10 on Tuesday written on a Friday

Tags

blogging, life in general, parenting, personal, tattoo, ten on tuesday, This and that

Yes you may laugh at the title. But you know everyday I think I should write something here and everyday I come open the new post window and everyday I sit and think, what should I write. Its not that I don’t have topics to write about. I do I do infact many of them. The problem right now with me is of plenty. I have been away from this blog for soo long that I have a lot to write about and I don’t know where to start.

So I think a bullet point post, mentioning 10 things that have been on my mind and in my life would be a good way, before you see more of me here hopefully regularly enough.

So here is my  10 on Tuesday written on a Friday

1. Life has been full of travel the past couple of months. From 7 months of no travel to the last 3 months full of travel, its hectic but its happy hectic. So in the next few days expect a lot of travelogues namely Kolavara Heritage in Shimoga, Raju Guest House in Tirthan, Ride Inn at Manali, Country Club trip to Kandaghat and then finally Goa. Have also done a lot of work travel to Hyderabad in between that has helped me explore the food scene there. More about that too on the food blog
2. Ojas has joined a new school after a break of about 4 months and seems to be pretty happy with it. And while he was on the school vacation, he went off to my mum’s house in Delhi for about a month followed by my SIL’s house for about 2 weeks. So all in all we had some couple time to ourselves after about 6 years and I can’t tell you how different it felt. Good yes and empty yes too but all in very different and weird. I realised that I am always thinking in terms of three now, always thinking as a mom and to actually think as a couple I have to make an effort but I also found it very refreshing. Had forgotten what uninterrupted conversations felt like and what a delight it is to have them. Also what I learnt was that it really is difficult to adjust back to being a mum now 😉 but I am trying I am trying 😀
3. Also like I mentioned in the earlier post, we moved back to the old new house. And one of the highlight for me moving back has been the studio in the house. Baking Studio, a working space for me. It has a desk corner, an island cooking corner, couple of racks for ovens etc. It is not a HUGE space but big enough to be called an office. I have already have had about three workshops there and they all felt nice and cosy. So excited to bake, teach and make videos out of the studio. One by One
4. One of N’s closest cousins P, actually if you ask me they are more like brothers and he is one of the closest people to N, is getting married end of this month. He went and proposed to his girl in full Bollywood style and decided to get married 6 weeks from the date of the Bollywood proposal. As a result we all running around as headless chickens, trying to arrange everything and enjoying every bit of it. The madness, the shopping, designing the card, dresses to stitch, jewellery to match. So much fun. I missed part of this for my own sister’s wedding in October, one because I was so far and two because they pretty much did a very simple wedding. I am making up for that with this one 🙂
5. Robin Williams passed away, leaving each one of us shocked and sad. Sad because there wasn’t anyone like him. We all loved him, We all loved to love him. Shocked because none of us imagined the person behind those laughs was suffering from depression and could commit suicide. I actually wanted to write a whole post on him but then somehow never got around doing it. Let me tell you this, most people who suffer from clinical depression try hard to hide that from the world and we are experts in doing that. I say we because yes I am one of them. I suffer from clinical depression, have been and will be on medications for a long time. And I bet people who read my blog or know me  can’t guess that till I tell them. So be sensitive to people around you. Read up on depression and mental health and please stop using sad and depressed in the same way. One day, one day may be I will be brave enough to share the whole story here. Till such time, I will do with hugs
6. I set myself a 100 book reading challenge for this year. I have read about 36 till now. I know I am behind but the good thing which has happened this year is that most of the books that I have read have been really good. Will list my favorite ones soon. Till then tell me which are the books you have been reading? Which ones did you like? And which ones you hated?
7. The child is growing up fast, he has already joined 1st standard and each time I think of it I wonder wasn’t the day of his birth just yesterday? With him are growing his questions, arguments and logics. This is a strange stage of parenting, I am enjoying it the most but it’s also bringing out the worst in me. Testing my limits, specially the limits of patience. I am loving watching him develop a personality of his own but I am getting scared of the fact that the personality is sometimes looking like a mirror image of me. I love seeing him becoming the independent big boy but each time he does something on his own without even looking at us once, the heart skips a beat and I wonder if the empty nest is not so far away after all. I love his witty answers but hate them when the same are used as smart A&^ replies. Such a strange and lovely stage of parenting this and I am absorbing it all as it comes.
8. I have decided to give this blog a breath, a last hope of survival with the 30 days letter challenge, I saw it first when a friend shared it with me and then I saw Shail doing it and it’s something that excited me after so long. I am itching to write some of the letters, I just don’t want to write some of them. I know some will be intense and will evoke memories, but I have decided to it. Thought long and hard actually and realised some demons needed to be dealt with, some thoughts needed to be written. Hopefully some of them will be funny too 😀 So from Sep 1 for 30 days, hopefully you will have a letter each day to read here. A letter which holds a tiny part of my heart somewhere
9. Some pictures you take make you happy. Make you so happy that you share them everywhere. They might not be the best of the pictures but you like them and they make you happy. The cat stories is one such set for me. I found those cats so so so irresistably adorable that I can’t tell and I am not even a cat person. Go see for yourself
10. And I saved the best for the last, my tattoo 😀 Yes finally after years of planning and thinking and wondering I got a tattoo done. I got an excellent person who heard me out, designed my tattoo and inked it on my patiently. Check out her page here and I strongly reco her if you are in Bangalore. And here is what it looks like

Ten on Tuesday : Xmas Special

Tags

chrismtas, festivals, santa, ten on tuesday, xmas

I love doing Ten on Tuesday’s. Sometimes its so much easier to write and think in bullet points 🙂 So here at the ten things I love about Xmas

1. The colors, oh the glorious colors. The reds, the whites and the greens … Its love all the way

2. Plum Cakes : If left to me this will be point 1 to 10… I simply love love love it and so does N

3. Gifts, Gifts YAY… yes yes I am greedy for gifts but don’t those add a punch to life.. This time I participated in three Secret Santa games with three groups, one of them being the ones doing this month long marathon with me… I have got the gift from only one group now and the second one a mail that its on the way but I can’t tell you how excited I am about all this LOL

4. Xmas trees : there is something about a well decorated Xmas tree, though mine never looks as great as it should but I still love having it in my hall every december till the new year breaks in

5. Mulled Wine : Every Xmas I start making mulled wine at home a week in advance and we sip it in the evening 🙂 The spices the sugar the warmth… yumm yumm yummm

Picture Credit Google – I strangely couldnt find mulled wine picture in my folders and this year I havent made any because of the hospital rounds 😦 but I think I will make some today

6. Xmas Carols, Xmas songs : Growing up the only carol I had heard was Jingle Jingle bells but then some years ago our next door neighbors were Christians and come December every evening they would play some lovely carols and Xmas songs. Listening to it every evening became so much a part of my life that if they went out someday I would play it on youtube myself. Luckily even after moving houses we can Christians neighbors who play guitar and sing carols every evening. Bliss

Watch this amazing video of a carol

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8. Holidays : yeah who can have enough of holidays? Growing up it was 10 days school vacations, later for a while paid year end holidays and then worked for a company which had xmas shutdown and now its ojas’s vacation 🙂

9. Xmas movies : I love love love the movies around Xmas, be it Polar Express, A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street, The Santa Clause, Jack Frost and many more

Picture Credit – Google

10. Happiness, Joy, Giving, Love : Last but not the least, love the spirit of Xmas, the love, the happiness, the joy it brings along

So here’s wishing u all a merry Xmas folks… Hope you have been good this year and santa is getting you loads of gifts

NaBloPoMo with a difference

Tags

musings, ten on tuesday

Yes a month of everyday blogging but not NaBloPoMo. Some days back both me and Sups were cribbing on twitter that how we need another month long challenge to start writing again and later she tweeted to me saying that a bunch of bloggers have come together to blog through the month of October, some days on topic of choice and on Mondays and Thursdays of every week on a selected topic. It seemed like an exciting challenge and I said yes, the word got around and 8 bloggers came together to form Bloggers united

However this month the challenge I am taking is to write a post eveyday and I am going to spread it across my blogs depending on the topic I chose that day.

Today we do a ten on Tuesday, so here are ten random things I have been upto

1. I am starting a little late on the challenge but damn I was traveling u see and yes travel has been good to me to this year, just came back from a short break at Coonoor yesterday and had a blast of time at the small quaint town (more on this soon)
2. I am missing Delhi again, come festival season and I start missing delhi so much. Its been 10 years but the feeling doesn’t go away at all
3. I am missing my mom even more than I am missing Delhi, the last I met was in Feb and its been what, no please don’t calculate and tell me.
4. Ojas has vacations and is driving me up the wall. God how they need entertainment every waking second of their life is amazing. God grant me more patience for next ten days
5. On the line of CSA, we have started Women against Violence month and the stories have began to come, heart breaking but yet the ones which require and need to be brought to the forefront
6. I am missing most of MasterChef Australia this season because when it comes in the night mil wants to see serials and when it comes in the morning ojas wants to see cartoons and afternoon at 2pm we are having the damn power cut.. imagine? I think its high time I bought tata sky plus so that I can record it and watch.
7. Life of a mother is never dull as I said on twitter/FB last week. Ojas on the first day of his holiday decided to jump from the staircase, had a bad fall and gave us the scare of life as we had to rush him to emergency for a CT scan. Thankfully all is well and he is fine now. These kids I tell *rolls eyes*
8. I am also slowly realising that I am turning into my mother when it comes to ojas, oh the horror. God help me and God help ojas
9. Tomorrow I am doing Kanjak at home, the joy… will be making halwa, poori, chole yumm yumm yummm
10. I so want the iPhone5, iWANT iWANT iWANT

so tell me what have u guys been upto?

Ten things about NaBloPoMo | Post 31

Tags

NaBloPoMo, ten on tuesday

So its time to end NaBloPoMo, 31 posts in 31 days and what better way than talk about 10 things about it 😀

1. It needs a lot of discpline and determination for doing NaBloPoMo…. posting every day is very very very difficult

2. That its actually not what to write but when to write and getting out of my laziness that I find difficult, once I open the editor I always find something to write

3. That NaBloPoMo is absolutely useless for clearing out the drafts in the dashboard. Lets face it the drafts will always be drafts

4. That I still have lot to write about even after doing 31 posts for the last month and I don’t know why I did tags in the month when I had something else more intelligent to write

5. That its lot of fun of doing NaBloPoMo with friends specially in the beginning when all the enthusiasm is up and in the end when we all celebrate 😀

6. That reading other blogs and commenting takes a major back seat during NaBloPoMo for me somehow. I just don’t seem to have enough time

7. That when I have other 8 people doing it with me and the reader exploding I do understand how u all feel when we do this 😛

8. That this is the second time I have done NaBloPoMo in May, did it two years back in May too… hmmm strange

9. That I find Fridays most difficult to manage when it comes to NaBloPoMo, 1 because I am in weekend mood and two because I like to schedule weekend posts on Friday too

10. Last but not the least that I do NaBloPoMo only because of some stupid, mad, excited and very lovable friends I have… yes you know I am talking about u 😀

Cheers to all of us for making it happen… Phew…. finally freedom 😛

Ten people I met in my swimming class | Post 16

Tags

NaBloPoMo, personal, swimming, ten on tuesday

Its time for Ten on Tuesday again 😀

So I have been going for swimming classes for about 1.5 weeks now, so I should write something about the class right 🙂 and what better than writing about people

1. You you you lady who swim like a fish, who floats like a fish, who when dipped your head in the water for the first time it felt like you were made for water, you make me totally J

2. The 63 year old auntie who has come to learn swimming at this age, please know that I totally admire you, admire the fact that at this stage you are ready to take on a new challenge. Kudos to you.

3. Lady in the hot pink swim suit which shows more that it hides, I admire your guts and more than that I admire your figure, with 10yr old and a 4 yr old please to tell me how do you manage that

4. Dear 6 or maximum 7 year old girl, please to go slow and not give us a complex by doing two laps of the olypmic size swimming pool non stop

5. Dear typical auntie character it will do you great good if you focus on your floating and kicks rather than telling me what am I doing wrong, you see I am able to swim accross the pool now whereas you are not even able to float fully. So pay attention to what the coach is telling rather than trying to become the coach yourself and who knows you might even learn swimming 😉

6. The very cute cleaning person of the club pool area, who greets us everyday with a smile, asks whether we have had our lunch and wishes us luck for the class. Thank you lady you cheer me up and make me feel confident before I get into the pool

7. The very friendly and encouraging lady who is always always motivating everyone in the group to do more, to go through that last few strokes and make it to the other end of the pool. God bless you

8. The gorgeous girl with little curls falling on the face, all of 5 years who comes in the batch next to her and waves to me everyday with a lovely smile, girl you make my heart beat faster and start uterine contractions, u make me want to have a girl

9.  Dear friend who introduced me to the club classes, who started learning in the batch before me, I thank you again. I know I technically didnt meet you there but this post would have been incomplete without a mention to you, you made what I always wanted possible.

10. Last but not the least, dear coach you are a rocking person you. Know that. I love the way you push us just enough and leave us alone to manage for sometime, how you let us know that we can do it, make us feel confident to attempt by ourselves and still are there always around for everyone if we lose our balance. Who know exactly what we needed the first day and exactly what we need on 9th and dear coach I still fail to understand how do you manage to give a B.Com exam in the morning, come to teach in the afternoon and go study in night. Kudos and thanks

Ten On Tuesday

Tags

general, ten on tuesday

I have been seeing Ten on Tuesday on Shilpa’s blog from a long time and now when I have so much to write it seems like a good thing to do… So here is my Ten on Tuesday on what happened in the last month

1. I got my new kindle, I think I have already blogged about it. Inspite of my intial apprehensions about having one I am kindof loving it. Finished reading the Hunger Games series on it and wow what a series (review coming up soon)
2. Went to Chennai and met Uma there, though the meeting was short but was glad I met her. Also met some more mommy blogger in a lovely cafe call The Zha Cafe… Laks, Lavs, Meera it was great meeting you.
3. My mom went on her first ever trip abroad to Singapore with my sister and we are thinking of visiting them too. I really want to but planning a holiday taking leave etc not sure
4. I have decided that now is time to get back to full time work, yes yes after a 2 year break I am thinking of going back to corporate world… how wil it be God only knows. So the CV has been updated, uploaded in some sites and now I am patiently waiting for the interview calls to come. If anyone of you have leads please to let me know 🙂
5. Last one month was really bad for my dieting and weight loss program, the month before that when I started I lost abt 2.5 kgs but last month was bad very bad. I blame it on CSAAM I needed a lot of emotional eating and lots of drinks to sail through it and I was so busy that workouts were almost at a halt too 😦
6. I need a vacation I really do, well I know this didnt happen in the last one month or did it? I got very drained and tired and hence that resulted in my wanting a vacation… yes so it did happen in last month and hence has a place here
7. Also has realized that the world is full of sickos the ones that torture little kids and also the ones that try to take mileage out of anything however serious the issue be, the last one month as taught me to sniff out a fake story (like Lady K says) and trust my intuition a lot more than before
8. With my mom’s trip to Singapore this month has been spent getting tensed about our Leh trip, we are driving for 10 days and were thinking of leaving ojas back in bangalore with both the granny’s and now that mom most likely will not be here in August we are dreading what would happen 😦
9. Mangoes have arrived both sweet and the sour and they have been bought in abundance in the household, we have been eating them as it is and cooking and baking with them too, mango dal, mango rice, ripe mango chicken salad and the mango bread and the best mango shake… yumm mango is truly the king of fruits
10. Ojas has a two month long summer break and damn I am getting crazy entertaining him… please to send some ideas to keep him busy in the vacations and please the ones that don’t require me to work hard 😉

so what has been up with u?