Angela Amman

stories of choices and consequences

Musings

da(y)zed & confused

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Dylan and I spent a couple of days up north this week, beautiful days with sunsets and floating on the water and poking around in little shops. However, we went from Monday to Wednesday, and now my body refuses to understand what day of the week it is. Summer always gets tricky when you work in a school, because days fade into each other, and I can do things during the week that normally get saved until weekends. This time, though, I can’t shake the feeling that my days just aren’t right.

Maybe it’s because my birthday (and birthday dinner) fell on a Thursday, and we ate late, so it felt more like a Friday. Now we are getting ready for a pool party with friends, but I can’t force my brain to understand that it truly is Saturday and not Sunday.

None of this is a huge deal, at least not until I have to start going back to work, except there are things that need to be done. I consult my calendar and planner more times than I should need to each day, and I’m triple checking alarm clock times before drifting off to bed. I wake up feeling like I missed something, even though I know I didn’t.

To be honest, it’s probably a bit of back-to-school/work anxiety creeping into my head. We’re tiptoeing into the BTS waters with trips to the mall, this year’s emergency contact updates, and glancing at school supply lists. Both kids get their class schedules for the year next week. Understanding the why doesn’t make it any less disconcerting. All I can do is keep double checking my lists and try to breathe myself back into the present.

It’s a reminder, I think, that all of the planning in the world doesn’t always help when things don’t feel right. All of the checklists and reminders can’t give me control of the things that are out of my control. I don’t like that feeling. I’m trying to sit with it, but my stomach still twists and turns and keeps me awake some nights. I hope as our schedules settle into place, so do my nerves.

birthday wishes

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I don’t love my birthday. It comes at a weird point in the summer for someone who goes back to work in the fall, a time when it’s too early to really feel ready to shift seasons but too late to feel like I’m still luxuriating in summer. It feels even stranger this year, because we’re creeping up on the anniversary of my mom’s diagnosis. Last year, the kids and I celebrated her birthday with her in Brighton, and that might have been the last real normal family celebration we had.

The kids made me cards (I will frame Abbey’s, filled with beautifully colored drawings) and Ryan found one that’s seriously perfect for us, even though he doesn’t love cards. He, Abbey, and I went to see Barbie while Dylan was in karate, which was probably the right choice for him. We had a fun dinner together, fake playing pub trivia and eating one of my favorite pizzas.

It still felt uncomfortable, and I feel unsettled and uncomfortable today. I ran this morning and did laundry and got most of my to-do list done. I shouldn’t feel like this, but I do. I’m not sure why contentment feels out of reach lately. I wanted to use this summer to re-set from a truly impossible year, with the knowledge that another, even more impossible year will come at some point. No matter how well Mom is doing right now, at some point, all of the chemo in the world won’t be enough to stop the cancer from spreading.

Maybe that’s why I’m having a hard time with my birthday wishes this year, even harder than normal. I’m not sure what to wish for anymore, since time only moves forward, and the past, when things were a little easier, can’t be tread upon again.

I wasn’t sure I wanted a cake this year, with wishes clogged behind fear and complete ridiculousness. We got one today instead, and I still have a couple of hours before finalizing my wishes for the upcoming year. If nothing else, I hope I feel a little more grounded when I wake up tomorrow morning, during the second day of my forty-sixth year.

gloomy

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The sky looks flat today, a pale color between white and gray without a cloud to be seen through the window. It’s not gray like rain is coming, though it has rained intermittently throughout the day, casting dampness over our Sunday. The sky is simply devoid of flashes of sunshine that always make me feel happier and more productive.

My girl told me she watched a video about productivity to try to motivate herself a little, and all it did was motivate her to be productive tomorrow. I know that feeling on Sundays, especially gloomy Sundays like this one, where everything feels like it would be better suited to be done tomorrow. We played a goofy game for distraction, but ended up laughing more than playing, and we abandoned it as quickly as I abandoned most of my task list for the day.

The things I’ve done so far today are small. A little laundry, but not all of it. A little organizing, but definitely not much. A grocery order I’ll pick up later.

I need to pack for a couple nights away with friends, but I’m dragging my feet, though I put together a packing list for Dylan. We’re excited to go, but I’m slightly sad to be splitting our family, only a few weeks after getting Abbey back with us after her summer dance program. I sleep better when we’re all together under one roof, whether it’s ours or someone else’s, so I know I’ll toss and turn while gone. Truthfully, I haven’t been sleeping well lately, so I guess it won’t feel all that different.

Gloomy.

Maybe it’s not just the weather. Maybe it’s in my head more than I’d like to admit. I’ll look for some sunshine, but I’m not sure I’m going to get to that until tomorrow.

thinking about book reviews

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I set a goal at the beginning of the year to basically read a book a week, though I made the goal 50 instead of 52. I don’t remember my reasoning, because I don’t think reading needs a two week vacation each year, but since I’m currently slightly ahead of the goal I’m keeping it.

I used to review almost every book I read. I believe it helps smaller titles gain momentum, and any independent author can tell you reviews matter to the ever-looming “algorithm” of what gets shown during searches.

At some point, I basically stopped reviewing. I’m not going to lie; I made it cumbersome. I got in my own way. I tried to keep up with a paper reading journal, adding the reviews to both my blog and Goodreads in turn, writing then typing then saving. I’d forget to do some and spend several hours doing it, trying to comb back through my memory (not the greatest, to be honest), especially when I’d binge read five similar thrillers during vacations.

I tried different systems. A list on the blog with links to the books and a picture of the cover. Links to my Goodreads reviews. Links to stand-alone reviews on the blog. Books that didn’t link to anything at all. Short reviews on the blog list. Mini-reviews on Instagram.

Right now, I’m not sure I have a system at all, except I try to star everything and add the dates to my Goodreads page.

Oh, and I struggle with stars. I used to give lots of things threes, but that didn’t seem to correlate with what other people did. For me, three was pretty much, “I enjoyed this and would recommend it to certain people.” Four meant, “I loved this and would recommend it to most people.” Five, for years, was more like, “This book lives in my perpetual top ten. This book changed my life.” Then I started to understand three wasn’t really a “good” rating among many of the readers I respect. I started giving more fours.

Now, almost everything gets a four. Fives are more like, “one of my faves of the year” instead of “I will adore this forever, both for appreciation of craft, meaning, and overall impact on my life.” So basically, the stars don’t mean as much to me as they used to.

Aside: I would LOVE a system that was more like: I would recommend this book to people who liked X, Y, or Z or I would recommend this for people who enjoy thrillers, unreliable narrators, and humor.

I don’t know, exactly. I do know that I rarely review books, and I feel like I need to get back to that.

early mornings

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Yesterday I wrote in the morning. My mom had a doctor’s appointment, and I woke up too late to work out but early enough that I had a bit of time to spare before leaving. The rest of the house slept, and I sat at my desk and put together a few words into a post. I forgot the quiet of writing while everyone else sleeps, the certainty that I shouldn’t be doing anything else in that exact moment. I miss that type of quiet.

I wish I could will myself awake every morning, but I press snooze most days and burrow back into my pillow. Soon, I will be waking before everyone else but in a mad rush to get things done before everyone else awakes, too. School days make it hard to fit everything into a morning routine. If I don’t work out in the morning, I’m unlikely to do it the rest of the day, except for a possible walk later in the evening. Trying to fit writing into that sliver of time usually doesn’t happen.

Some summers I try to creep my alarm earlier and earlier as school gets closer, so I don’t feel shocked when it starts to go off before 5:00 a.m. It feels tough to do that this summer, because I’m staying up too late, and the kids are up late, and basically I’m making excuses for not doing it. (It’s currently 11:32 a.m., so I am not writing this in a house where everyone is sleeping.)

Tomorrow, I will try to get up a little earlier, and maybe earlier still the day after that.

time slips and other truths

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I keep reading about how block scheduling can help you feel more in control of your day, and I’m attempting it. I try to build margins of time into my day, because I get frustrated when I feel busy and don’t feel like I tackled nearly enough on my to-do list. I make sure I’m not shoving things against each other, keeping space between the blocks.

It’s not helping.

I still wonder where time went. I find myself driving kids places I didn’t expect or spending more time that I expected doing laundry or making dinner or any number of things I know are a waste of time — talking to the cat, scrolling the internet, changing passwords I can’t remember and have to retrieve through a complicated process of two-factor authentication and hope.

Most days I discover I’m missing one of the five habits I’m truly trying to instill this month. These aren’t complicated habits — water drinking, certain workouts, meditation, cleaning tasks, journalling in one form or another. Yet I can’t seem to fit in all five on any given day, which doesn’t make sense because really it’s only a few hours out of the day, max, and I don’t work in the summer. I mean, I work, but I don’t go to my job, so I feel like those few hours should be easy to block into my day. I could understand when the kids were young, and they demanded a lot of my time. Mostly, these days, they entertain themselves (except for my Uber duties). They’ll chat with me if I seek them out, but they’re also happy playing video games, moving furniture around in their rooms, working out, or hanging out with friends.

So far, all three days this month, I’ve basically written about how my life has kind of devolved into missed opportunities and mismanaged time. Maybe by seeing it in writing, I’ll be able to make some small changes to build on each other before the beginning of the school year arises. After all, my days don’t get less messy when the kids are in school.

(Just in case we’re keeping track, which I totally am…Out of five tasks today, I only did three. Out of five habits, I only did three. I might still meditate. We’ll see.)