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The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!Robert Burns- To A Mouse
I’ve not often had my plans crumble down. In fact am all about planning. Usually get into the realm of head-in-the-clouds so far do I wander off with my thoughts.
But it’s beyond daydreams and the lifestyles of the rich and famous. It’s more of the everyday things which really either help you stay afloat or pull you under.
A few years ago when I was pregnant with MLM I made plans of being the best mother out there. I certainly did not plan to turn into a screeching shrew who lives in her track pants and waits for deliverance and neither did I think that having a career was going to entail so much thought. It’s the circle of life- you grow up, get an education of some kind and get a job of some kind else you mooch off someone to sustain yourself.
But taking a conscious step back from work pretty much turned into an situation where was very little scope of being able to work the timings I wanted, do the kind of work I wanted and still be able to give the lion’s share of my time to my child. Oh and I forgot to factor in me-time..that was a joke by the way!
But I did work. For a little over a year. Did reasonably well too I thought too before the ugly specter of work-life balance (WLB) raised it’s insidious little head.
At the last place I worked before MLM was born I used to facilitate in-house workshops on WLB and I thought it was fairly doable. Provided you made it a priority and did everything possible to attain it.
Know what I think now? It’s HOGWASH!!
When your child (ren) is/are older possibly then being able to do things on your terms becomes a bit more viable without feeling like you’ve descended through Dante’s Hell but prior to that you never really know what kind of a path your life will take. Am not even venturing into the arena of curveballs. But the kind of decisions you might make for the health of your family or for your own benefit might end up making you accrue a lot more dividends that you’ll have to pay in person through compromises, frustrations and a lot of food for thought.
Bottom line? We don’t like changes unless there’s an outright benefit that we can sense and even enjoy from the onset. Anything that you need to wait for seems to come not only too slowly but often makes you lose sight of your rationale in indulging in it to begin with.
But having to make big decisions is necessary from time to time. It helps you prioritize, makes you think hard and think clearly and pushes you to do concrete things.
So the intangibles and the semi daydreams will just have to wait for their day in the sun.
In the meanwhile….carpe noctem anyone?
P.S: I want to shoot the person who propogated this WLB theory. Either it’s a man or someone who has a trust fund or a very good nanny! It’s certainly not a person like ME!
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I recently decided to go the Groupon way and the first (and only purchase) I made was for salon services.
It was very convenient to purchase and I finally got the opportunity to avail it today. Truth be told it HAD to be today since it was going to expire tomorrow but yeah..that’s how we roll in this family. We are ‘last-minuters’ but that’s another blog post for another day.
Anyhow, this place I landed in (which shall be unnamed) is a branch of a well-known national chain which advertises regularly in the major national dailies about their weight-loss, wellness and overall cosmetology services. The services I had opted for were for a facial and hair wash/cut/blow dry.
Am guessing not-so-pleasantly-plump people like myself are looked upon with a lot of eagerness since there’s more money to be made off us. The manager of the center took me into her room while the staff was preparing for the facial and laid a lot of jazz on me starting right from getting me to lose my hard-won lard to skin polishing, peeling, microdermabrasion, and livening up my hair!
I was beginning to feel like Frankenstein’s monster who needed new parts tacked on. Of course she counted against the fact that my excess lard just causes “well-meaning” advice about my appearance to bounce off entirely. Especially well meaning advise that comes with a price tag that’s as much as the EMIs on the new house.
This lady tried everything! I mean everything. She said look good for you husband, increase your confidence, boost your self-esteem and become a stronger woman. I guess seeing me sans make-up and in track pants made her think I was a dumpy housewife who needed “encouragement”.
But long story short I finally wrangled my way out of her lair and got the stuff done that I’d gone for and was pretty happy with the transformation of the hair at least-
But that lady was like a snake oil salesman with the extra luggage she was carrying around herself and trying to make me feel like I was a behemoth!
I’ll try it the old fashioned way…huffing and puffing and climbing stairs and sweating unfashionably till I lose the lard.
If it doesn’t work I know Mrs.Frankenstein’s always there to take me apart :)
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Most moms get this advice from others, “when your baby sleeps, you should sleep too!” . Now that’s sound advice but one that moms seldom follow. Or can afford to follow actually. Usually there’s so much to be done for an infant and toddler that you can’t simply go to sleep even when you are DEAD on your feet.
But when you have a slightly older child you become a bit greedy about your time away from being an active or real-time mom as I call the ilk, and want to use your time to DO SOMETHING! When actually you really should be dragging your sleepy self to bed.
So here I am, yawning massive yawns that expose my maws and my head’s dropping a bit while I think of the next pithy sentence but I am still determined to DO something so this time doesn’t go waste.
As my son’s prone to say these days, “that’s stoopit Ayu”.
Good night all, I will finally take the advice and ‘sleep when the “baby” is sleeping’.
Image courtesy-deviantart.com -
MLM and I have been engaging in lots of verbal skirmishes of late. I’ve been on the losing side I’m not ashamed to say. It’s the truth. Anyone who has kids knows that they (the offspring) always win. Till they go off to college. Then we win. And keep winning because there is some role-reversal that happens and they don on a lot of the roles previously taken on only by us.
I’m so eagerly awaiting MLM’s kids. I know they’ll be all he is and MORE and I’ll be cackling away to glory from either up there or down there. Down there is more likely. But I digress…this is what happened today. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg of the stuff that regularly happens.
I was pottering around and adding things to the laundry basket when I heard a door opening, Knowing MLM I thought he was trying to access the front door or a loo. It was the loo. Within 2 seconds of entering the bathroom he’s naked as the day he was born and in a meditative pose on the commode.
When I asked him why he was naked since potty training has been done and dusted a while back, he said his clothes were dirty. I had seen his clothes a few minutes back and they seemed fine to me. Nothing filthy. So I asked him how did they get dirty. To which he promptly replied, “I do it! You go wash clothes now. I give my clothes. ” and smiles beatifically.
When I stared at him, giving him my Look Of Shame, he shuffles his toes and says,” I put on clothes, it’s cold Ayu”.
You just can’t win. They have you surrounded on all sides and don’t they just know it!
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This morning when I dropped MLM off at school his teacher told me that she had heard him say ‘stupid’ in class.
Now this is a first for me. He normally parrots whatever I say even the rebukes so Red and I often have to spell out a LOT of things.It often goes to a ridiculous extent and Red looks confused with the amount of spellings he finds coming at him :)
Anyhow since his teacher wasn’t too perturbed at MLM’s enhanced vocabulary I took it as a sign that he wasn’t making a it too conspicuous a thing.
Once he came home I spoke to him about it. I find he’s most amenable during bath times. So we spoke about saying that word could ‘give ouchie‘ to his friends and make his teacher think he was very naughty and not very polite.
So he promised & pinking swore (pinky swore) that he wouldn’t say the word anymore. In order to make to make him understand I was VERY serious I told him that everytime he used that word it would mean time off from swings and the playground.Imagine my surprise and plight when he turns right around and says ‘That’s STOOPIT Ayu!!
This too shall pass. Won’t it?
*looks heavenward for deliverance*
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We live on the 7th floor and there are perfectly good stairs leading to wherever you want to go in the building. *shudders* at the thought of trekking down all the way when there are perfectly good elevators in place too!
But with gravity having more influence on the body day by day I decided to grin and bear it and be a (wo)man about it! I wasn’t going to chicken out…even after I counted the last stair at 110.
Now for some people that many stairs are no biggie. And for people used to running after hyperactive kids that kind of stamina required might be in abundance. Not me. I’ve had strength to lift things and use heft but unless I really work at it doing anything at a stretch really tires me out. Probably why am rather squishy all over rather than just have that kind of solid fat that some people seem to possess.
But endurance and a healthy BMI notwithstanding I wanted to do things differently in this new place. And as soon as I made that resolution it came back and kicked me in the teeth.
Apart from the seemingly unending boxes, laundry and whatnot, the only thing getting exercise these days are my arms from pushing MLM on the swings. Had I kept up that pace I’d ended up looking like Popeye very soon!
So I’ve decided that since 30 is the new 20 and all that jazz..I need to tap into my mojo yet again and get going. It’s like birthing a baby. No…scratch that! NOTHING is like birthing a baby. That is, was and always will be EXCRUCIATING! Epidural my left butt cheek! But that’s another post for another day.
I did the whole going up and coming down bit and did a few rounds of the entire compound as well and while it didn’t put my heart in overdrive my leg muscles were switching like they’d been given a wee bit of the Taser love.
But it’s a start and I plan to be not panting and wheezing like a broken down jalopy by the end of the month.
Of course if I conk off before that one day it’ll definitely say ‘Death By Stairs’ as my epitaph!
All morbidity aside this makes me look forward to tomorrow’s walk-
