Que Sera Sera
I have no fixed idea or plan for what my daughter should be when she grows up. My parents gave me the freedom to choose my path and never forced any of their children into or away from any field. My daughter certainly will have more choices and more challenges (ouch!)than I did , when she grows up. I hope she has the maturity and awareness to recognize her calling and go for it. The reason I am talking about career choices for my toddler is : she found a long piece of white foamboard left over from a home decoration project. It's a 5ft by 1/2ft long rectangular piece. She was holding it in her hands and shaking it around ( it's very light). After a couple of times, she started swinging it and shaking it jumping up and down. She called out to me to see what she was doing. I instantly knew she was trying to mimic the people who stand at busy intersections on weekends and shake signs advertising a new restaurant or housing community. She's seen many a sight like such with amusement, wearing a huge grin on her face. This childhood excitement is okay, but I could hardly picture my child waving and shaking advertisement signs on street corners!!! I quickly shook her out of it with the generous offer of a candy and watching 'Curious George' on TV without asking for it. I don't know if I am simply attaching too much meaning to a simple act. That foamboard is going to disappear until I can figure out a good way to use it.
Daycare drama winds down
After many days of tormenting struggle, today my daughter went into school with a half hearted smile, without tears and actually gave me a hug , a kiss and waved bye to me! Considering what we went through the last three weeks, it feels like warm minestrone or lentil soup ( on a chilly day) for my soul - sorry, being a vegetarian, the expression 'chicken soup for the soul' makes me ill at ease; Its supposed connotations of comfort are lost on me!
I kept repeating to her how exciting her days are at school, the plethora of fun things she gets to do, how nice and caring her teachers are and so on. Eevn though those words never elicited an understanding nod or a 'Okay, ma', their cumulative effect combined with a sense of resignation must have attained fruition! This morning again during our drive I was rehashing the same tunes, when suddenly DD said " Amma, I got a boo-boo on my finger". I seized my chance and told her, her teacher could give her a bandaid, that she should ask for it with a "please". She cottoned to the concept of getting bandaids as I expected and that lubricated the whole effort nicely. I almost could'nt see the light at the end of this tunnel, I was thinking of looking at other care options since the settling down issue had blown out of proportion. It tugs at my heart to say bye to her when she smiles and walks into her classroom happily. To see her cry and struggle in protest is painful beyond words. I have jet lag from all the guilt trip I've been made to take.
So glad the curtains have started to draw down on this drama!
I kept repeating to her how exciting her days are at school, the plethora of fun things she gets to do, how nice and caring her teachers are and so on. Eevn though those words never elicited an understanding nod or a 'Okay, ma', their cumulative effect combined with a sense of resignation must have attained fruition! This morning again during our drive I was rehashing the same tunes, when suddenly DD said " Amma, I got a boo-boo on my finger". I seized my chance and told her, her teacher could give her a bandaid, that she should ask for it with a "please". She cottoned to the concept of getting bandaids as I expected and that lubricated the whole effort nicely. I almost could'nt see the light at the end of this tunnel, I was thinking of looking at other care options since the settling down issue had blown out of proportion. It tugs at my heart to say bye to her when she smiles and walks into her classroom happily. To see her cry and struggle in protest is painful beyond words. I have jet lag from all the guilt trip I've been made to take.
So glad the curtains have started to draw down on this drama!
New daycare drama!
Parenting, so far, for me has been a stimulating, rewarding, enriching, sleep depriving, exhillarating, under-the-table-crawling .... cornucopia of experiences. Must remind myself my daughter is just two and a half and there are more peaks to scale in this journey! One unique thing about motherhood - you have never before with anyone in your life resonated so much in their joy and pain. When your child is excited upon seeing a new toy, your heart soars. When he/she cries in pain, every cell in your heart aches. Now I can understand the expression - it's like having a piece of your heart walk outside your body!
DD has started at a new day care this week. Each day her settling down gets worse and worse. From crying for five minutes, she's progressed to one hour. She's not eating. Even her sippy cup comes back with milk( on which she practically lives)! Her dad dopped her at day care once and swore he'll never go through it again since it breaks his heart to leave his weeping, screaming daughter at day care and walk away mercilessly. Never mind the fact that I have to do it everyday!
I have been preparing her for this transition talking to her about the new place at every chance I get with her , every time she'd care to hear me. Initially she was excited , probably the gravity of spending an entire 8-9 hour day in a new place amidst new faces had not sunk in as yet!
I asked her softly last evening what she doesn't like about the new place, she says ' they have yucky carpet!'. My eyebrows go up a half inch looking at the mess she's made of the carpet at home!
Yesterday her teacher told me , when she was talking to someone on the phone, DD walks up to her and asks " Are you calling my dad to come pick me up? ". I am speechless!
Change is hard. Especially for me! As much as monotony and boredom set in easily, I am 'snug as a bug in a rug' most of the time. I resist any change. I can understand my daughter's situation. It does take a good deal of time to start feeling comfortable with your new environment.
The thing that really wrings my heart is, with lies and deception I manage to buckle her up in her car seat and drive her to her school. Once there, as she's fighting and struggling when the teacher literally tears her away from me, her flushed face and teary eyes shoot an expression of 'You too, Brutus?"! That realization that the one person closest to you, who you think understands you well is also hand-in-glove in this conspiracy - is evident on her face. I walk away partly because that's what I have to do, not linger and make it any more difficult for the teachers, mostly because I cannot stomach the emotion she hits me with! I drown in guilt as the tide of anger and helpless frustration ebbs and flows until I get to work and drown myself further in yet another set of challenges and issues. Motherhood smolders inside quitely singeing away at weak , lame attempts to justify it all saying it's what is practical! And that you can do nothing about it. I know in two weeks she'll be all settled in , adjusted and will start enjoying her new place and friends. But right now, she's in pain and I am in bigger pain.
DD has started at a new day care this week. Each day her settling down gets worse and worse. From crying for five minutes, she's progressed to one hour. She's not eating. Even her sippy cup comes back with milk( on which she practically lives)! Her dad dopped her at day care once and swore he'll never go through it again since it breaks his heart to leave his weeping, screaming daughter at day care and walk away mercilessly. Never mind the fact that I have to do it everyday!
I have been preparing her for this transition talking to her about the new place at every chance I get with her , every time she'd care to hear me. Initially she was excited , probably the gravity of spending an entire 8-9 hour day in a new place amidst new faces had not sunk in as yet!
I asked her softly last evening what she doesn't like about the new place, she says ' they have yucky carpet!'. My eyebrows go up a half inch looking at the mess she's made of the carpet at home!
Yesterday her teacher told me , when she was talking to someone on the phone, DD walks up to her and asks " Are you calling my dad to come pick me up? ". I am speechless!
Change is hard. Especially for me! As much as monotony and boredom set in easily, I am 'snug as a bug in a rug' most of the time. I resist any change. I can understand my daughter's situation. It does take a good deal of time to start feeling comfortable with your new environment.
The thing that really wrings my heart is, with lies and deception I manage to buckle her up in her car seat and drive her to her school. Once there, as she's fighting and struggling when the teacher literally tears her away from me, her flushed face and teary eyes shoot an expression of 'You too, Brutus?"! That realization that the one person closest to you, who you think understands you well is also hand-in-glove in this conspiracy - is evident on her face. I walk away partly because that's what I have to do, not linger and make it any more difficult for the teachers, mostly because I cannot stomach the emotion she hits me with! I drown in guilt as the tide of anger and helpless frustration ebbs and flows until I get to work and drown myself further in yet another set of challenges and issues. Motherhood smolders inside quitely singeing away at weak , lame attempts to justify it all saying it's what is practical! And that you can do nothing about it. I know in two weeks she'll be all settled in , adjusted and will start enjoying her new place and friends. But right now, she's in pain and I am in bigger pain.
I got a ticket!
Before I landed in the U.S., anytime someone announced, "I got a ticket", it was usually in a jubilant tone and meant a ticket to a highly sought after movie, concert or some such event. If the tone was flat, it'd mean - it was a bus/train ticket and was usually an FYI kind of deal.
The day I came home and announced to DH that I got a ticket, my mood was sombre - I was holding the citation I'd received a couple of hours before , in my hand.
I received a speeding ticket and had to take a traffic school ( concentration camp) course and finally a test. I was doing 40, supposedly, in a 25 mi/hr zone. I can vividly recall that day as I was listening intently to Jhumpa Lahiri speak with Terri Gross about her novel, The Namesake, which I had read and was enjoying listening to her interview. It wasn't like I was listening to some fast music. There were 4 or 5 cars ahead of me on this single lane painful street with 3 stop signs and it would have been impossible to go at 40. This cop who was camouflaging among the bushes came out of the hiding and was behind me. He was on a bike and put on his right turn indicator, meaning for me to pull over. I thought he wanted to make a right turn and kept driving at 20 like one of those annoying grannies. IMO, he got irked that I didn't pull over until I heard a siren and that caused him to write me that ticket. I tried explaining , very gently that I've always been a very careful and concious driver and have never violated any traffic/safety rules. He could have just given me a warning and let me off. Bike riding cops rarely let you go, the car driving ones are more mellow.
Neways, I had to pay a fine of $280 ( being made to stand for an hour and a half in the line at traffic court - chatted up with a gum chewing , braid sporting 21 yr old guy and a 40 something excessively made up woman). And then had to take the traffic school which is an online course of at least 6-8 hrs, it's the most excruciating thing on earth. The lessons are in the form of slides and every slide stays put on the screen for atleast 3-4 mins and there's no way to click the right arrow mark to proceed. The same rules are drummed and drilled into you in so many ways. One idea is presented as an entire paragraph with convoluted, repitious sentences - torture with tautology! It reminded me of a classmate in undergrad who'd copy from my test paper. If I wrote ' take a 5k resistor', he'd copy it as ' a 5K resistor is taken' - basically converting active to passive voice and vice versa, so it wouldn't be obvious he copied.
After every 3 or 4 slides there's a quiz, without correctly answering which , you cannot go ahead. If you answer 50% of them wrong, you've to repeat the lesson. Each lesson is about 35 slides long. I was dizzy, nauseous and cursed that cop for putting me through this torment. The course assumes you're a victim of amnesia and starts at a level below when you took the test for obtaining learner's permit- before you ever got behind the darn wheel! It's not like I had forgotten every basic road sense by violating that speed limit. The only thing that'd be worse than traffic school is if they start punishing people physically, like whipping them for such traffic violations. Why can't they come up with something far more meaningful like send violators to exercise boot camps - running, strength training, abs and push-ups, weights between 6 am and 7 am for a month. Or mandatory personal training sessions - so they get the satisfaction of having punished us and we also benefit from the hard labor and hours put in? Gosh, I spent 2 full days of the weekend grudgingly going through the whole course material ( with DH smiling like Satan from time to time) only at the end of which, I could register for the test I had to appear for at a designated testing centre. I had to answer 50 heckling questions , of the same painful nature as those in the lessons, got 47 of them right and passed the test.
Have you ever received a traffic ticket? Do share your experinces.
The day I came home and announced to DH that I got a ticket, my mood was sombre - I was holding the citation I'd received a couple of hours before , in my hand.
I received a speeding ticket and had to take a traffic school ( concentration camp) course and finally a test. I was doing 40, supposedly, in a 25 mi/hr zone. I can vividly recall that day as I was listening intently to Jhumpa Lahiri speak with Terri Gross about her novel, The Namesake, which I had read and was enjoying listening to her interview. It wasn't like I was listening to some fast music. There were 4 or 5 cars ahead of me on this single lane painful street with 3 stop signs and it would have been impossible to go at 40. This cop who was camouflaging among the bushes came out of the hiding and was behind me. He was on a bike and put on his right turn indicator, meaning for me to pull over. I thought he wanted to make a right turn and kept driving at 20 like one of those annoying grannies. IMO, he got irked that I didn't pull over until I heard a siren and that caused him to write me that ticket. I tried explaining , very gently that I've always been a very careful and concious driver and have never violated any traffic/safety rules. He could have just given me a warning and let me off. Bike riding cops rarely let you go, the car driving ones are more mellow.
Neways, I had to pay a fine of $280 ( being made to stand for an hour and a half in the line at traffic court - chatted up with a gum chewing , braid sporting 21 yr old guy and a 40 something excessively made up woman). And then had to take the traffic school which is an online course of at least 6-8 hrs, it's the most excruciating thing on earth. The lessons are in the form of slides and every slide stays put on the screen for atleast 3-4 mins and there's no way to click the right arrow mark to proceed. The same rules are drummed and drilled into you in so many ways. One idea is presented as an entire paragraph with convoluted, repitious sentences - torture with tautology! It reminded me of a classmate in undergrad who'd copy from my test paper. If I wrote ' take a 5k resistor', he'd copy it as ' a 5K resistor is taken' - basically converting active to passive voice and vice versa, so it wouldn't be obvious he copied.
After every 3 or 4 slides there's a quiz, without correctly answering which , you cannot go ahead. If you answer 50% of them wrong, you've to repeat the lesson. Each lesson is about 35 slides long. I was dizzy, nauseous and cursed that cop for putting me through this torment. The course assumes you're a victim of amnesia and starts at a level below when you took the test for obtaining learner's permit- before you ever got behind the darn wheel! It's not like I had forgotten every basic road sense by violating that speed limit. The only thing that'd be worse than traffic school is if they start punishing people physically, like whipping them for such traffic violations. Why can't they come up with something far more meaningful like send violators to exercise boot camps - running, strength training, abs and push-ups, weights between 6 am and 7 am for a month. Or mandatory personal training sessions - so they get the satisfaction of having punished us and we also benefit from the hard labor and hours put in? Gosh, I spent 2 full days of the weekend grudgingly going through the whole course material ( with DH smiling like Satan from time to time) only at the end of which, I could register for the test I had to appear for at a designated testing centre. I had to answer 50 heckling questions , of the same painful nature as those in the lessons, got 47 of them right and passed the test.
Have you ever received a traffic ticket? Do share your experinces.
'me' time : Be careful what you wish for!
Went to kickboxing class yesterday after a break of about 3 1/2 months. And got some much deserved pelting. It feels like I have been hit by a train. I am supposed to have been kicking and boxing for a whole hour. But at the end I looked like I'd been at the receiving end of some kicking and boxing by some guy who has anger management issues, got nagged in the morning by his wife, missed lunch and had a couple of people cut him off in traffic later the same day.
This reminded me of a Jillian Michaels exercise dvd that I once worked out with - 30 day Shred! After reading a couple of reviews I ordered this dvd. The evening I came back home and saw it had been delivered, I popped it in and watched it while sipping coffee sitting on my couch. A few jumping jacks, some crunches, push ups, squats - all elementary school stuff, I remember thinking to myself. In fact I even doubted my decision to buy it.
Next morning I got ready at 7 am to work out along with the dvd. Boy!!!!! Jillian is the most evil, sadistic purveyor of pain there has ever been! The individual steps are carried out in fast succession. There is not a half a minute's rest between the different sets of exercises. Jillian actually says at a couple of instances -' I dare you to pick up that remote and press 'pause', keep going !'. The first time I saw her say that, I was taken aback in that shaky, sweaty state of mine. It was almost like she could see me reaching for my remote and was saying that in real time. Spooky! The squats are all done with dumb bells. These innocuous looking 5 lb weights can make you tear up when you are doing chest flies and such. The abs, jumping jacks and squats - the circuit repeats itself at a dizzying pace. I was shredded in 30 mins not 30 days. I completed the 30 minute workout. But for 4 days after that, I was walking like I had fallen down in a stampede and ten people had run helter-skelter all over me! I couldn't climb stairs up or down ( both ways were painful!), I had difficulty sitting down and getting up, I struggled to lie down on the bed. And to see me get up from a lying position - turning and grovelling on hands and knees, even the most hard hearted person would have looked for a kleenex. Muscles that I didn't know existed were twisted out of shape. They were happy that they had been acknowledged finally, and I was writhing in pain. I spent those 4 days debating whether this one was a keeper because of the death blow it dealt me, meaning it'd definitely prove effective for weight loss or if and how I should go about trying to sue Ms.Michaels. I repeated the workout after a couple of months and paused the dvd in places where I had to. I wasn't left as sundered this time. I haven't paid Jillian and her workout-mates a third visit yet.
These and other thoughts were interrupted by the screeching sound of the garage door opening and I was glad to be home, back with my family. So much for 'me' time. It's just 'me getting whipped' time!
This reminded me of a Jillian Michaels exercise dvd that I once worked out with - 30 day Shred! After reading a couple of reviews I ordered this dvd. The evening I came back home and saw it had been delivered, I popped it in and watched it while sipping coffee sitting on my couch. A few jumping jacks, some crunches, push ups, squats - all elementary school stuff, I remember thinking to myself. In fact I even doubted my decision to buy it.
Next morning I got ready at 7 am to work out along with the dvd. Boy!!!!! Jillian is the most evil, sadistic purveyor of pain there has ever been! The individual steps are carried out in fast succession. There is not a half a minute's rest between the different sets of exercises. Jillian actually says at a couple of instances -' I dare you to pick up that remote and press 'pause', keep going !'. The first time I saw her say that, I was taken aback in that shaky, sweaty state of mine. It was almost like she could see me reaching for my remote and was saying that in real time. Spooky! The squats are all done with dumb bells. These innocuous looking 5 lb weights can make you tear up when you are doing chest flies and such. The abs, jumping jacks and squats - the circuit repeats itself at a dizzying pace. I was shredded in 30 mins not 30 days. I completed the 30 minute workout. But for 4 days after that, I was walking like I had fallen down in a stampede and ten people had run helter-skelter all over me! I couldn't climb stairs up or down ( both ways were painful!), I had difficulty sitting down and getting up, I struggled to lie down on the bed. And to see me get up from a lying position - turning and grovelling on hands and knees, even the most hard hearted person would have looked for a kleenex. Muscles that I didn't know existed were twisted out of shape. They were happy that they had been acknowledged finally, and I was writhing in pain. I spent those 4 days debating whether this one was a keeper because of the death blow it dealt me, meaning it'd definitely prove effective for weight loss or if and how I should go about trying to sue Ms.Michaels. I repeated the workout after a couple of months and paused the dvd in places where I had to. I wasn't left as sundered this time. I haven't paid Jillian and her workout-mates a third visit yet.
These and other thoughts were interrupted by the screeching sound of the garage door opening and I was glad to be home, back with my family. So much for 'me' time. It's just 'me getting whipped' time!
Nothing in particular-isms
* California! - We're so fabulous that our neighboring state is called NV!
* I exercise some caution while driving, exercise some patience when dealing with my daughter ( can hear the lie detector beeping!) and I realize, this is about the only exercise I am getting these days!
he he! This just came to me while brushing my teeth this morning, wanted to write it down somewhere before it gets purged out with the timed auto erase that keeps happenning in my head!
Adding on :
* Arguing with your spouse is like running on a treadmill - Time has passed, energy has been expended , but you are where you started, without making any progress! And you are tired!
* Being away from home makes one home-sick! But being out on the sea makes one sea-sick ?
* When you're talking out loud to yourself ( or no one in particular) , you're crazy. When you do the same thing in cyber space, you're blogging!
Disclaimer : These are original flashes from my cerebrum :-), any resemblance to to any quotes from anywhere is purely co-incidental.
* I exercise some caution while driving, exercise some patience when dealing with my daughter ( can hear the lie detector beeping!) and I realize, this is about the only exercise I am getting these days!
he he! This just came to me while brushing my teeth this morning, wanted to write it down somewhere before it gets purged out with the timed auto erase that keeps happenning in my head!
Adding on :
* Arguing with your spouse is like running on a treadmill - Time has passed, energy has been expended , but you are where you started, without making any progress! And you are tired!
* Being away from home makes one home-sick! But being out on the sea makes one sea-sick ?
* When you're talking out loud to yourself ( or no one in particular) , you're crazy. When you do the same thing in cyber space, you're blogging!
Disclaimer : These are original flashes from my cerebrum :-), any resemblance to to any quotes from anywhere is purely co-incidental.
Somebody, stop me!
A rolling stone gathers no moss.
But the mind is like a rolling stone with magnet on one side and fevicol on the other, picking up everything in its way. As if the wandering mind and its stiff resistance to stay focussed weren't enough, we now have the internet - a galaxy of information explosion through which the mind rolls on uncontrollably.
I spend a lot of time on the internet, I seriously need to wean myself off that and exercise some discipline. I have become this person who - if I need to clean out my closet and have forty five minutes to do so, will first starty by googling 'How to organize your closet' - from there jump to
House plants - A simple, satisfying way to decorate your living space - to
How to grow Orchids - to
Dealing with your toddler's tantrums - to ..... and an hour and twenty minutes have passed and I have not lifted a finger except to click my mouse button!
My God!
If I make myself stop reading about movies and filmstars , then I find I am suddenly addicted to something else. The topic of interest varies - it's recipes or yoga or child rearing and so on.
I keep trying to straighten this , but like a grandparent that spoils a child, undermining the parent's efforts at disciplining, the internet thwarts my every resolve. It's a web no doubt, I am snarled and it's world wide, where can I escape to? As Jim Carrey says in Mask - Somebody, stop me!
But the mind is like a rolling stone with magnet on one side and fevicol on the other, picking up everything in its way. As if the wandering mind and its stiff resistance to stay focussed weren't enough, we now have the internet - a galaxy of information explosion through which the mind rolls on uncontrollably.
I spend a lot of time on the internet, I seriously need to wean myself off that and exercise some discipline. I have become this person who - if I need to clean out my closet and have forty five minutes to do so, will first starty by googling 'How to organize your closet' - from there jump to
House plants - A simple, satisfying way to decorate your living space - to
How to grow Orchids - to
Dealing with your toddler's tantrums - to ..... and an hour and twenty minutes have passed and I have not lifted a finger except to click my mouse button!
My God!
If I make myself stop reading about movies and filmstars , then I find I am suddenly addicted to something else. The topic of interest varies - it's recipes or yoga or child rearing and so on.
I keep trying to straighten this , but like a grandparent that spoils a child, undermining the parent's efforts at disciplining, the internet thwarts my every resolve. It's a web no doubt, I am snarled and it's world wide, where can I escape to? As Jim Carrey says in Mask - Somebody, stop me!
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