I love little memes like this one: The Glory of the Stay-at-Home Mom. And then I look at it again, and I hate it.

It’s true in some respects. I often feel that staying at home isn’t something that can be understood until you try it out. It’s not for the faint of heart, either. At first glance, it seems like there is an easy road where a person gets to play all day at doing things that are fun. Somehow it never works out that way, though.

All right, at first when I didn’t have children, my days were filled with writing and playing guitar and messing around with some video games. It didn’t take long to just clean up after myself. Then living with my husband it took a little longer. During pregnancy most of those chores got harder.

Last year I wrote about my three-ish jobs and juggling a child who stayed at home with me all day. Minus three-ish jobs and juggling two children and the household chores makes me feel very much like the woman with six hands in the last frame of that meme. Except I don’t have six hands.

And I’m sure someone will like to comment that the chores are the same no matter if one parent stays home or if both work, and someone might even be right.

All I can say is I want to write during naptime. The trick here is to get both kids to nap at the same time. And have that time be uninterrupted with diapers or random screams or anything else of the sort.

I know the conventional wisdom is to sleep while the baby sleeps. Well, it doesn’t work. I have to be beyond exhausted to get my body and brain to agree to a nap, and even then the smallest disturbance knocks me out of it. I “wake” feeling more fatigued than when I attempted the nap.

So unless I know I can manage at least an hour uninterrupted, I’d rather be productive. I can blog, I can meditate, I can plot, I can write my 750, I can even research potential markets – all of these things are contributing to my career goals.

Right. I admit it. I have career goals and part of it is to stay at home.

Naps don’t last forever, and I’m probably pushing it with my daughter nearing three. My son seems very resistant to napping during the time she deigns to be quiet. Somehow, I will make it work. Determination can make things happen that otherwise wouldn’t.

But if anyone does know how to switch diaper times from 2 am and 2pm to 8 am and 8 pm, I’d be grateful. Or, really, any time when we’d already be awake. Domestic chores are trying my patience. It must be time for more yoga.

I am determined to keep writing, despite the dishes daring me to put just one more on the stack, and the laundry sitting to become riddled with wrinkles. It’s a lot to do. Most of the time I’d just prefer to ignore it, though somehow that only makes it worse when the time comes to tackle the chores.