Having a home-based business doesn't strictly mean you use all the resources you have at home to conduct your, well, business. No matter the composition of your household, I recommend you use a separate phone line as your business line, but make sure you plug yourself on your home phone voice mail greeting.

I only started using my cell phone number as my business line about a year ago, after a few very painful experiences while using our home line as my contact number. Not only do I have a hubby and three young children potentially answering that incoming customer call, but also a hubby-mother (God love 'er) and hubby-brother living with us who may not necessarily know how to handle said call. For example, there was the time I was indisposed in the restroom....

H-M: LEI, ARE YOU IN THERE? (larger font means higher volume)
Me: Uh, ya?
H-M: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Me: Um, I'm going to the washroom.
H-M: OKAY. (now speaking into the phone to what I later learned was a host) SHE'S IN THE WASHROOM.

It took several months, but I think 95% of my business-related calls now come to my cell phone, and when I can't answer it, nobody does, and the call goes to my voice mail instead.

This afternoon, as I was preparing to take the shower I had waited so patiently for (taking it any earlier today would have left Little Guy unattended), I heard a yawp behind the door.

H-M: LEI, ARE YOU NAHKED YET?

Hence the title of today's entry. By the way, it turns out, it was just my hubby-brother on the other end of the phone that time, waiting for my take-out dinner order. Although that didn't really put me, in all my birthday glory, very much at ease.