to gym or to shake.

Knew that I'd been bloating up over the years, when my trousers went from a 30 to a 32, to a 34 waist size. My waist is still a waist, but I need 34 to lug the damn thing over my hips. Its the one place where I can claim to look like Sreedevi!

Have been meaning to exercise, but.
Morning walks are out, cos I'm too lazy to get up. 6.30 is early enough for me, thank you.
Evening walks are out, cos I'd still be stuck to my desk/client's desk in the evenings.
Nightly walks are out, cos the mad dog wants to pause here and there and everywhere to sniff. So its a nice (for her more than for me) stroll rather than an energetic swinging walk.
If I were that focussed a person as to drop her back and then come down again for my exercisewalk, I would never have gotten into the shape I am now in.

But then, my husband offered me an alternate career option.
A belly dancer.
He said I'd give all of 'em a run for their money.

Hmmm....
I can either divorce him.
Or join a gym.

He's been at me to join one for ages now.
But knowing me, I'm afraid it'll be good money gone down the drain.
Pliss to advise, bloggy friends.

Thou shalt feel Guilty...

Mommy guilt didn't exist when Sonny boy was small. He was an amazingly sweet baby and never gave me any sweat. From potty training to feeding to sleeping, he was an utter sweetheart!

But with the school years, entered the frequent trips to Guiltyland.

Firstly, I joined back to work once he was old enough for school, so number one guilt was how can I leave my baby to cope on his own?

This was definitely reinforced by the fact that his teacher at the time told me that children of working parents all had problems in adjusting. Despite the fact that I thought Sonny boy was adjusting beautifully well. She told me that I needed to spend more quality time with him and that there was no substitute for that. True, that, but where was the time?

And then that monster made his appearance- Homework. Brrrr. I have never dreaded my homework in the way I dread Sonny boy's. I still do. Bad enough that I could only give my son whatever time was leftover from office hours. Those couple of hours, I had to make him do something he disliked, had to yell at him and make him cry. The 'quality'time spent with my son on some days made me feel truly wretched. I spent more time on it, because I didn't want the teacher generalising that his working mother had no time for him.

And then, as he grew, the reasons for guilt grew too.
I was/am always bad cop. While the Acha was/is mostly good cop. This is because he has wayyyy more patience than me, but also because he doesn't even NOTICE some things that simply glare at me.
Like making his T's go over the line and his Y's go below. If not neat, at least correct handwriting?
Like putting away his stuff after he's through with it.
Like being more careful with his toys and stuff.

I wish the Creator had given me a man's mind while at it. Amazing how little they notice things!! Bad enough when it comes to the house, but worse when it is with regard to Sonny boy. The 'mistakes' are left to me to correct.
If I correct, I am the non-fun mother. If I don't I am the un-bothered mother. Guilty either ways.

I also feel guilty that I don't 'network' enough with other mothers in the complex. I am the last one to know of the dance class, the karate class, the yoga class in the clubhouse. When he was a baby, Sonny boy had a lot more friends cos I was friendly with a lot of the mommas. We tended to get together in the evening, and naturally the kids bonded too. Not so nowadays, when once I get back, I have work and a little bit of me-time as well ( books, FB, blog), without which I think I would divorce the husband!

I have not the leisure to know his friends, whether to approve or disapprove. When my Mom comes, it is she who tell me the little tidbits about them that are so invaluable in knowing them. I heartily disapprove of one particular kid who GETS ON MY NERVES. But then, I don't have the time to introduce Sonny boy to other 'better' kids. Introduce because Sonny boy is bad at going out and making friends. He tends to stick to the few he knows and then makes them the axis around which his world revolves.

It is my Mom (or my maid) who knows whether he finishes his snack/lunch at school. Who gets first chance at hearing what went on in school. If at all they manage to get something out of my clam son.

Come to think about it, almost ALL my guilt centres around me being a working mom. But then, I know of at least a few mothers who wish they were in my shoes and could contribute to the family finances, or have an extra piggy bank to dip into for the luxuries. And then I read about this lady who felt bad about not DOING something and BEING somebody.
On the one side, there's her who feels like that, and on the other, there's a me who IS somebody other than a mother, and DOES something other than mothering, but wishes she didn't have to. Incidentally, that post of hers so resonated with me. I could empathise with every guilt she mentioned other than the doing and being somebody. Even that, except that she felt guilty for not, and me for.

She's made her peace with her guilts, I am yet to.
Mothers in blogosphere (fathers too), if you want to get that guilt off your chest, let the words spill out and take part in this contest for Mommy guilt initiated by Apu.

english o english.

Sue handed me a big red marker quite some time back. I'd been lazy to sit and make make a note of all the bloopers, but then here goes...

Mails written with the intent of sounding official more than communicating whatever quite make me see red.
Not the perfect example, but something like this- where....
instead of asking the person - could I know your name?
you go to the extent of asking- I wonder if your honorable self could do me the great pleasure of letting me know your good name? .....
makes me go aaaaarrrgghhhhh!
I don't know if this is the accepted mode of writing in officialese, but it gets my goat that simple English is disallowed when you are writing to an official in a bank/PSU.
They don't TALK a different English, then how come they're supposed to READ a different English??


Again, its ok if ordinary people can't read/write or even understand English. Its just another language after all. But then, after you've been educated a whole decade in the language, and you hold a senior position in a respectable organisation, you better mind your spellings/grammar.
I LOVE it when my dear 'superiors' send me mails that are supposed to be a sample of the perfect way to comunicate to clients, with these mistakes-
did you recieve my mail? (recEIve is the correct spelling)
don't loose it (lose, not loose)
pls advice (advise, not advice)
revert to me (revert to is repetitive)
I enjoy the few times when I correct the mails and send it out, with a copy to the person who made the original mistakes.


I dislike officialese, but SMSese gets my goat more than officialese.
In our days, alphabets were English, and numbers were Math. But these days' kids seem to have it all wrong.
Dey cm 2 thnk engls n mth put 2gethr is gr8 and d way 2 go 4wrd!!
Gauri is yet to enlighten me on what exactly she meant to convey by the alphabets towards the end, in the post which was her contribution to the blogathon.


By a weird coincidence, I found this forward in my mail last week, that I'm copying here, cos it goes so perfectly with this post.
Enjoy, folks, especially all you MOPS out there. :-D

ONLY THE BRITISH COULD HAVE INVENTED THIS LANGUAGE

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Then shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let's face it - English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England ..
We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing,
grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?
Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.
If you have a bunch of odds and ends
and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English
should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
in which your house can burn up as it burns
down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out,
and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

And, in closing, if Father is Pop,how come Mother's not Mop?

I WOULD LIKE TO ADD THAT IF PEOPLE FROM POLAND ARE CALLED POLES THEN

PEOPLE FROM HOLLAND SHOULD BE HOLES AND THE GERMANS GERMS!!!

its a new school year...

I didn't think much of the kindergarten graduation thingie conducted by his school earlier this year. Thought it was making too much of a progression that was only natural. Not exactly a mountain out of a molehill, but close to it.

But today when my baby was all dressed to go to first standard, I realised suddenly that it was indeed a big deal. He's no more a baby now, he's a boy! It IS a mountain!

He was still as thrilled (if not more) about his Ben 10 undies as his new school uniform.
He informed me solemnly that the elastic band of his tie had to go "UNDER the collar, Amma."
New uniform, new Cars bag, new Cars lunch box, new Cars water bottle... Cars seems to be new Ben10, if you get me. Tho' I can't understand why it suddenly seems to have found favour...
Trinity gave the new white Reebok shoes an assessing glance, but then decided not to push her luck.

And the books- phew- don't get me started on the books.
English and Math and Hindi and EVS and Computers and Moral Studies and Art and...this and that ...
I turned a deaf year to my Mom's well meaning advice on getting a tuition teacher for him all of the last year. I didn't want anybody else shoving their ideas of academics down my son's throat.
But this year, am forced to the conclusion that a tuition teacher just might be a solution for all of us. Or I have to quit my job. Teaching my son everything in just 1 hr - which is what I have left of the day after I reach home- is just not feasible.

And Sonny boy is fast growing up.
Just prior to school opening day, this weekend we were brushing up his writing skills and I was giving him dictation with this sentence-
His mother gave him a sock.
after writing h-i-s, up piped a voice- Amma, can I write Mom for mother??

The Amma gave the Acha a speaking look and told the son- MOTHER. not mom.

And yet, he remains a little boy.
While I was putting his folder inside his bag, he told me , Amma, it is called a folder because you have to FOLD it and put it inside the bag.
LOL. The last year, his bag had been a small bag and the folder had to be folded to get inside his bag. So.

I guess this is how the year will progress- a little big with a little small.

God bless that the year is a fruitful one. That above all else- career, housework, wife... I am a good mother to Sonny boy. Right now, that takes priority.

Mommy Bloggers List

For the upcoming Mother's Day, IndusLadies.com is coming up with a compilation of an elegant list of all Indian Mommy Bloggers and is sending it to over 1 lakh readers. In addition, this list would also be made avaialble to 6000 facebook fans and twitter followers of Indus Ladies. (Note: If you blog "exclusively" about Parenting your kids, or about Parenting in general or any special Parenting experiences, then your blog qualifies).

If you blog inside or outside Indusladies.com, this would be a good way to get the word out about your wonderful blog to the entire membership of Indusladies.

On Mother's Day, all you need to do is make a blog post requesting your readers to download this compiled list of Indian Mommy blogs.

If you would like your blog to be included in that list, please email (to partners@indusladies.com) the following as soon as possible and before 6th May.

1. Your blog URL
2. Your blog Name
3. A 5-8 line description about your blog (or about yourself as a blogger)
4. Link to 3-5 of your most popular blog posts.

Please forward to your fellow bloggers as well.


P.S - If you have any questions, please email partners@indusladies.com.
PPS. TODAY IS THE LAST DAY to send in the request for your blog to get included too, so HURRY!!!!!!

the week that was.

In Sonny boy's absence, I

saw 2 movies at the theatre.
Both mallu movies- Janakan and In Ghost House.
The former was ok, with Suresh Gopi and Mohanlal putting in good performances.
Ghost House -I saw it only for the sake of the husband who whined me into seeing it. Four young bachelors were FUNNY in the original. Four middle aged men are NOT in the sequel to the sequel.
And what the husband had to say was that I should not over analyse comedy! Husbands!

made no dinner at all.
There have to be compensations for seeing movies like Ghost House, right?
No lunch either on most days. Breakfast however was made and eaten healthily.

read books.
Finished the whole lot of Mills and Boons borrowed from my sis, and which have to be returned this weekend when we go pick up the son and the dog.
Agatha Christie's The Complete Ariadne Oliver.
Compared to the Poirot and Miss Marple, Ariadne is boring.
Vikas Swarup's Six Suspects.
I liked this book of his too. The characters are well drawn out and Swarup entwined me beautifully in the ups and downs of their lives. How the people from different corners of the globe end up at Vicky Rai's farmhouse, with very different but equally strong motives the fateful day of the murder is a nice page turner.
Amish's The Immortals of Meluha.
This book was such a delightful surprise and the best part of it, is that there is more to come- part 2 and Part 3 too. If Part 2 and 3 go the way of Part 1, then we have a WINNER on our hands. The story has to do with the Neelkanth and how he comes by his role of the saviour of the Suryavanshis and the Chandravanshis. Amish has done a riveting job of combining mythology and religion into fiction and I'm really looking forward to the sequel which is supposed to be out at the year end. Happy writing, Amish.

And then I slept and slept and slept.
And made umpteen calls to Sonny boy.
And was miserable that only Trinity could not speak to me.

This weekend, we're off to pick them up.

Happy Meal toy. Check.
Remote controlled Helicopter (he took only the wires, he forgot the actual copter!) Check.
Book. Check.
Repaired scooter. Check.
Ben10 Tshirt- to be drwan and painted in the next 2 days.
1 more toy- to be bought
2 eagerly waiting parents. CHECK.

Missing...

Am not looking forward to this weekend.

Sonny boy and Trinity have been carted off to chez grandmother in Kerala.
To enjoy 2 weeks of the summer vacations. They may be enjoying, but the parents are finding the home to be unnaturally quiet.

The days pass by boringly in office, but the evenings are looooooooooong.

The Acha watches his News and English movie channels in peace, without a little hand snatching the remote away and putting on his precious cartoons. There is no fight between the big boy and the small boy over who gets to watch what, while the Amma watches from a distance and bangs her head against the wall and wishes she could just get her hands around the neck of the guy who invented tv in the first place.

There is no doggy foot pawing compellingly at our legs/hands the minute we stop our random rubbing of her doggy belly with our toes/fingers.

There no Sonny boy to holler at and threaten and blackmail into having his dinner in under 45 minutes. (I am NOT exaggerating- he takes a minimum of half an hour to get anywhere near finishing his meal- be it breakfast, lunch or dinner.)

There is no mad dog behaving, at the ripe old age of 6 (equivalent to 42!) like a puppy and running off with chappals, bathroom mats, and the like. And no Sonny boy quick to react to the mad dog's capers- jumping up and howling, "Amma, Trinity's EATING my shoes/chappals/sandals!" and running after her, which is exactly what she wanted in the first place.
And then the Amma would run after the pair of them and separate them, whacking the dog, and yelling at the son to stop acting like a fool, and then the Acha would berate Sonny boy the hundredth time for not being able to see thru a mere DOG's ploy for attention.
And all the time, Sonny boy and Trinity would listen with apparently submissive faces, but each planning to do EXACTLY the same the next time opportunity presented itself.



At night, there is no small figure in pyjamas trailing around.... and then waiting up in bed for me to come and read him his story. As I settle in bed with my book, it is when I miss Sonny boy the most. No little head snuggling onto my shoulder, pushing his book in front of mine, saying "my story first, Amma, this one!" And then, once the story is done, his leg comes flinging itself across my stomach and his fingers creep around to my ear... sigh..

Whe the Acha puts his hand around me too, the hand is firmly put aside, along with a firm order- "Acha, you don't hug Amma. I will hug Amma. YOU hug ME!" Even when the lights are off, any attempts by the Acha are inevitably foiled by an alert son.
The Acha says that as if contending with his son noticing and not approving of his attentions to me was not enough, now he has to put up with the dog's disapproval too!

Trinity is very watchful indeed, of not just the Acha, but also Sonny boy's attentions to me, quickly running up in case she senses any hanky panky. Its almost like - why almost- it IS - like having a second child.

In the car while driving down, I was in the back seat, with Sonny boy on one side, and Trinity on the other, cos like any two siblings, they would be all affection to start with, but soon, the one would start to play up with the other, resulting in a pow-wow in no time. So it was deemed better to keep them on separate sides- him looking out of this window, her looking out of that.
But inevitably, both of them would land up on my knee. And then a paw would find its way onto Sonny boy's hand, and then a yell would go up that she scratched him, and then I'd again push them apart, and the Acha'd ask them to SHUT UP...

Mornings, we no longer need an alarm clock. Promptly at day break a canine form stirs. And a head lifts impatiently at every single sound from outside... and then when she can stand it no longer, she's up and at us- poking her WET nose into our faces, wagging her tail nineteen to the dozen against the wardrobe making a louder racket than any alarm clock... "Wakey wakey", she grins good naturedly at us from beside the bed. And the Acha who hates that wet nose in his neck, jumps up promptly to take her for her walk.
Sonny boy loves to have that nose poking at his face tho' and every morning, she tickles him into getting up with giggles...

Its been a week of having a home without Sonny boy and Trinity. And tomorrow's Friday- a day we normally look forward to. But not this time. Something tells me its going to be a loooooong weekend.