Random. Structured. Haphazard. All Me.

A Tangled Yarn of Thoughts Being Unravelled…

Recent Posts

  • Moving In…Moving On

    This is the first blog post from the new house so I guess am on my way to breaking it in.

    We moved in last Monday and since then we encountered a level of displacement I’d left behind quite a few years back.

    In any house or home there’s some amount of orderly disorder (except in my parents house. Disorder does not exist in their universe!) and since we know where everything is, right from the light switches to the safety pins you never feel lost.

    In a brand new place despite packing boxes having labels on them, till you open them you don’t get a proper idea of where everything actually is.

    So we moved in and continued with going to work for Red and school for MLM and descent in minor madness for me.

    It isn’t just about getting those god-awful boxes out of the living room, it’s about the place looking like somewhere you belong, you want to be in…the erstwhile empty spaces should reflect the ideas you had in your head when you bought the place to begin with.

    But it’s taken shape pretty well ( I think). Some of our things will need refurbishing-grubby little toddler is now semi-grubby preschooler and asks for tissues or runs into the bathroom to ‘wash your hands’ after eating so my sofa’s upholstery is no longer under attack.

    We got the net connection up and running-YESS!!!

    Red killed a lizard for me yesterday- YESS!! and EWWW!

    The offspring has been to the playground everyday and has settled into a pattern of being around the new place. So the chants of ‘ Let’s go home’ have abated. He still calls it the ‘ New House’ but then again so do I, in my head i.e. Some of the moms in the play area have become familiar faces with some numbers having been exchanged as well.

    We got cable, a help (for now) and have been able to access the maintenance service with a fairly short turnaround time so yeah…things are falling into place.

    And we started to celebrate our first Diwali with our new neighbors last night and then conked off (don’t ask me when) and were deaf to the noises outside! How’s that for fatigue?

    So right now, sitting at the new work station, typing this out feels pretty good :)

    Here’s a glimpse of where we were at the start of this week and where we are now.

    House pictures to follow later.

    Toodles!

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  • The Check List

    We test drive a car before buying it. We ought to be able to test drive our spouses, partners too. Here’s why-

    • You meticulously switch off the lights and fan when exiting a room. Their motto in life is to forget it. Always.
    • You hang your wet towels out to dry on the clothesline or drying rack. They feel a bed is the best way to get the job done. And somehow never seem to leave it on the side of the bed they sleep in; its always on yours.
    • You love to read in bed. They act like a minute beam of light is blinding and continue to toss and turn till the bed seems to be suffering from tectonic movements.
    •  You watch/read mainstream movies and novels. They watch award-winning foreign language movies which are dark and dreary and someone always seems to die or be dying and read books which are as straight and uncomplicated as a jalebi (or pretzel, take your pick).
    • You want your bathroom tiles to be “cheerful”. They raise eyebrows at you and say just pick something where the grime won’t show up and keep mumbling about the ridiculous adjective of cheerful for bathroom tiles!
    • You usually know where your essential accessories are. They need a map. Everyday. Without Fail.

    That and many more reasons are why you should know a person beyond their favorite color and food.
    You just might end up shivering next to a person who ends up rolling themselves up like a spring roll in a comforter meant for two while you ponder about whether you would be justified in kicking them of bed altogether.

    OR in time you could gaze upon your giggling offspring and say isn’t that the most beautiful face ever? They would agree.

    So it works both ways :)

  • Residue

    People often talk so dismissively of residues. It’s what’s left behind afterall when all the better, more worthwhile stuff has been availed or done with.

    But residues are important too because they are the only glimpse into what transpired long after something has ceased to be.

    I am terribly maudlin today. I’m sitting in my empty apartment and all around me are residues. Of my child crawling and leaving grubby handprints while he learnt to walk with support, of his discovery of crayons and markers (the walls bear testimony), the marks left by the tape I used to put up pictures and glow-in-the dark figurines for him…

    The couches I plonked myself in, the spot by the wall where the fridge used to be, the empty library, the beds we slept in..all seem to have left an impression in their places while they make a new home for themselves in the new apartment.

    I can actually see myself from back then..the talks that went into the night, the smallish balcony where every new flower was photographed and published on Facebook (much to Red’s annoyance)…

    All that’s left are residues of a family who lived here…cooked, laughed, cried, spent seemingly endless time putting a baby to sleep…and made memories together.

    And now that I look back..it was all good.

  • I Know Tedaktal

    Doesn’t make any sense at all? Well this is such a spelling that even a spell check might not help. So lemme reveal the actual word behind the mangled one- Pterodactyl. Whoo! that’s a doozy isn’t it? Given that it’s not even spelt the way it’s pronounced.

    Anyhoo MLM’s learning about dinosaurs at school and is QUITE pleased about the whole thing. We watched Ice Age: The Dawn of the Dinosaurs with more enthusiasm and understanding than ever before and he pointed out a Tedaktal to me. Only because they were showing a scene where a pterodactyl was flying about that I was able to follow him.

    But I also had the most informative discussion with him on the way back from school. It started out like this:

    Me: What did you do today? Had fun?

    MLM: Yes. I saw a Tegosaurus.

    Me: You DID? WHERE?

    MLM: Skoool!!

    Me: What did it do?

    Me: It eat plaaants.

    Me: Ok…what other kinds of dinosaurs does your school have?

    MLM: Taiserotops!

    Me: A Triceratops?

    MLM: YES! Taiserotops.

    Me: What does it do?

    MLM: Eat plaants!

    Me: What else?

    MLM: Me T-Rex.

    Me: Really?

    MLM: Yes… T-Rex eat ice cream, chocolate…(fades into mumbles since mouth is busy chewing).

    Me: Shall we go home and watch the dinosaur CD?

    MLM: YESSSSS!

    Me: Oh crap…what have I done?

    MLM: let’s go home, let’s go home, let’s go home ( into infinity)

    Image source- http://data2.whicdn.com/images/7074282/thing.10910721.l_large.jpg
    Image source- http://data2.whicdn.com/images/7074282/thing.10910721.l_large.jpg

  • Did You Know About: Reactive Airway Disease

    It took us a little over 2 years to understand that our HYPERACTIVE child might have some help with his hyperactivity. No, it’s not ADHD although I pored over the DSM and ICD in order to find something that would help me understand his relentlessness and lack of sleep.

    The coughs, colds and persistent sleep disruptions took a toll on us as well. Added to that there was the on&off medication for the symptoms that we weren’t too happy about but it seemed to do the trick for the time being.

    I have realized it’s a matter of immense luck to find the right doctor. And also at the right time. The doctor we finally ended up going to was one who specialized in Ear, Nose&Throat cases and immediately diagnosed MLM as having Reactive Airways Disease.

    With more structured medicine doses and entirely different types of medicines we were able to achieve longer durations of sleep for MLM ( and consequently us) and wee dip in his hyperactivity.

    In time though it was discovered that he had allergies which used to cause the cough and colds and once we identified them we were able to curb them to a large extent as well.

    The piece de resistance was a minor but life-changing surgery for him which took care of his tonsils and adenoids (two things which used to give him a bad cough and make him snore like a trucker!)

    Why was the surgery needed at all? Well it was like this- the adenoids were causing fluid build up in his ears leading to a diminished sense of hearing. Thankfully it was a reversible condition.

    So we are nearly one year down the day of surgery and doing well thank goodness! His hearing is great! He can hear potato chips being bitten into or chocolate wrappers being opened. And his speech has improved to the extent where he can say Brontosaurus and Stegosaurus and string together sentences that are correct and make sense overall, grammatically and contextually.

    For the parents out there who seem to be a bit paranoid about your child, it’s just fine. Paranoia helps at times, if nothing else then to just let you know that you were worried and that’s basically your job. To worry and think of the booboos and take them away for good.

    But the flip side? Now that the speech is clear, coherent and LOUDER than before, I am hit with a barrage of words that rattle around my head all day long and sometimes in the night as well.

    But that’s a small (and LOUD) price to pay to hear a small imp prattle along happily in his own way.

    Amen

  • Out of the Mouth of Mini Me

    I say Mini Me because till now NO ONE has said that MLM is anything like Red. I alone see the similarities and point them out which I know makes Red happy. Who doesn’t want to be told that a once-cherubic and now-impish child with beautiful long lashes, a gurgling laughter and the cutest pout ever, is like his dear ol’ dad!

    Anyhow, don’t let the cuteness thing fool you, this child has his wits about him plenty and uses them to get into messes that are anything BUT cute and divert my attention from those lashes, pout and gurgling laughter quite easily!

    But I digress. As always.

    The last few days MLM and I have been getting into tiffs every morning about his going to school, brushing, getting up in the morning…you name it and we’ve butted heads about it. He literally so.

    Today when I picked him up I thought why not offer an olive branch. If nothing else it’ll help when I have to pack and get my work done. So we drove by KFC and decided to get some Popcorn Chicken for him- it’s his favorite thing to eat in the world. Next to chocolate. DUH!

    So we went and paid in the drive through and went around the bend (seriously!) to pick up the grub. In the meanwhile the little man sneezed and wiped his face on his sleeve. The prim and proper mother than I aim to be from time to time, I told him he is to use a tissue and say ‘Excuse Me’ when he sneezes.

    Pat came the reply- Excuse Me I want some Popcorn Chicken please! Just the same thing he’d told the lady at the drive through window.

    Yikes! Is he going to go through life thinking everything’s centered around a drive-thru window?

    Motto Of My Life
    Motto Of My Life

     

  • Am I The Only One?

    I know Mothers wonder about their children and what they’re up to, what they have the potential to get up to throughout their lives.

    But am hoping that there are other moms out there who have this reaction as well- WHAT IN THE NAME OF GERBER’S BABY FOOD WAS THAT?

    My child- MLM has some strong preferences. He wants to wear track pants. Seldom wears denim.

    Likes his pants to be drawstring. Likes the drawstring to exit the waist of the pants as soon as he gets his hands on it and then promptly begin to chew on it.

    Am convinced he’s part goat. What the other part is am yet to figure out. And if I try harder to arrive at an answer my head is going to explode!

    In the meanwhile the brat will continue to graze on the strings of cotton that have elastic in them.

    BAAAAA! humbug!

     

  • The Uprooted Gypsy

    I’ve categorized myself as a gypsy since long. Not because I have dark, good looks or lots of jet black flowing hair…no sirree! I’ve moved from one place to another as far back as I can recall.

    9 schools. 1 place for graduation and yet another for the Masters. And a job or two along the way.

    I wasn’t entirely a tumbleweed but hadn’t developed any roots so going from one place to the other was simple enough and often the only option.

    The city I live in now is literally been the first place I call my home. Others have come close but this place is home. Ask anyone who has duct taped packing boxes more times than they care to imagine and they’ll tell you they exactly what I mean!

    Been here nearly 9 years. Longest duration anywhere, ever! and this is the first place I had a place of my own as well. Red and I that is. And now we’re moving. It’s just out of the neighborhood and into a place I can see from my roof but it’s still a move.

    The place where I’m staying now is the first place we lived in that was our own. It’s cozy. The smells are familiar as are the scattered toys and the scribbles on the wall by an enthusiastic toddler.

    The new place is fresh, clean, higher up with a better view of the city and offers more opportunity to interact with like-minded people which has been entirely absent here. But the familiarity of a place, especially one where you’ve put down your roots finally is VERY difficult to leave behind.

    There have been special meals, tantrums, birthdays, anniversaries, plans of the future, colors, music and more loads of laundry done than I care of imagine. All here.

    And to leave it behind is incomprehensible. Even while I sort through things and make piles of ‘To Give Away’ and ‘To Keep’.

    It’s not so much the packing and leaving that I mind. It’s the starting over. It’s often like Sisyphus and his boulder.

    But despite all the gloom for leaving behind a home and the what’s clearly the end of an era for me, I’m also (in a non-overt manner) looking forward to the fresh, clean, vibrancy that will come with a new place.

    And, in time, it too will become home.

  • Sunday Morning Shenanigans

    While growing up I think the one thing most people on this planet had in common was their Sunday mornings. Even if it came at different times across the world, I firmly believe every damn person with a whit of grey matter WANTED to sleep on Sundays!

    As kids we slept pretty much as long as we liked on Sundays and and as adults the sleeping in on Sundays took on a religious zeal almost! It was as if the Galactic Amoeba (am kind of a fence sitting on the existence of the Almighty so I guess HE/SHE could be like a giant amoeba in the cosmos too right?) created you with the inability to get up before 8 am on Sundays.

    Enter matrimony and you find a husband who likes to sleep and let sleep. Till date I can’t recall Red (he shall be called Red hereafter) having woken me up because he was hungry or he thought it was too late in the day. He likes to sleep till it leaves him on it’s own and he wishes others around him do the same.

    But we people are an odd bunch. Just when things are going well we think to ourselves, “wouldn’t it be fun to have my body stretched beyond normal capacity and give birth in excruciating pain, to a child who will change the course of life forever! Let alone my Sundays.”

    And the baby cometh. The baby groweth. From a wailing infant to a chubby toddler who puts his fingers up your nose as a wake-up call. Then when he grows to a preschooler he comes and bounces on your undefended form on the bed and demands for toys and Play Doh and whatnots. And just when you’re growing the slightly bit immune to his tactics and have developed an armor to deflect it, he says those words, in that tone that no mother can ignore. Beyond a point anyway…”am hungryyy”.

    You haul yourself out of bed, try to be a good trooper and give the poor starving child with his Oliver Twist eyes something to chow down on. And think it’s just a Sunday…no biggie…I’ll sleep when he becomes a teenager and is surly and non-communicative. But till then your Sundays are toast! And so is your sleep. 

    So what’re you gonna do? You are a good mother after all! You wake up the spouse and ruin his Sunday morning because NO good deed goes unpunished! 

  • Things I Fancy

    I found this site while browsing through app recos on my phone a couple of months back and have been hooked to it ever since. I’m not hooked to the extent that I’m actually buying stuff off it. It’s got a mixture of things that I can afford and stuff I look at wistfully but I haven’t bought anything. Yet.

    And here’s the thing- listen up closely men because you’re getting a rare insight into the female psyche. Women really enjoy shopping. But they LOVE window shopping. And these days with people having less time on their hands courtesy their jobs, bringing up kids and folding laundry (when does this part end!!) and whatnot, screenshopping is a huge boon!

    Window shopping is so exciting because imagining the possibilities of what you can do with the things you’re looking at is a mini trip in itself. And women like these kinds of trips. It doesn’t involve packing extra clothes, water, milk, juice and toys (gadgets) for a simple car ride to the supermarket! It’s something you do just for yourself. A little guilty pleasure with 0% guilt!

    So I too indulge in this harmless activity knowing the credit card won’t get any excitement and neither will my husband’s blood pressure seeing the monthly statement.

    Anyhoo! so back to Fancy..it’s got some really whimsical things I enjoy looking at and bookmarking them and then I thought why not share these things with random people I don’t know and add more to the clutter that is in their cyberspace. Just being a good neighbor in the blogosphere.

    So here goes, in no particular order of preference, some of my Fancy’d-

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    How cute are you!!
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    I could definitely imagine chomping on this by accident!
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    Who wouldn’t like to bounce on top of water in a setting that resembles the movie Deep Blue Sea
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    What I’m going to be saying while the offspring is a teenager

    So while some of you might be thinking, window shopping…really? That’s what women want? Just remember- windows are nice to look through and it doesn’t hurt to look; as long as the credit card is locked FAR away!