Inner voice

“Mama. UPPEEEYAH!!”

I look down from my laptop screen and an earnest toddler face is staring up at me, a plastic teacup in one hand, a baby doll in the other.

“Hi Bub,” I say, distractedly looking down at her tiny face. “What’s up?”

“UPPEEYAH! UPPEEYAH!” She bounces up and down on her chubby legs. Lift me up. On your lap. I want you. I want to lift her up, but I’m mid-train-of-thought on one of the four blog posts I am already behind on writing that I need to get done so that I can get to doing everything else that needs doing. I desperately think of ways to distract her. “Where’s your -”

“UPPEEYAH! EHMO! EHMO!” My words are cut off by insistent toddler demands for entertainment.

I sigh, torn. Good Mother. Bad Blogger. One or the other.

I lift her on to my lap, setting aside the list of posts I’m trying to get written before heading to the grocery store, the playdate, the coffee shop with the slides that saves my sanity. I try not to think of the lists of things that are just getting longer, the events I’m supposed to organize, the blogs I’m supposed to migrate and redesign and enlist writers for, the plants that need repotting, the laundry that needs putting away, the office that needs organizing. I think of one thing to do and it snowballs in to 50.

She settles in to my lap, contentedly. Maybe all she needs is a hug. Maybe that’s all I need, too.

…Inspiration has been lacking around here lately. It might just be February, February’s long short days of snow and ice and boots and coats and mittens, no no put on your mittens, no honey please don’t throw your mittens in to the snow, no no your mittens stay on your hands, no no OK forget it we’re almost to the car anyway. It might be the mundane-ness of living, of getting up and making breakfast and playing and getting lunch and naptime and getting supper and bed and how did it get to be 8 pm again? It might be that I’m using all my creative energy elsewhere, places like here and here and here which are all places that I love writing but maybe am I stretching myself too thin because I can’t even manage to write here anymore? Then I remember I barely managed to write here before all that and at least having someone else holding me accountable is forcing me to write, which actually kind of makes me a writer now that I think about it and how did that happen?

And then the inner voice takes the revelation and turns it on its head. You’re a writer, when you can manage it. Get it together. The piles of things to do mount physically and metaphorically. I think god, I need to get organized. Regimented. Out of bed at 7:30. Monday she has Cheerios and blueberries, Tuesdays an egg. Dressed by 8:30, out the door by 9 for the morning’s events organized alphabetically by season and weather. Except I’ve never been able to live like that, despite the fact that it would probably be really good for me, my life, my brain. The reality is she wakes up when she wakes up and if I wake up before she does I lay in bed reading tweets and playing angry birds instead of using the time putting away laundry and organizing the cans in the cupboard.

Inner voice.

I wonder if I could suck more.

I’m sure I could find a way if I tried.

…She’s on my lap, demands for Elmo forgotten. She leans her head against my head and puts her hand on the side of my face and pats it and says Mama in that voice that makes me melt. I lean down and hug her back, rocking both of us back and forth. Time stops.

Inner voice is silent.

Good. Stay that way.