Random. Structured. Haphazard. All Me.

A Tangled Yarn of Thoughts Being Unravelled…

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  • Keeping The Glass Half-Full

    Keeping The Glass Half-Full

    Just got to know a little while ago our usual milk vendor won’t be supplying milk for some more time to come.Milk GIF - Find on GIFER

    And while this isn’t a crisis per se, it’s inconvenient. And that in a nutshell is how trying times are for people of a particular socio-economic group. Inconvenient more than actually critical. Unless it gets to hell-in-a-handbasket stage.

    Bummed out GIFs - Get the best GIF on GIPHY

    I am at home. With all my physical comforts except that my dishpan hands are getting more solidified day by day. But it’s a small price to pay in the long run. It’s not like I give massages for a living and need butter-soft hands.

    I have slightly flat feet so my arches have been hurting from standing for too long and doing dishes. So I’ll be wearing my sneakers and doing them from today. Again, problem identified and a workaround identified as well. Definitely not a hardship.

    What is getting to be a hardship is not knowing how things will shape up in the days to come. Let’s face it, we’re on a daily wait and watch. Weeks and months are a luxury we can’t afford to indulge in while planning for tomorrow.

    TO and Red have been playing cricket at home for a few weeks now to limit the outside exposure and I think my ironing board and the unfortunate iron ended up being the boundary line one too many times. Outcome? Iron just won’t iron. Workaround? Fished out an old iron which had some kinks in it but at this time seems to be heating up, or so the little red light tells me, and we’ll take it for a spin a bit.

    Peace GIFs | Tenor

    So for everything that seems like a “problem” I’m deciding to call a “blip” instead. The way we look at things makes a huge difference in how to react to it and everything else that follows. Btw, running out of coffee? Now that would be a PROBLEM.

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    Stay safe. Try to stay cheery. It’s not that tough. Have a few laughs. Watch old home movies of your kid. Reminisce with the spouse about the way things were and before you know it, you’re somewhat ( if not a lot) diverted from the non-fun Corona.

    Note: For the uninitiated, the fun Corona comes in a bottle.

    Corona Beer GIFs | Tenor

  • I Tried…

    Dear God in Heaven, Oh! how I tried.

    I tried to grin and bear it but I just couldn’t.

    I couldn’t stand another second of it.

    The agony. The utter and complete lack of anything remotely humane.

    It was just too much…I just couldn’t watch Sharknado 6.

    If only Kurtz knew about the Syfy Channel…he’d have aimed his words elsewhere.

  • I Get By With A Little Help From…

    Music. Pretty much of all types but I have particular songs earmarked for particular situations or moods rather. There’s a specific song for decompressing. The main reason this song became the anthem for situations where the walls seem to be closing in is because of its lyrics. It’s beyond ridiculous. Utterly ludicrous. And that’s the beauty of it. When situations make you go WTF in caps, bold, underlined with an army of exclamations and question marks after it, a song without a head or tail can make you do a double take and go, “Dang…that’s so weird it’s actually good!”

    I also get by with the help of movies. The more senseless the better. See the theme running through this post? I have a few I fall back on- Sharknado, White Girls and a few which aren’t senseless but just good clean fun and laughs like Padosan and Naram Garam and their ilk.

    A good friend sitting in a virus hotspot just pinged and told me about tsunamis and earthquakes on top of the lovely days the world has been experiencing. So, find your rhythm and groove. No matter how weird. We could all do with a bit more weird. Feeling bright and shiny is a bit overrated IMHO, weird is the way to go!

    Image result for keep calm and be a weirdo

     

  • Cabin Fever Blog#1

    So tedium is finally settling in. A lack of a sense of urgency is hard to fight against consistently. Whether it’s shoving TO into his school bus or waving Red off at the door, there’s a sense of things being time bound. And now, there isn’t. For a lot of things

    I think the part that of life that people genuinely have trouble processing is ‘what next‘. When you don’t have a clear cut path ahead but still have options, the process of what-nexting becomes a bit easier. When you have the mundane facing off with the exciting, it helps to sort through things and decide what can be done and when.

    When it’s all mundane, all essential and the tenor of your day isn’t punctuated by much except occasional blips of emotion etc, things just seem to stretch out longer and longer and it’s a bit disconcerting to be honest.

    This soup bowl has been in my family as long as I can remember. I think my mother bought it sometime in 1990. Went through the flu, chicken pox and a few other sick days and many non-sick days cradling it in my hands while I blew on hot soup to get me through something. Not always a tough time…just something. Today it’s a sign of familiarity, my folks and overall family. It’s not sensible to be attached to objects and especially those which can get chipped or cracked very easily but when something has survived international and domestic house changes across the decades, it feels pretty damn sure that it’s here for the long haul. And that’s terribly reassuring at times like these.

  • A Spa-cial Intervention

    Yesterday I took a break from the germs in my house and went to sample the germs in a friend’s place instead. And before all the faces get pinched about taking germs lightly, I’d like to point out that these are all known germs and we’ve been germing it up long enough so that the germs are friendly more than anything else. That and healthy squirts of the alcohol-laden sanitisers that graces the eyes the moment you set foot in both households.

    Anyhoo, cabin fever being a real thing and needing a break from seeing my buck-toothed buckeroo, I went off to spend some time with a friend after being lured with the well….lure of fresh filter coffee. What followed was a realisation that Mars and Venus are truly separate entities and after a particular age, the twain are most likely not to meet. I refer to of course, the difference between the way girls and boys utilize their time. And while I’m a big fan of pretend play overall, I have to say…oh man! girls are the cutest!!!

    So I walked in to be greeted boisterously by two bouncy girls with grins stretching from ear to ear. I was ushered into a chair too small for my behind but curiously sturdy at the same time while I was treated to a spa; all the in comfort of their living room.

    The grin you see on my face is real! Who doesn’t like to be fussed over? Have oil roll down their face while little hands stick flower petals which will make one look “beautiful”? Between the cream, the aloe vera gel, the flora and the patting my face took for about half an hour, I was about to topple over from the said chair out of utter bliss.

    How does that compare with the time I spend with the tailless monkey who masquerades as a little boy back at home? Let’s say that farty sounds play a big role in that interaction.

    Sigh…

  • A Few Learnings

    While it is witty and even pithy to start a blog post with a title like ‘Love In The Time Of Corona’ as a take off on the famous novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, this is also a time of a bit of reflection even if done intermittently.

    Full disclosure though- I did not read the novel. Am unlikely to pick it up anytime soon. The last big fat novel I read was LOTR and that was because the guy I liked at the time gave it to me and said, “Read it! It has tons of stuff you’ll like!” Since he gave me my first Harry Potter book and started a life-long connect with the character, I thought it would be a safe bet to go with his reco. Umm…yes and no. I *did* enjoy reading LOTR but enjoyed the movies way more and Golum is permanently etched on my brain cells and so are the memes about “precious”. So yeah, some takeaways do last long.

    Getting back to the matter at hand- few things bring us together or expose our foibles like adversity. While certain people prove that they are inherently troopers and will always rise to the occasion and get stuff done, others show that they are vapid and generally have not much to contribute barring churning the mud like bottom-feeders and just cloud things up. And in case this sounds like a serious indictment on people, it is!

    There’s plenty wrong to be wrought at times of adversity by sharing information at the wrong time, at the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. Here are a few things that have been becoming clearer to me as time goes by:

    • Who you’re with during times of crises help you understand who the people are you want around for keeps.
    • Family bonding, even under forced situations, is an opportunity to teach our kids about life, how to roll with unexpected changes and also how to ask for help.
    • What is enough- this cannot be stressed upon too much. On a daily basis, the things I indulge in, can be pared down to the bare minimum that I decide I can survive on happily instead of the sheer quantity that we choose to surround ourselves with.
    • The intrinsic value that we place on objects, activities that shape our lives- daily and in the long run.
    • Communication and that too the proactive and genuine kinds, has taken a backseat to the prepackaged, mass-targeted messages we circulate in the name of “being in touch”.
    • A helping hand doesn’t take too long to extend and neither does it cost anything but can exponentially add to the feeling of ” I did my part”.
    • Learning to prioritise is a skill that needs to be learnt and relearnt throughout our lives and we kind of let it lapse by doing mainly the things which seem urgent/important majority of the times.
    • Gratitude cannot be taken too light. Ever. I’m not talking about the kinds which makes you drop on your knees and start believing in the Galactic Ameba but the kind that truly makes you value yourself and your life. It does help put the shitty stuff in perspective.

    So, while it may not be “love” in the time of Corona, it’s definitely been learning and a realisation that some things truly help the world turn- I’m of course referring to the Almighty Coffee Bean! What?!! did you think I could let a whole somber post go by and not revert to some levity? Pshaw!

    Stay safe, keep the loved ones close and but not enough that you cough and sneeze on them. Just enough that when you reach out, there they are.

    Salut.

  • Cabin Fever Bloglet#3

    Cabin Fever Bloglet#3

    Can’t avoid lists…or can we?

  • Cabin Fever Bloglet#2

    1. You find toothpaste on the ceiling of your bathroom/top of the shower cubicle and pretty much everywhere but on the toothbrush.3
    2. You see animal figurines appearing in laundry baskets, inners, the fridge and also the vegetable baskets.6
    3. The little hooman hides the remote in his school backpack as payback for switching the telly off. 9
    4. There’s a T-Rex silhouette behind the glass in a dark bathroom where you lit tealight candles.3
    5. There food’s on the table, it gets eaten, leftovers get put away and suddenly the cries of “I’m hungry” echo throughout the house. 7
    6. You go to the loo to do your business and there’s a persistent knocking on the door and questions of what you’re doing, how long you’ll be and why you went in there start raining down.10
    7. The little hoomans look at you and all they can say is Netflix/chips/buy me top-ups for games. 8
    8. The moment you think, “Ah! some peace and quiet” a little voice pipes up, “Wotchu doing Ayu? Can I do it with you?” 4

    Despite all my gripes, and there are many I agree; I want to reiterate that there are mothers out there who proudly proclaim that their little angels are the best thing to grace this planet since the discovery of coffee. To them I say, “liar liar pants on fire!”

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  • When I Turned Into A Princess…

    When I Turned Into A Princess…

    And by that I don’t mean the Snow Whitey kinds with bluebirds chirping all around me. I mean the Princess Vespa-kinds from Spaceballs. Take a look-

    So these are the times when I caught myself thinking of certain things and then doing a mental doubletake.

    While washing the dishes in the utility area today the sun was shining bright overhead and kind of right in my face. And I thought..damn! I’m going to need sunscreen from tomorrow.

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    While lounging on the couch yesterday I wished the pumice-foot scrubber had an extendable handle so I could take care of my deadskin while streaming the latest episode of Blue Bloods.

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    When I wished for a better design of the bluetooth headphones- if they could have a flatter back so when I lean against something, they wouldn’t move from the perfect spot over my ears.

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    When I wished for a rideable Roomba so I could clean the house but not exert myself beyond a point.

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  • Cabin Fever Bloglet#1

    Cabin Fever Bloglet#1