Working from home with a small child in residence presents unique challenges. Any of you who have done this will know what I'm talking about. The business phone ringing becomes a signal to your child to fall and hurt themselves; or, more likely, to suddenly discover they must tell you immediately and in detail all about the cheerio they found in the cat box; an event so profound it can not possibly wait for your client to finish placing their order.

I first began making beads and jewelry when Katy, my daughter, was 3 years old. Working from home would have been difficult enough if I did something normal like desk-top publishing or corporate piracy. But no, I had to choose a profession that involves the daily use of a torch. To say that working when my daughter was around was out of the question is to understate the case. Not only was I playing with fire, the torch is loud enough that I couldn't hear the soft sounds of a toddler picking up stray objects and testing them with her mouth. Working while she was conscious became taboo.

To solve this dilemma I began getting up at 4:00 am to work. Katy, bless her, was one of those rare children who slept through the night early in life and never woke before 7:00 am. (This being a good thing at age 2 becomes a problem at age 6 when you need her out of bed at 6:00 am to catch the school bus.) I took my baby monitor to my studio (aka the garage) and turned it on high so I could hear when Katy woke up, and could usually get three hours of torch work in each morning.

There was one particular morning I will never forget. I awoke at 4am as usual, dressed quickly, and set off for my studio ready to work. At first, when I flipped on the light, the faint scritching of claws on cement did not alarm me. We had a cat door into the garage to allow Walter, our cat, a place to eat and to get out of the weather. But Walter is a marmalade cat, and the animal scuffling out of sight was... black...? Still, I was not concerned. Obviously another cat had discovered the door and was helping himself to the buffet. I moved closer to get a better look at our new visitor. Uh...Was that a white strip running down the length of the back and tail?

The next few moments are a blur in my memory. I managed to get out of the garage at an amazing rate of speed without unduly alarming The Visitor. I ran to the bedroom in a panic. "Steve! Steve! There's a skunk in the garage!!!"

My husband, groggy but intrigued, pulled on a robe and went out for a look. Standing cautiously at the door we observed the skunk calmly nibbling at the cat food.

Pepe lePew, as I began calling him, visited my studio three more times before we finally got an electronic cat door for Walter. Walter now wears a special collar which unlocks the door, thus keeping out any other denizens of the night. We saw Pepe one more time after that, ambling about the back yard. He disappeared through a two inch crack in the fence and was never seen again. To my eternal gratitude, he never did spray us or our home; and after a while I almost missed seeing him. Almost...