Madness 2

*Full fledged rant*

If there has ever been a super stressful time for me, it must be these last few days.

So yesterday, I was up at 4:20 in the morning. Why? I have no idea. I forced myself to lie in bed, until 5:30, and then decided to squeeze in a workout, since I was up anyway. So the day, started early, and it stayed packed. Had people coming in to view the furniture, phone calls by the dozen.. Too many things to do, and too little time.

By 8 in the evening, I was knackered, but could not even go to bed, as we had people coming to look at the furniture. The whole process is so annoying that sometimes I wish I could just dump the whole lot and forget about it! If only!

Anyway, as I was saying, it was late by the time daughter went to bed, because of all this, and I, obviously, went to bed even later. And was off like a light, and did not stir until 6:00 this morning. And even then, it took me a lot of effort to get out of bed.

Once up, I realized that I had forgotten to put the milk coupons out, but thankfully, had extra milk left over.

Opening the dishwasher to pull out cups, for my morning cuppa, I saw dirty dishes in there! I had forgotten to turn it on. Again, thankfully, it was not too tough to sort out.

Going into the utility for something, I noticed something in the washing machine. I had forgotten to hang the washing to dry! It would have been alright, if only it did not contain daughter’s school uniform! I have never, ever done that, you know! I needed to get them dry, in less than an hour’s time! I tried ironing them, spread them on the clothesline in the balcony, in the hope that the early morning sunlight would be hot enough to dry it. But who was I kidding? It was just as wet, at 7:30. I just had one hope – my hairdryer. Well, lets just say that the dryer hasn’t been used as much as it was this morning, in the last few months. Thankfully, it got passably dry for daughter to wear, who told me rather sweetly, that she has no problem wearing wet clothes!

I could only thank my stars! And my hairdryer 🙂

The 3 Cs

Cleaning, Clearing, Cooking

It would be no exageration to say that the last few days have been crazy for me. I have been cleaning, clearing, cooking, hosting a party, and cleaning, clearing all over again.I do have loads of left overs to not have to worry about cooking though 🙂

It was daughter’s birthday last week, and I decided to do a small get-together, with our close friends, at home. And also ambitiously decided to cook. Of course, better sense prevailed, Or rather husband prevailed. He refused to even let me think about it. He knows me. So I settled on cooking a few things and ordering the rest – just to make me feel less guilty about not cooking entirely. You see, I have some friends who cook for massive parties, and I feel so inadequate. Husband, of course, believes that we should outsource everything that is not our core competency, and we should enjoy the day rather than go crazy cooking. Which I agree with, most of the time.

Thank goodness, he drilled some sense into me. Even with the little that I had to do, I was running around like a headless chicken. Shopping for everything we would need, cleaning, taking the opportunity to clear out clothes and toys that we needed to give away. Which just made it crazy, because I just ended up doing things which I could have easily done another time. The only way I could pull it off, was by staying away from the laptop. I allowed myself the phone(but of course 🙂 ).

To cut a long story short, in the few days that I cut off myself from the laptop, my efficiency doubled. My cupboards are lighter, my carpets are cleaner, I wish I could say that I was lighter as well, but after a party, that would be a small miracle 🙂 It won’t take too long for my carpets to go back to their earlier state, but I seriously plan to keep my cupboards light. I’m going to have a tough enough time trying to pack things into boxes without adding to it by shopping some more.

Now, with the party and the mess out of the way, I’ve got to get ready to go to Venice 🙂 We are off to Venice next weekend! And I suspect that I will have to go on another blog sabbatical to get everything ready to go.

So I’ll get back next week and comment, reply to comments, read, etc, etc, etc 🙂 I’ll try to sneak in when I can, but I might be better off staying away from the laptop. Oh, and please do wish for us that we get good weather this time! AND by good weather I mean, HOT weather!

PS: Leaving you with a picture of one of the things that I made, and luckily, turned out to be a huge hit 🙂 especially lucky, because it was a first time experiment 🙂

Just because..

..I am too tired to think of a title, but don’t want a lecture from Ashwathy 😉

There are reasons that I tell you that term breaks are pure torture. Reasons like this…

What’s wrong with this? This is a 3D puzzle. The box warns that it takes 2-3 hours to complete – but when we bought it, I somehow managed to miss it. Or perhaps my subconscious must have dismissed it – 2-3 hours – that has to be an exaggeration, right? Wrong. It takes that long and more. As I discovered to my horror.

Last week, Poohi’s school had a Maths puzzle workshop. We had been to it, and they had a little shop. And this was what we picked up from there. Mainly because Poohi loves puzzles, and she is quite good at them. So I thought(mistakenly), that may be it would be fun to do a 3D one. Maybe it would challenge her a bit. Challenge, it sure did. It just challenged the wrong person – me. I know, I know, I should have known!

This week has been a week of broken promises. We had planned to go out for lunch, just the two of us, but it never happened. Today we had planned for it again but there were some last minute change of plans. So we decided that we would go out in the evening. By the evening Poohi was a little tired, so we decided to stay at home and do something fun. That ‘something fun’ turned out to be that 3D puzzle.

Little fiddly pieces, trying to figure out what needs to be done, over the constant chatter of daughter’s(if you have met her, you would know what I mean), eager little fingers which are sometimes a bit too rough with cardboard pieces, with a million and one questions(does the real Tower bridge have giant batteries that makes it open?).. make a deadly combination.

At the end of the  3+ hours, my back is in pieces, I am ready to demolish the whole thing, if I could, and all I want is, for it to be assembled, and out of the way. I can’t help cursing myself for buying the darn thing, when daughter gives me a sudden hug, and says, ‘Amma, that is magic! It almost looks real ‘.

Can’t ask for more than that, can I? I guess a little ‘magic’ does work wonders to soothe a mother’s aching back and grumpy mood 🙂

PS: I haven’t been blog hopping much, haven’t been responding to comments. Come Monday, I will be on it, I promise 🙂 This week has been crazy!

Swayamvar nahi Shaadi

or so he claims when he says ‘“Swayamvar nahin Raam Shaadi bolo, jab thaan hi li hai to shaadi karke hi jaaoonga.”

Ever since I first saw Rahul Mahajan ki shaadi promos, I have been at a loss to figure out, who in the right mind would want to marry him?

Well, we found out. There were plenty and most of them from media/acting backgrounds. Not really surprising, is it? I am willing to bet that most of them must be hoping that they stay on long enough for the audience and headhunters to notice them and then would have luck of getting rejected by the man:) That would surely be having the cake and eating it too, wouldn’t it?

The thing with all these reality shows is that you get hooked!  I started watching it, to just see who would want to marry him and I am so hooked! They are such a laugh riot.  Of course, I would be grateful if Rahul Mahajan’s laughter could be sedited out or even beeped out! He does sound exactly how Smita describes . The stuff the girls came up with was just hilarious! One girl claims that ever since she saw Dil toh Pagal hai – she was convinced that she would get married to a ‘Rahul’!! Another one, has been pining away for him for that 10 years – ever since she saw him, when she was 14. Thats right – 14 years of age! That must be the longest crush ever! Some are already in love with him. One claims that he is perfect – apparently he is a responsible person – now where could she have possible got that from? And honest because she says he wants to go good for the nation if he ever enters politics! Yes, right! Show me one politician who says he wants to do ‘bad’ for the nation.  That’s all we need, for him to enter politics as well. As if we did not have enough ‘interesting’ people in politics already!   One of the girls was a Iskcon devotee, but she was chucked out. Guess they did not like the fact that she spoke more about Krishna than Rahul 😉 Apparently every girl dreams of getting married to a celebrity – really? I must be living in some kind of parallel universe as I am yet to meet a girl with these ‘dreams’.

Yesterday, we got to know some interesting general knowledge facts, like Obama’s real name is Obama Bin Laden!! and another contestant had a tough time figuring out which country Nagaland belonged to – Columbo(????) and South Africa being one of the names that she tried with! It was hilarious! She was given so many hints and yet could not figure it out.  It amazes me that people who know(and love) Rahul Mahajan have no clue that Nagaland is part of India! Is it just a sign of the times? I  must be out of touch because I still haven’t been able to figure out what exactly is so great about Rahul Mahajan? I though people would run the other way, if asked to marry him. Apparently I am very very wrong.

When I had first seen Big Brother here – the time when Shilpa Shetty had participated, I was surprised to see how easily celebrity-dom is cast on so many people. It does not seem very different in India. People seem to be becoming ‘celebrities’ based on all sorts of claims to fame. One of the contestant claimed that her mother gave her the money that she had been saving for her gall bladder operation, to her daughter so that she could participate here. What? Competing in a reality show is more important than an operation? What kind of child would accept it? Wouldn’t that be a fair indication of the person’s priorities?

Reality shows are here to stay. I guess, we will continue to see more and more celebrity crazy people trying to compete in them for their 2 mins of fame. Are we getting shallow as a society or is it just the opportunities that have opened up avenues to show case such people. Reality shows that are some kind of talent show/hunts certainly do open up avenues to the talented – but when reality shows are just entertainment, and the standards constantly dropping to further sensationalize it  – where will all this end?