Crazy happy!

One of the greatest perks of being a SAHM is the leisure to think, analyze and do some things that one would never get a chance to do otherwise. For example, one of my morning activities is (as you may all know by now) is waiting near our gate with our younger kiddo till his school bus arrives. We spend at least 10 minutes a day doing just that. Sometimes I take my phone with me and catch up with my blog reading on Feedly. But mostly I leave my phone behind and sit chatting to my newly five-year-old.

Today as we sat there, after a bit of tickling and poking of my cheek with a prickly globe amaranth (vadamulla) bloom, Ani was sitting in my lap when a mynah flew down a few yards from us. They are common here along with some more pretty and cute fauna. We watched the little bird hop along and I tried to imitate its call. This led me to listen for more sounds of the denizens of the air around us and I could make out at least 6 different sounds. 

Last month I had shown Ani the Greater Coucal/ the Crow Pheasant strutting across our yard and told him its name and asked him to listen to its distinctive call. Today as the bird started asking for salt ("Uppu, uppu"), Ani immediately said, "That's the Uppan!" and we both sat in a sort of rapture just listening to it. Then a koel started its song and I just had to whistle back (yep, that's one of my greatest accomplishments. I can whistle and pretty loudly!)

So the school bus came and Ani said good bye. But the koel and I were at it in full swing. We would have a bout, then the koel would sulk awhile. Then it would start going again and I reciprocated. Each time he gave up and sulked, I laughed. I pulled some weeds in the meanwhile and kept up the competition till my tummy rumbled to remind me it was time for breakfast. As I went in (of course after having had the last whistle!) I was crazy happy and what else did I sing but this...

ഒരു വട്ടം കൂടിയാ കുയിലിന്റെ പാട്ടു കെട്ടെതിർപാട്ടു  പാടുവാൻ മോഹം 

ഒടുവിൽ പിണങ്ങി പറന്നുപോം പക്ഷിയോടരുതെയെന്നോതുവാൻ മോഹം 

(Once again would I love to sing in competition with the koel

Then say "Don't leave" when he flies off, miffed )

Thankfully, unlike the poet, I don't have to just wish, I can do it! So the next time you are feeling down in the dumps, just find a koel to compete with. I guarantee it will make you chuckle and giggle like a giddy school kid! As for the koel, I am sure he'll come again. After all, this was not our first jugalbandi! :)

Productivity tweaking - too much?

Of late, I have been slightly obsessed with productivity enhancing tools and articles. This year I started listing out my daily to-do list in my daily journal in addition to the reminders for daily jobs on my faithful Astrid. Every morning, I wrote out a big list and chose three MITs (Most Important Tasks) to be completed that day in addition to my menu items for the day. Okay, this listing, so far has been done about 80% of the time till yesterday, at a cursory glance through my journal. On travel/vacation days as well as some stretches when LIFE happens in all caps, this has not happened. And did I manage to finish all list items every day? No way. I was lucky if I could finish at least the MITs!

The news that Astrid was acquired by Yahoo! and is going to be taken off the web (part of me still screams, "Why, why, why???" in true soap opera fashion) knocked me off my feet. For the first time in years, I've had some semblance of accomplishment of my daily routine and here it was going kaput! I hurriedly imported all my data from Astrid and started searching for a viable alternative.

Over the last couple of months, I searched high and low for Astrid's substitute and tried one app after the other while retaining Astrid on my phone. I tried Remember the Milk, ToDoist, Wunderlist, Trello and more.  I signed up for  each in turn and tried using them for a day or two. Something or the other would bug me about the new app and I invariably deleted my account with each. In the process, I also started using Feedly for blog reading because although I have neatly categorized and bookmarked my favorite blogs and keep culling the inactive ones from time to time, I thought I could enhance my reading organization by opting to read through Feedly.

This week I had almost reached breaking point when Astrid's farewell mail came through. Then I happened to read this article: Confessions of a Recovering Lifehacker. I realized that in my search for the perfect tasking app, I was missing out on a lot. I checked my phone - Astrid was working fine and I didn't need to sync it with the web because I only use it on my phone and it functions well enough without syncing up. Plus I have a paper copy of all my recurring tasks as well as a copy on my trusty Evernote if ever my phone crashes and Astrid on my phone is lost. I can easily manage on those in such an eventuality and since I've already tried out some new task apps, I can easily choose one then.

Aaah, relief! In that happy frame of mind I settled down yesterday to watch the final of the Tri-nation series. Now there is something totally unproductive (ok, ok, I did cheat, I took the time to catch up on some reading)!!! I almost kicked myself at 2:45 am for having lost precious sleep sitting up all alone to watch the Indian batting fiasco. But I couldn't switch off the TV because MS was still there!! As he struck ball after ball and didn't run to protect his hamstrings and the other batsman, I marveled at his courage and understood his strategy of waiting for the weak link in the Lankan bowling lineup. But when the last over equation came up, ardent fan that I am, I doubted whether Captain Cool could accomplish it on that pitch. Oh how glad I was to be proven wrong! If you'd been within a ten-mile radius of Karthi at 3 am today, I'm sure you would have been deafened by my war whoop as Dhoni's last sixer flew over the boundary line. I woke up all my family to join in the festivities. We waited till Arun Lal's last gaffe at the presentation ceremony near 4 am. Total amount of sleep yesterday - < 2 hours!!!

Ups and downs!!

The past two weeks have been interesting ones at Karthi. At first we had a couple of unwelcome guests. A very nasty couple I must say they were and it must have been a hasty marriage of convenience. We were taking cold precautions and so a cold virus and influenza virus got together and attacked our home. First DH went down. When he showed signs of getting up after three days, I went down, then Nikhil got the fever. The symptoms were interesting - we had all the usual cold symptoms, high fever that in my case peaked four hours after I took fever medication, body aches, heavy head - rather, you might ask what symptoms we did not have, that would be easier to enumerate.

Suffice to say, I had barely scraped my head off my pillow for the first time in four days this Tuesday when my driving instructor came along. He had, after innumerable delays in getting my learner's license processed, managed to get me a driving test slot for the fourth of July (yesterday). There I was, barely able to stand straight, having practised the Eight at the end of May for a couple of days and not having touched my scooter for almost a month! He consoled me saying that even if I failed, I could get another appointment soon enough, but it was difficult to get a fresh date if I did not attend at all. So I said I would meet him at 7:30 am at the testing ground on the fourth.

I got to the place, practised hard for an hour doing the Eight and duly presented myself for the test and PASSED! No one was more surprised than I!!! DH who came to provide moral support at the time of the test was watching and saw that about 50% of the lot that tested yesterday flunked their Eights. I was in the middle of a long queue and I didn't want to watch any negative things, so I didn't watch any of the tests before mine and kept my head turned away and visualized myself completing the Eight successfully. I heard others in the queue going, "Oh no, she put down her foot" and all the gasps and sighs, but determinedly hummed a tune and kept my eyes averted. Well, that strategy worked! It's like a huge weight off my chest now! Now if I could only chase away the residual muscle fatigue and lethargy of the flu too, I'll be in clover.

Today, for the first time in a week, I went outside to check my garden:

Ahh, the long beans have started climbing the trellis my helper made for me last Monday. My other veggies too are coming along:

 The okra are looking good, although the weeds nearby are taking advantage of my week's inactivity.

The tomato seedlings are big enough to be transplanted.

My garden area has benefited from the post first shower weeding. I can see what plants I have! 

My favorite rose. People keep asking me for cuttings each year. Few have reported success. This is one plant I have not allowed to die in my garden!

My vadamulla aka globe amaranth was a puny plant until last October we dumped a load of manure near it to be distributed in the garden. It took off!

This I brought home from our 2010 trip to Munnar. Slowly but surely it has been making its way up our garden wall, gets almost burnt up each summer (it's on our southern wall, so you can guess how hot it gets!), but still survives. 

Most of that bare area you can see there is uncultivable because there is just four inches of soil above two septic tanks and the soil quality is very poor. I will be putting some pots and grow-bags there in the near future. Lots still to be done! 

So how does your garden grow this year?

Confucius say...

Confucius say: If  normal work =  15 minutes in the yard, no try impress garden helper by digging 2 hours. 

Ouch, my arms! But I had to take advantage of the first ever clear day we've had since the beginning of the month. At the time it felt good to get going at the weeds with some company (Work/talk ratio was maintained consistently. He did 80% of the work, 20% of the talk while I did the same in inverse proportions). Please attribute any spelling errors and all creepy pics in this post to my overenthusiastic gardening today.

Remember my earring organizer from 2010? I wrote about it here.

Recently I took a proper look at it again:

It has stretched so much. (Costume jewelry hoarding problem - who me???? Naaah!) And I don't think I'll be able to fit in even one more pair in there. 

So I helped myself to some more crochet goodness, this time choosing a frame that can support the weight and still retain the shape...

I just pulled down on the bottom of a trio of wire hangers, crocheted three different granny squares in white and bound them to the somewhat square shape of the hangers. The result is this:

 

They are slightly wonky,  but very practical!

Lots of room up there, hmm!!! And if I run out of space, I can always make a new square! Also preening a bit because I thought this craft up all by myself!

Now, what to do with the old one once I clean it up? I'll think of something! And the clear day has ended officially as we're having a fantastic shower right now!

The Way of the Artist

There is a saying that "Great art comes only from great suffering". I have my own opinions about that, but recently I saw an instance of the same happening  in real life. 

Last Saturday DH, our kindergartener and I were out shopping for groceries. We also needed a replacement bulb for our living room light fixture and had taken an old bulb as sample. On our way back, I casually glanced at our son on the back seat. It seemed the kiddo had grown very fat cheeks all of a sudden and there was a black screw bottom poking out of his mouth. I let out a gasp and pulled the bulb out of his mouth. Fortunately it was still in one piece.

DH was not about to let it go at that. He suddenly swerved on to the road's shoulder, slammed the brakes and took several partially successful swipes at the backseat occupant while I let loose a diatribe on the consequences of putting a bulb in one's mouth. Needless to say, my lecture was drowned in the frantic shrieks and scarpering to get away from his father's hand.  On the whole, we were greatly thankful that he was unharmed.

Later that evening we were all engrossed in our weekend activities when the kiddo came up to us with his Magna Doodle and showed us his sketch:

His explanation: "This is me when Acha comes to pinch me..."

Bears a close resemblance to this, hein? I assure you that our kid has never seen this painting ever before this. Makes you think what horrors little Munch must have gone through???

See how true art is created? Here is our own little Edvard Munch with his life experience sublimated to high art:

Kochi Biennale, look out, here is your future contributor!

And yes, after we were spent from our guffaws, I did take our almost-5-year-old aside and explain with great calm and emphasis about the consequences of trying to illuminate one's insides with anything other than an endoscope. Yep, that's sorted out now.

As if the monsoon storms were not enough!

- Your mom is in hospital undergoing surgery for cancer.

- Your dear, 5-month-pregnant sister in law dislocates her knee in a freak accident, lands up in another hospital.

- Your sweet two-year-old niece is taken to the emergency with sudden convulsions and starts a high fever.

- Your brother-in-law is downed by chicken pox.

- You are stuck at home, not being able to go anywhere or do anything for any one of the above.

All this is thrown at you within 24 hours and you have my plight yesterday. I went almost crazy (not to say anything about depleting my phone balance) trying to keep tabs on all my loved ones in trouble. Since my brother needs constant company and my kids will need someone to come home to from school, I have to stay at home.

What they say is true - action is the best remedy for worry. My kitchen got uncharacteristically neatened up. The garden suddenly lost a big patch of weeds. Holes were poked into new garden beds and seeds were sown. These activities were punctuated by intervals of stillness, giving thanks for the blessings received, watching and drinking in the rain with my eyes, marveling at the exuberant green that has sprung up all around withing just twelve days of monsoon. 

By the time these were done,

- Mom was out of surgery, recovered her consciousness.

-  Sis-in-law received excellent care, the baby is safe and she will be out of the hospital today.

- Niece is fighting back, thankfully no more convulsions, receiving care for fever.

- Brother-in-law is recuperating in his brother's house where all have already passed the ordeal.

The day is much more peaceful. 

All things pass. 

You just have to hold on.

Soul Lessons

Scene One

The Bank

I am overjoyed to see that there are only a few customers due to the early hour. I join the slightly amorphous queue for my transaction.

A slightly elderly lady cuts ahead of me taking advantage of the shapelessness of the "queue". She studiously avoids my annoyed gaze.

Someone whispers in my head, "She is giving you a chance to be a better person". I look at the side of her head and forgive her for her action. I am probably inconvenienced by an additional five minutes, but it's okay. I have another transaction at the bank and that is completed very pleasantly and efficiently. I am satisfied.

Scene Two

The Village Office

The queue here is enormous. I hand my old land tax receipt to the peon who finds the correct register and places the receipt as a bookmark on the right page. He puts my register beside another tall stack at the working clerk's side. I am not even in the first stack! Plan to stay for at least one hour here.

A man walks in two minutes after me, gets his register found, then coolly takes it from the peon and places it plump in front of the harried clerk with a murmured request. The clerk makes a nominal protest, "It's difficult when you plague me with such requests when such a lot of people are already in queue", but processes the guy's transaction quickly and lets him go anyway.

This time I don't even bother with getting annoyed and then forgiving. I am calm. 

Two minutes later, a tardy employee arrives. The first clerk moves to another seat and takes the tall stack of registers with him. The new clerk takes the first register in the smaller pile and proceeds to accept my land tax. I am out in 5 more minutes.

Coincidence? I don't think so. I believe it was the reward for a lesson well learned. I rode on a smile all the way home...