What do you call "work?"

So determined was I to succeed at my journalism career, that I worked  the day before giving birth to my first child and was back at my desk three weeks later.  Stay home? No way -- in large part because being home was too much work.  
So I had to laugh about the brouhaha over Hilary Rosen’s comment that Ann Romney, mother of 5, had “never worked a day in her life.”  Tough as it was being a “working mother,” juggling a reporting/editing career and three kids, what I’m doing now is harder. And certainly less rewarding, both financially and psychologically.
Since I haven’t yet figured out my “next great thing,” as spring fever struck,  I’ve been pouring my energy into the house that I’ve neglected for the last 30 years.
Take my day yesterday: I discovered that a glass window in my basement had fallen out. Plus,  there’s a wire screen covering the window, making it impossible to reach from the outside. Somehow, after pulling the glass inward, washing it, scraping off old paint, and gathering supplies to try to caulk it back in from the inside (likely impossible), I dropped the glass. Oh, well.
Instead, I tackled my deck, which got filthy over the winter despite an oil-based sealant.  After an hour, I took a break and turned to the garden, as long as I was still wearing gloves from the deck job, pulling crab grass by hand.
Then I turned to the key problem. The key was spinning around in our double cylinder lock. I’d taken it apart once before, after it broke, and discovered that it had been installed slightly off center, putting torque on the key. Try holding both sides of a double cylinder lock so it doesn't fall off the door, while unscrewing screws, then lining up tiny pins through a dark hole you can’t see into. (I know a lot of you have tried this). That took up another hour.
Did I have lunch?  Did I get to gossip around the water cooler? Did a colleague express appreciation for a good idea I’d come up with ?
When my husband came home from work that night, I insisted he look at the marvel of my key repair (even if the yard was still weedy, the glass still missing, and the deck still pockmarked.)
“Tell me what a great job I did!” I begged.