All Hail Email

Email makes me crazy. After a one-week vacation this summer, I returned to work to find my inbox teeming with more than 1,400 emails.

But email is also my friend. As careful readers of the Working Parents blog may recall, my son Leo has had six surgeries in the past two years. His latest surgery was on Sept. 7. Rather than spending the entire day at the hospital trying sneak calls on my cell phone to let everyone know how he was doing, I used an email list (which I save as a draft in my inbox)to send out an update. My colleagues, family, as well as friends are on the "Leo List," so it's a very easy way to get in touch with everyone in our world in one fell swoop. And whenever anyone asks how Leo is doing, I simply add them to the list if they aren't on it already.