my backyard. I am the hostess of the frat house for fourth graders, after all.

I do, however feel the pull of my email when I’m not at my computer, or when my PDA is buried in my purse while I’m out. The Internet never closes. But if I made myself available all the time to everybody who visits my website from every time zone, not to mention all those moms who drop by my site between night feedings, I’d never sleep. So…