Get out of my head

Trying to find balance between motherhood and anything is hard. Just fill in the blank: eating, sleeping, working, pooping those darling little spawns of your womb believe if you shared your body once with them, then they are entitled to inject themselves into your business at any and all times of the day.

That's how I find myself writing staring at a computer screen trying to even complete the next sentence in my head let alone complete a plot while Child A bangs and sings Minecraft parodies at the top of his not so adorably off-key lungs through our shared wall, and Child B pops in every two minutes to ask what I am doing and why and what can he eat next because he's part Hobbit and has only had three lunches today and I realize this is a run on sentence but I can't seem to stop because at least I'm writing words down one after another in some babbling order.

After all, that's more than I've accomplished in the last two hours since my kids have been home from school.
So I break down dramatically, throwing bags of Boom Chicka Pop and organic apples in their direction and begging for a little quiet so mommy can finish the latest thrilling chapter in her dark young adult novel. And for a second, they are quelled and quiet until five minutes later when the little one sits in my lap and starts hitting the keys and asking if he can help me write while the older one reads over my shoulders asking what "Sexual tension" means only to be completed by the cat jumping onto the keyboard and helping the younger one write ckfhtjkosiwje all over my now sexually unfulfilled heroine.

And I love them. I really do. I think its adorable when they imitate me with their little notebooks and weak plots about Piggy Wiggy and the Beanstalk. But I just wish there was a way to extricate them from my head without waves of guilt or pawning them off on my mother in law or equally exhausted friends.

I've told them time after time that I'm a person too with dreams and desires of my own and not just an automaton who makes them chicken nuggets and drives them to basketball. But I don't think they believe me.

I know J.K. Rowling's mantra to make writing time sacred.  So I have neglected PTO requests till the other moms give me dirty looks at drop-off; my friends think I've "lost the plot" and have dissolved into an anti-social weirdo who doesn't brush her hair and skips coffee talk and gym sessions to play pretend; and I cram errands into the two hour window where I only have to drag the six year old with me.
And I'm lucky. I have three hours in the morning while my youngest goes to half day kindergarten to organize, research, and write.  But my sadistic brain really gets going about thirty minutes before I have to pick up my six year old.

So I spend the next eight hours till bed-time trying to repress any creativity so that I can do homework and make dinner and tie knots at cub scouts, all the while waiting to unleash that next sentence after their heads hit the pillow.

Yet, after the third request for a tuck in or a desperate search for teddy, I fall into my chair behind the computer screen staring blankly and trying to remember words and what order they go in. My brain has turned to mush. The plot has run away and my characters won't talk to me.

In the grand scheme of things, I know this is a 1st world problem, and I even glare with contempt at my own whining. But I wish there was a way to balance motherhood and creativity that didn't involve locking them in a closet with two iPad, a bowl of Goldfish, and a muzzle (please don't call C.P.S. I never actually did that, just contemplated it). I know some people will say, it will happen in time when my kids are grown up. But I'm afraid the people in my head pressing my brain to get their stories out don't want to wait. I don't want to be in suspended animation until they are 18 and out of the house. Isn't there a way to be mother and me?