Art and Mamma - a battle of hours?

I go over this in my head every single day.  I run the same themes through the same worn tracks in my synapses.  How do I actually make time to write and parent and have my full-time teaching career?  Am I truly insane?  Am I just lazy and I need to stop complaining and just dive in?  Perhaps somewhere inbetween.

I fight between wanting to do physically healthy things like exercise - run or do some dance conditioning - or sitting down to write while Hudson naps.  And writing this blog only vaguely counts because what I really want is more poetry in my life.  For naptime, running usually wins out because the stroller is the easiest way for Hudson to fall asleep.  What about bedtime?  Well, tonight is a beautiful example of what I want, which is a couple hours to myself, but that's only becuase Hudson fell asleep in the car seat on the way home from a family event in Tacoma.  Usually I lay down with him until he falls asleep, and the problem is that I'm usually asleep by then too.  Shouldn't I wake up early then?  Yes, I should.  Do I?  Never.  There's a major discipline issue on my part, but I also hate to remove sleeping baby limbs from me and try to sneak out of bed without waking him.  It is really friggin cozy.

The bottom line is that I KNOW all artsy mammas fight the same battles in their minds, and some of them are actually able to catch the discipline needed, and they do art.  In particular I like two books, My Mother Wears Combat Boots by Jessica Mills, and Mamaphonic, a collection of essays by artsy mammas in all art forms, edited by Bee Lavender.  I want to find others and welcome recommendations.  Partly it's good to know that every mamma has her own story and her own way of making it work, and it's partly good to know that we all face the same basic struggles of stereotypes, demands of family and career, and organizing our time to deal with all of it. 

I have seen forums, blogs, and magazines online that seem to be more or less dedicated to this topic.  I know that we are now an Internet society, so I should expect to look for artsy mamma community online (I am in fact writing a blog, am I not?) but I find something lacking nonetheless.  There are one or two replies in a forum's thread, there are scattered blogs with few comments.  I am very, yes, very thankful they exist (so I don't end up reading something like "Seattle Woman") but I am on the hunt for human contact.  I need another writing buddy like I had in PA (oh, how I miss you!!) and a mamma buddy too.  Soon enough, right?  I've been here barely a month.  But I know how it goes -- September comes and I start teaching and there is no more rich, internal life of pondering the shade of a daisy petal half dampened by Pacific Northwest mist while my son bats gently at the flower, providing a metaphor for the moment...

I am going to get out of Blogger and open my freewriting notebook to do at least a few minutes of writing practice RIGHT NOW.  That's all I can do, right?  Grab the minutes as they come.  Keep the notebook handy.  Maybe, just maybe there will also be time for Ben when he gets home from a flamenco show later.