Angela Amman

stories of choices and consequences

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pauses

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I left dirty dishes in the sink last night, rinsed, but not washed. Lots of random cooking led to a mid-day running of the dishwasher, and I didn’t feel like unloading and reloading before bed. I felt like I was getting a little sick, and I just wanted to go to sleep. This morning, I wished I would have done it last night, but that’s the thing about decisions of convenience — they can’t be undone.

Still, the sun shone off the snow through the kitchen window, and there are worse things than dirty dishes. My sore throat seems to have moved on to become a low key headache, and I’m waiting to see if caffeine helps or if I need another couch nap today. (I am never opposed to a little couch snooze, wrapped in cozy blankets, drifting off to the sounds of my family going about their day.)

I’m trying to plan my week — lunch with a friend, half days for the kids, finally scheduled a blood donation — all tucked between the regular work and kids’ activities. Eventually I’ll hit the treadmill, because I haven’t managed to embrace walks outside in the sub-freezing temperatures, despite my promises to do it each year. (I hate the feeling of being freezing, then both hot and cold at the same time.)

All of these random thoughts are a little pause, a way to take a breath before Monday comes.

Breathe.

when I forget

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I forgot an appointment today.

I have a planner I check religiously, but obviously I didn’t check it this morning, on this second snow day that felt a little like a dream when I saw the sun outside. I sat on the couch, doing Wordle and other NYT games that make me feel like I’m waking up my brain instead of putting it to sleep. Dylan woke up and came to the couch instead of immediately hitting video games, and we watched the new Percy Jackson episode, talked about how it’s so much better than the movie, how I need to watch the first five episodes before finishing in the upcoming weeks. I ran on the treadmill (ok, ran and walked and ran and walked) and felt generally productive after writing about under productivity yesterday.

Then my phone rang. I saw the number. I looked at the time, and I remembered, thirty minutes past the time we should have walked into their door, let alone the forty-five minutes past when we should have walked out of ours. They rescheduled without an issue, and I apologized over and over before I hung up, and I feel like a failure.

I made taco meat, because I work at the dance studio tonight and am not home to eat dinner, let alone make it. I made turkey meat for the guys and Impossible “meat” for us — two skillets, two spatulas, double the cleanup, but I used the premade taco seasoning. And did you know it has preservatives, and you can make your own that tastes better and is healthier, and I feel like a failure.

I would never let one of my friends engage in the failure dialogue for these small things — a forgotten appointment, using a convenient shortcut to make dinner — or for the bigger things, to be honest. I know my friends, and I know they’re all worrying and trying and worrying and probably overthinking, and I would want them to know those little things don’t equate to failure or subpar motherhood or any of the things I’m feeling right now.

I know this, solidly, in my head, where logic should rule. In my gut, though, I feel like a failure. Everyone forgets; I know this, but I’m still turning it over and over in my head and wishing I wouldn’t have forgotten.

overplanning / underproducing

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On January 1, we were floating somewhere in the Caribbean Sea, or possibly the Atlantic Ocean. My geography is terrible, but that’s not exactly the point. We were on vacation, so I decided to begin my resolutions “after vacation.” Then we drove home for basically two solid days, so I lived on gummy bears and other road trip fare and decided to wait until I got home to set goals and get started. Dylan’s birthday is the sixth, and we focused on that and getting the house back in order, then, then, then.

There’s always a then.

I know the first of the year is an arbitrary date and not a true clean slate. I can clean my slate whenever I want. I can set goals, begin new routines, buy a notebook that may just change the world, and I can do those things on whatever day I want, even in the middle of the day and not just at 4:45 a.m. when I wake up for my first workout of a new routine. Yet there’s something magical about those “new beginning” dates: the first of the year, my birthday, the beginning of the school year.

This one is slipping through my fingers.

I have’t done nothing. I’ve truly pondered what I want things to look like this year. I’ve made conscious decisions about where I need to hone focus and what things I might be able to let slide just a bit. I’ve journaled and planned ahead, and set some small-but-measurable goals. I’ve even met a few of them. (Hello, Water, nice to become reacquainted.) Still, I feel a little stuck in some sort of limbo. It doesn’t help that our mild winter suddenly decided to remember we’re in Michigan, resulting in two snow days right after our MLK Jr. break.

All of this is to say I’m basically overplanning myself into doing not much of anything at all. I see myself falling into a trap I set for myself all the time, which is the one where the stars must align for a “serious start” that will be the beginning of something beautiful.

The truth is, I’m already in the middle of something beautiful. Of course, that thing, my life, is also sometimes terrifying and sometimes overwhelming and sometimes hilarious and sometimes plain, old mundane. The key, if I’m being honest with myself — and I’m trying to be honest — is starting.

I used to think I had no problem starting things. I liked the shiny promise of a new story, a new planner, a new beginning. The starting felt fun and adrenaline-filled and like something I could unwrap with pride. So many of those starts petered out. Those stalls, stops, implosions, whatever you might want to call them, all lurk in the back of my head. It’s scary. No, I’m scared, literally, to start again when I might not be able to bring yet another fresh start to fruition.

So instead I’ve been planning and using big markers instead of fine tipped pens, and I’ve been tip-toeing around writing or blogging or sending out a newsletter or any of those other things I said I’d do in the new year.

Today, I decided to just show up. Just sit down. Just write. Just press “post” even though it’s not perfect and not what I planned and doesn’t have nearly any of the polish or any of the answers or any of the milestones I hoped to have by the middle of the month.

Show up. Sit down. Write.

chasing endorphins

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I used to consider myself a runner. I charted routes and crafted playlists and followed training plans, though never quickly and never longer than a half marathon. Speedwork stressed me out, and finding hills wasn’t a thing in Royal Oak. Now I live somewhere with plenty of hills and I basically use my treadmill and spend more of my “run” walking than anything.

I still make playlists. Ryan and Abbey make better playlists, but I still do my best to find songs that make me happy, songs that make it easier to move my body when sunlight won’t crack through the basement windows for hours.

This morning, I didn’t have a run planned — and this is not a vignette about how my body just felt like running so I did that instead of walking. My body doesn’t do that much anymore, and I only say that because saying “never” seems extreme. I chose sleep over a 4:30 a.m. wakeup time, and then I felt guilty when I walked in the house after taking the kids to school. I had time for a 45 minute walk, approximately. I’m not going to lie, though, the plan involved a more…leisurely walk than you might imagine. I didn’t exactly have time for a strenuous workout that would lead to having to take my second shower in two hours. No one has time for that.

The first five minutes were easy. I did my trio of little daily games (Wordle, the Mini crossword, Connections). I let my playlist begin. (I know I could just walk without doing any of those things. I didn’t choose to do that, and with the mornings staying darker and darker, I will use the treadmill almost exclusively. We don’t have sidewalks!)

As I increased the incline, my playlist picked up. Arctic Monkeys. Foo Fighters. Lady Gaga. Rihanna. I put down my phone and added additional incline and speed (a very small amount of additional speed). I felt a glimmer of the endorphins I used to get from running, which I didn’t think I’d ever feel without working up a major sweat. That glimmer got me through an extra half mile, and it maybe changed my mood for most of the day.

I miss the real “runner’s high” I used to experience when I ran more, and there are days I want to say screw my knees and my old-lady lungs and my excuses, just in hope of finding those endorphins again. Today, though, that glimmer helped.

I keep seeing things about glimmers as an opposite of triggers, and I’m intrigued. I’m not sure if they’re made up or an actual phenomenon, but they interest me. I appreciate the idea of finding moments that can change my mood or my attitude for the better, moments of peace or beauty or joy or love that I didn’t expect to experience. I’m not sure it counts as a glimmer if I find it in a playlist I created for myself, though I do play them on shuffle, so the particular order of songs wasn’t by design.

I’m not sure than it matters.

I hope I can remember that feeling the next time I’m struggling to find a little figurative sunlight in my day. I hope I can find those endorphins again — even if it means I need the Foo Fighters or Rihanna or Alex Turner to help me do it.

past eleven

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It turned 11:00 before I washed my face tonight, which means it’s later than that now. I’ll regret the minutes that creep towards midnight (and possibly past) in the morning, but it seems lately that if I don’t open the computer (or journal or scrap pieces of paper) to write when I think of it, the thoughts fade into nothingness by the morning. I wish I could be the type of person to go to bed at an hour that ensures a decent night’s sleep. I wish I didn’t dread my alarm ringing next to my bed or the way it feels to change in the darkness, starting my day with everyone sleeping around me.

Many days I do it anyway, the abandonment of a warm bed always a shock, even when I know the run is worth it. Some days aren’t even a run, just a quick walk after shushing the cat to silence with a belly rub and his breakfast.

Last nights don’t always look the same around here. Usually someone is in bed and most of us aren’t, though the combinations of people change. Normally we go to bed in age order from youngest to oldest. Sometimes the spaces between those bedtimes are whispers, and other times they’re gaps of time, when laughter gets stifling behind hands and closed doors.

Abbey and I were looking through old photos tonight, trying to find one of her and her best friend, their hair in the kinky curls of brushed out braids, their smiles perfectly imperfect in the way they were before braces and lip gloss. Her friend turned 16 today, a whirlwind time of almost-driving and homecoming dresses and sleepovers still filled with giggled, whispered conversations.

I’m not sure why I opened the computer, why I began this post. Maybe to record the laughter before it fades into the darkness of a Wednesday night, the ephemeral nature of conversations happening in the middle of the week, when we’re tired and maybe a little sillier than we need to be as the clock inches closer to 11:00.

I wonder, sometimes, if these moments are glimmers of parenting done right (connection) or parenting that misses the mark (too late, too loud, too much bending over phones and pressing post). Maybe we don’t know until later, until the moments stack on top of each other to make a week, a month, a life.

I found the photo we wanted. I found so many photos that reminded me of a day or a pair of pants or sunglasses worn in the early days of Covid when we still found it novel to be on zoom instead of in a classroom. How quickly those days slipped into the past. How deeply they’re embedded in our psyches, entrenched in ways that delineate before and after.

Tonight, however, it’s past eleven, and I need to go to sleep. I hope the laughter echoes in my dreams.

tracking time

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I’m trying to be better about not wasting time. I struggle with this regularly, because it’s an avoidance mechanism I fall into when I’m overwhelmed. I spent so much time last year feeling overwhelmed, that I expected this year to be a breeze by comparison. What everyone knows is that time fills, whether it’s with positive or negative things, wants or requirements, and the feeling of being overwhelmed is internal as much as external.

That’s a long way of saying I’m trying to block time in my schedule for things and also track time using an app, and I’m not sure that’s the way to go. (Writing out loud here) I like the blocking, visually, though I don’t always stick to it, though I think I’m getting better. It’s also a way to visually identify when I’ll need help driving or when there’s not a chance in Hades we’ll be able to eat anything close to dinner together.

The app is what I’m unsure about right now. I liked the idea when I started it. Obviously, or I wouldn’t have tried it at all. I set up categories for writing, editing, blogging, journalling. But honestly, with work and being a mom (aka driver) and all the random things in my life, my writing time on good days hasn’t approached more than an hour in a long time. I’m aware of that, and working that number higher is part of why I wanted to track time this fall. However, it’s disheartening to read, “you focused for 48 minutes today,” when you’re exhausted and feel like you’ve gotten pretty much everything on your to-do list accomplished.

I considered tracking other things just to up that number. Workouts. Meditation. Appointments and errands for my mom.

That feels a little like cheating, because most of those things can be done on autopilot. They’re not really focused activities. (Ok, maybe the meditation.)

I guess I’m writing to think today, because I’m starting to see that maybe 48 minutes of focused writing is better than zero minutes or six minutes or eleven minutes. Maybe instead of feeling bad about that small section of time, I should use it as a reminder that I’m finding time at all, something I couldn’t even pretend to do last fall when my mom was newly diagnosed and I couldn’t focus on a THOUGHT for eleven minutes, let alone a journal entry.

I will stick with it for now, 48 minutes at a time.