All around me, doors are swinging open and closed, boots are dripping on the wood floor, the dog is jumping up and down with white flakes on her snout, siblings are arguing over who gets more of the shoveling money, and my husband is reorganizing our books and doing the laundry.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. 

It’s a Monday and I should be home alone. 

It’s my “me” day. And I will do many things for my family, but I will not give this up. Even on a snow day.

O.K., officially, Mondays are my day to freelance. After 16 years of full-time reporting at a public radio station, I negotiated one day off a week, unpaid, to have some control over my own time and try my hand at new kinds of writing. And, in fact, this new schedule has allowed me to take on jobs that I didn’t have time for in the past.

But here’s what I really do on my freelance day….