Random. Structured. Haphazard. All Me.

A Tangled Yarn of Thoughts Being Unravelled…

Recent Posts

  • In The Dance Of Life…

    In The Dance Of Life…

    I often suffer from tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. My husband would disagree entirely given how often he gets a pained look on his face when I keep gabbing away or how quickly he reminds me that it’s really late and I should be FAST ASLEEP already!

    There are occasions when a particular concept floats into my head but doesn’t make it down to my tongue. This morning, one of those nebulous concepts got cleared up…PITSTOP!

    Mornings at my home are really a race, bar none! Usually Red and I work in a relay but often we tag-team just to get MLM out the door. And our precision is quite fine. In the 6 years the child has been going to school, he’s missed the bus only thrice. That’s practically a spotless track record! Pun totally intended.

    Today Red got him dressed while I buttoned him up and got lotion on the spots Red missed. I got one sock on while Red did the other and then swapped me for one of MLM’s legs while I did up the shoe. Then I bundled him in his jacket (Red’s jacket which he’s usurped) while Red got his book bag packed. And we were out the door, near the bus stop before you could stop to ponder on life before having kids!

    It’s an intricate dance…you have to get the steps right. Wake-up, brush, cha-cha-cha. Drink your milk, go bathe, cha-cha-cha. And then of course if things are right you either waltz your way into the school bus or you’re doing a tarantella and just managing to get a toehold on the bus.

    I often have the William Tell overture as the background score in my head. And as psychotic as it may seem, it’s the truth! My kid makes me experience life at so many levels that I think in color, sound and taste!

    And please excuse me while I cha-cha my way to my daily chores!

    Alors on commence!

  • Loose Lips…

    Yesterday while running an errand I got blocked into a narrow lane by an imbecilic cabbie who had parked bang in the middle of the road with no thought for anyone else. Apparently when you have to take a whizz everything comes a poor second.

    So there I was, getting more annoyed by the minute with bystanders trying to help me find my way out of an impossibly narrow space between the badly parked cab and a tractor. To make it worse, some of them mumbled, “lady driver” because a male driver would have pulled off a feat worthy of the Knight Bus and squeezed through the wedge of space available, nevermind if it spelled the death of their car’s paintjob.

    As always, adding to the fun was my kid, who from the back seat kept offering me his helpful tips about how not having come out of the house at all would have been “so good” and how stopping for chips on the way back home would somehow miraculously solve all the problems.

    Cut to 20 minutes later. Errant cabbie comes back post-pee, unapologetic and does a “talk-to-the-hand” gesture when I start giving him my “I want to squish you under my foot like the worthless slug you are” look. I guess I might have muttered a word that rhymes with duck and luck in a sotto voce manner. And guess who heard it with the windows half down and being a few feet away? The same child who can’t hear me when I’m yelling for him to clean his room, my loud voice booming through the whole house!

    And this morning the little monster comes upto me in a moment I’ll always remember…he had a ridiculous toothpaste mushtache around his mouth, crud in his eyes and told me in a fake whisper, “You said the ‘f’ word yesterday”. My knee jerk reaction was to say, “No, I didn’t” followed by “What’s the f-word anyhow?” and he told me, enunciating it clearly enough for me to have a WTF moment.

    And being a parent caught doing something wrong, I lied like a trueblue hypocrite and said, ” I said fudge…not the other thing”. And bang comes the question,” What’s fudge?” And I told him in great detail, trying to distract him from pondering on the original f-word. And it seemed to be working as well, till the monkey boy came back to bathroom door, whispered conspiratorially and told me, ” I know you said the F-WORD!!!” and he laughed a mini-villain laugh and scampered away.

    Oh FUDGE!!!

  • Kids: Boon Vs Bane

    Kids: Boon Vs Bane

    The jury is still out on that one.

    On one hand you can remember them as the cutest, cuddliest, chubbiest drooly monsters that walked around with a diaper-covered bum. And on the other hand you wish you could sedate them or keep them in suspended animation when they’re getting their best and most annoying bratty groove on.

    At the risk of pissing off my husband, who is more predisposed towards liking the offspring and not wanting to punt him over the fence into the neighboring building, let me say that kids are the people who test your patience to the extent you want to chuck everything and join a convent or do a Hansel-Gretel with them and leave them in a forest clearing somewhere…preferably in a galaxy far, far away.

    There are some day when praying for divine intervention does no damn good at all and the only thing that helps you get through things are longing glances at the booze cupboard or the promise of a weekend ending and school starting up again.

    And kids really can be quite rotten. They are trying on the days they need to be angelic. They mouth off at the time when they need to be mimes and they stay up like owls on the nights you need them in bed and knocked out by 7:30 on the dot!

    But if they always did what was expected of them they wouldn’t be kids at all. They’d be flitting about with wings and halos and spotless white clothes. Instead these oompa-loompas have decidedly tarnished halos and the wings which mimic the headless chicken scenario.

    Oh well…c’est la vie.

     

  • Moving On…

    I’ve lived in quite a few places. Changed houses, states, countries and a continent in the process.

    But the longest I’d lived anywhere till date was the first place Red and I bought after we got married. It wasn’t that much of a well-thought out decision. We didn’t factor in any green space close by, or schools.

    The place was BIG, we had the room that we needed for our books, clothes and kitchen stuff. When the parents came to visit, they each had their own rooms with attached loos and the view from the balcony, while not spectacular, was cozy and I had flowering plants on the parapet for the almost the entire duration we lived there.

    We planned a family in the apartment, had a kid who learnt to walk there. We had our fights, plans for the future, packed for trips and ultimately made it a home. And now, 4 years later, it’s gone back to being an apartment again.

    We had tenants living there till recently and when they moved out I realized that I’d cut my ties with the place well and truly. Earlier, I used to be able to see glimpses of my kid toddling about the house along with other memories of us going about our lives; without getting hauled in for hallucinating.

    But this time around I felt like it was someone else’s space that I was visiting. I still knew where the light switches were (Red doesn’t remember them for the place we live in even now) but there was not tugs felt once I switched off the lights and locked the door on the home we’d lived in for 6 years.

    People move on. Sometimes it’s a such a smooth process that you wake up one day and realize that you no longer possess a particular frame of mind. And there are other times when you literally browbeat yourself into moving forward.

    The people we couldn’t do without once- we can now go without talking to them for days on end and things still seem alright. The lifestyle we held to be an absolute truth gets swapped for another one and we ease into it so seamlessly it’s almost as if nothing else ever existed.

    It’s a heady and yet a very reassuring thought…I for one am relieved.

    Have a good weekend people.

     

  • Dafuq Wake-ups

    Dafuq Wake-ups

    My kid doesn’t often beat me to the alarm clock. The days he does are often a mixture of me cussing him out in my native tongue (while half-asleep mind you) or me having a really shrieky-freaky wake-up call.

    Try this scenario on for size: you, nice and cozy under a comforter; it’s cold, dark and smoggy outside and suddenly a small, cold object starts tapping at your face and head. You can’t figure out what it could be and then suddenly it turns out to be a hand!

    You open your sleep-weary myopic eyes and there’s a cute but solemn face staring at you unblinkingly. Then it sniffs and says in a slightly phlegmy tone, “I woked up.”

    You can’t help but give out a garbled, scared moan…it’s your kid. An hour before his usual wake-up time and with bad grammar no less!!

    No wonder I’ve been thinking of little brat from The Grudge!

    *shudders*

  • Weekend Wobblies…

    Weekend Wobblies…

    Wobbly because till things get set right, it’s always wobbly and might even topple over. Like the unending towers my kid builds.

    I’ve usually found that one can accurately predict that a small person (not being politically correct about the midgets and others of their ilk) lives in a particular house. It’s not always the tiny shoes strewn around, or the trike outside the door.

    A house can be beautifully maintained without ever giving away the fact that someone with little grubby hands lives there. What usually gives is away, what even the most hawk-eyed moms eventually slip up and miss are the things kids hide underneath the couch cushions.

    While I was growing up one of my neighbors had a kid whose couch would inevitably yield G.I Joe action figures. I’ve sat on Sgt. Slaughter and Cobra Commander more time than I would like to remember. And now that I have a grubby-handed kid of my own, the kind of things that end up under my cushions are worthy of a special mention.

    Here are some of the treasures unearthed so far:

    • a bendy Mr.Bean action figure’s tiny litte hand. That was *quite creepy* but not as creepy as the head which was propped up on a bottle on water on the dinning table.
    • a clothes pin (don’t ask me why-the balcony’s on the other side of the house)
    • one of my elusive ear buds.
    • beads from a necklace that I didn’t even know was broken.
    • bobby pins
    • a handkerchief
    • indeterminable dust of something I don’t want to even consider.
    • marbles
    • a chewed on marker cap
    • and as always, a dinosaur figurine.

    Surprisingly (and happily), bugs are always missing!

    I don’t feel like Howard Carter mind you, but there’s a feeling of awe from time to time once the cushions come off! If we ever get a bigger home, am sure I’ll find something that’ll rival Mr.Carter as well!

    Happy weekending folks…

     

  • Sunday Morning Bloglet

    I did not think that I would have occasion to ever write the words: I woke up with a penny stuck to my leg. But the universe and (almost always) ny child conspire to have me say the most unlikely things in life

    Happy Sunday people.

    Here’s to more currency being found on your person and preferably the kind you don’t have to exchange before you can use.

    Salut!

  • The 80s&90s

    Those were some fun decades…especially in the way movies were made.

    This last week I watched some movies I had DVRd and utterly enjoyed the blast of nostalgia!

    I started with Die Hard…a movie you can never go wrong with. Whether you’re burping a baby, fighting with a spouse, feeling angst or anything else this is an ‘Anytime Movie’.

    Bruce Willis’ deadpan face gets stiff competition from the late Alan Rickman but as far as thrilling action movies are concerned, this one is right up there with the best.

    Add to it the poofy 80s hair-dos made stiff with hairspray, the blazers and sweaters with their shoulder pads that made people look like linebackers. The ponytails tied high and one side, the white hightops everyone seemed to favor and the Frankie Goes To Hollywood track that most of the movies seem to integrate in their OSTs…Ah! Good stuff.

    2nd on my list was Hard To Kill..an utterly, completely silly farce of a movie made by Steven Seagal and starring yet another person who shouldn’t ever have “acted” aka Kelly LeBrock.

    While Under Siege is another of my Anytime Movies and made by Seagal, the flow of the movie in Hard to Kill is plainly hard to swallow and yet it escapes being so bad it’s actually good. Instead it’s just a movie that makes you guffaw if nothing else simply because it’s really that flat. Seagal also delivered gems like Out For Justice which was in a class by itself (insert big time eye roll).

    But this isn’t a post about movies alone. It’s about a point in time. I was a child growing up in the 80s and 90s…and it was such an interesting time. Make-up was better louder, hair was better poofier a la Bon Jovi and his ilk and groups like Bell Biv Devoe were on the air.

    And while I listen to Cheap Thrills on continuous loop (courtesy the offspring); harking back to the 80s and 90s doesn’t seem like a bad time at all.

    Cheers to nostalgia.

  • Ode To My Oddballs

    My family is a bit kooky. And in that we’re perfectly normal I suppose. Since I don’t have a “fly-on-the-wall” access to my friends and neighbors’ homes, am assuming that their kookiness can rival and often outdo mine. Those who are painfully normal, I don’t know what to say…you are clearly the minority amongst us. I don’t know many of you so that clues you into what kind of people I belong with.

    Take for example things I say to my kid quite often which others may jiggle their eyebrows at. A statement like, “Put on your pajamas and move your snake off the floor” is very probable and in fact was uttered while I was booting up the laptop.

    My 8-year old coming to me and spouting the details of the Serval for durations which seem like eons to me also occur quite frequently. And suddenly phrases like “one’s life flashing before their eyes” don’t seem like such a phrase anymore…you can literally feel your hair and nails growing while the offspring drones on and on about small-big cats and suddenly segues into the Eyelash Viper ;yet another creature you had the pleasure of not knowing anything about till your flesh and blood decided you were pathetically uninformed about the creepy crawly and decided to make things right.

    Recently, exactly 2 days ago, the Lord and Master (henceforth referred to as L&M) gave me a Fitbit smart watch. Am sure he was influenced by those unending ads on the telly which try to insidiously get inside your head and tell you to buy jewellery for the woman in your life. If not platinum, then diamonds and if nothing else works, go for the gold! Tis the season of bling after all!

    So..Le Fitbit Watch-It monitors my heart rate (always galloping), let’s me know the optimum resting phase (so I don’t keep imitating a slug) and generally nudges me off the posterior so I can get moving in ways designed to help me. The ways I move that don’t help me much are my versions of tangos and weird jerky-dancing which I’m prone to break into as if in the throes of a partial seizure. But then again…Bollywood is in my veins and no dance is risqué enough, no dance is too weird and the more spontaneously you indulge in it, the truer you are to your people!

    So this watch,which is waterproof, is helping me define new “health goals”. And yes, those would be sarcastic air quotes had I been speaking out loud. I am now suddenly very aware of not taking the stairs enough…the Fitbit reminds me that half a staircase has been climbed. How does one climb half a staircase anyhow?

    I’m reminded that I haven’t had the mandatory 3000 mls of water I need to have on a daily basis along with the optimal amount of sleep I should be having. It’s all fine and dandy and maybe in time I’ll even grow into it, but as of 2 in the morning today when I felt a weird lump behind my back, went into the Princess and the Pea mode…I realized that I was sleeping with the watch on (for sleep monitoring purposes only) and the discomfort was making me thrash around, raising the “resting phase heart rate” to near-awake heart rates, steadily heading towards I’m going to be a solid beeyotch in a few hours if i don’t get some sleep” heart rate

    And apropos to nothing; while I type this out the offspring is sitting next to me, still in his pajama tops-no bottoms and making hissing noises with the toy (miniature, thank the Heavens!) black cobra while he peers over my shoulders and takes dainty sips of his chocolate milk.

    These are the oddities in my life. Thank goodness for that!

    Now excuse me while I get my deep breathing done courtesy Fitbit…Breathe in….Breathe out.

    OMMMMMMMMMMM

  • Driving Dairies

    Imagine this…you’re driving on a crowded market road; pedestrians jostling with vendors, buses bearing down on you and the inevitable morons who insist on driving with the high beam on; blinding you for what seems like eternity.

    To add to the fun, imagine shielding a plastic bag full of fish for the aquarium; on the passenger seat all the while telling your kid to sit down and stop complaining about the bumpy road.

    In the midst of all this, when you’re close to being home free, still seeing spots in front of your eyes and hoping that the fishes haven’t had their brains turned upside down; comes the most unexpected thing…a tap on the shoulder and an inquisitive voice asking, “Hey…do you know who the President of India is?”.

    And saddest part is that even after you tell you kid off for choosing the worst moments to ask trivia questions, flip off the biker who cut across your path without the turn signal…you still can’t remember the new guy in Rashtrapati Bhavan.

    Oh nuts! The things that make you miss your husband!!