Back to business

You must have heard about the Nor’easter. Mountains of snow got piled in this part of the world. All said and done, it was not that bad.  We would have gotten two feet of snow and we spent good three hours shoveling but it was the best of circumstances. No power failures. No fallen trees. The snow itself was light and powdery. We were all huddled under the same roof. The school was off for the past two days. Driving is still a bit dangerous as the snow banks on the side are tall enough to hinder visibility and the roads are narrower. Nevertheless from tomorrow, we will officially be back to business.

LMT post

Happiness is…

• the sight of a  sleeping child, lost in the land of dreams
• the sound of a child thumbing the pages of a book, lost to the written word
• the taste of hot gooey oats kichadi on a cold afternoon
• three-day weekend
• playing board games
• sleepovers!
• watching back to back episodes of Friends
• long phone conversations
• silent togetherness
• cheek rubs and snuggles
• the sound of the garage door open
• doing what I thought I could not do
• 8-hour sleep
• no chauffeuring around on weeknights
• a warm body crawling up to you for some company
• a cup of ginger tea
• exchanging stories at dinner time
• an unexpected compliment
• unconditional acceptance
• overcoming temptations
• sharing a slice of my life

So what makes your jar of happiness full?

Willpower

Some days require more willpower than others. Today, was one such a day. It took humongous effort to say no to the little voice in my head that  

• had me convinced that eating that third piece of fig Newton is not so unhealthy after all. Just one more is not going to hurt.The problem is it will not stop with one more, and it will not stop with fig Newton. 

• tempted me to watch Everybody Loves Raymond tonight for the gazillionth time. I deserve some laughs at the end of the day after all! And this is exactly how the habit of slacking hides behind the excuse of being busy. 

• kept telling me it is ok to skip this post. But then we all know that’s how inertia spreads its tentacles and before we know it the blog has gone into hibernation mode.  

• said it’s ok to skip flossing tonight, I have already flossed twice today after all.  Three months down the line, we don’t want to be sitting at the dentist office squirming with guilt, do we?

Armed with my word of the year, I fight these temptations, one at a time. Some days it feels like I am taking one step forward and on other days it feels like I am taking two steps backwards.

Honey

Meet the newest fleeting member of our family – Honey Venkatesh!

Honey is as real to Ram as is Hobbes to Calvin. She started out as a girl but last night Ram told us that she changed her mind and wants to be a He. So for the record, Honey is a He. And just like Mary’s little lamb, Ram’s little Honey follows Ram wherever he goes. He has school days and home days. He gets a seat at the dinner table and even takes a turn while playing Chutes and Ladder. He ventures out in style – his face peeking out but his body warmly tucked in the backpack. “I want Honey to see the world mama,” would say his ardent caretaker.

This morning Ram went around the house searching for Honey and when he couldn’t find him, he was convinced that Honey had snuck out on an adventure, “I hope he does not get bruises or gets hurt while going on an adventure,” said Ram. Turns out, he was just resting in the car last night.  Ram was elated when he was reunited with his buddy.

“Mama, when are you going to get us a real dog?” asked Ram. “But you have Honey Ram,” said I. “But mama, Honey is a stuffed dog. I want a real one!”  Amazed at how he can traverse between the world of fantasy and reality so seamlessly I told him, “Not for now Ram”  He held Honey closer to his chest and skipped away for his nap time.

Overcoming inertia

Another weekend has flown by…! I would have thought about updating this blog atleast a 100 times, and would have drafted a minimum of 10 posts in my head, but thanks to good old inertia which has planted its stubborn feet, none of them came to light.  

How has the first 11 days of  the new year been for you all? After having a really relaxed winter break with friends, we got back to our routine last week, which was bitterly cold by the way in our part of the world. The Christmas tree is down in our house and so are the lights. One child in the house has been coughing incessantly and one adult was down with flu like symptoms. All these are harbinger of two tough winter months in our household. So yeah, winter is here, which is good because it means spring is around the corner.

I have been staying away from binging – the regular eating binging and FaceBook binging. About regular binging – I realized that the biggest drawback to gluttony and binging is I am eating without savoring because the taste buds have not had a chance to rest. So I am experimenting with less binging. Not dieting but less binging. Now on to the topic of FaceBook binging – the perils of working on a computer all day long is that I have ample opportunities to graze the land of internet, with FB being the most grazed about land. But after all the grazing is done, I don’t feel happy instead I start loathing myself more and more for the lack of discipline. I like FB, it has brought me closer to some friends, it allows me to share what I feel like sharing, I use it as a sounding board for ideas etc. I see value in it but I don’t think it deserves more than 15 mins of my day. So I get FB darshan once in the morning and once at night. And that feels just right…!

What else? what else? I was recommended to have two boxes of tissues when I checked out the book The Fault in Our Stars and the movie The Hundred Foot Journey from the library. The box of tissues were handy for the book but not so much for the movie, which just made me fall in love with the quaint French village. 

Closing this post with a Hari Katha and Ram Leela. We were lazing on our queen bed yesterday when Hari declared – “Amma is the most matured person in our house”. Now I have lived long enough with these kids to expect the unexpected. No sooner did Hari finish this comment, that Ram, who had no idea what the word “mature” meant, picked it up. “Yes anna, Amma is the most matured person in this house. She always thitties (scolds) us. Adi kadaikuum (want to be spanked?)”  Sigh..!!!

On that note, have a good week peeps!