The Little Tortoise

Man.

I’d like a do-over please.

Only with more sleep before the do-over part?

Anju was sick all day today too.  More throwing up, not interested in eating, completely not interested in pedialyte, barely drank any water, and then more throwing up.  Aren’t you glad you stopped by to read that?

Also?  The AC conked out.  It was the first day this year that I turned it on, and the fan was whirring busily away, but no blessed coolness.  I noticed it, but didn’t really notice it, if you know what I mean.  Beacause I was busy with the girl, and the boy was being a complete pill. 

So finally, around 5:45, Nik calls to me from the window, :MOM!  Oh NO! The umbrella fell down!”  One of our patio umbrellas was leaning quite unaturally over.  So, I went out there, with the kids following (yes, even Anju, because when she’s not feeling well, she becomes even more of a velcro child) and tried to fix the darn thing.  Finally, I just pulled the whole thing apart and left it lying on the ground, because I noticed, in the time that I was out there, that THE AC UNIT WAS NOT MAKING ANY NOISE!

And normally?  That AC is the noisiest thing around.  (Until you go next door and hear theirs.)

So, after my pathetic attempts at trying to figure out why it wasn’t working, I called around and got a service guy who could fix it this evening.  Very important.  The inside temperature was 89 degrees.  No wonder Anju was a hot sweaty little bundle!

Now, as I write this, I have cool air wafting down on me.  The kids are sleeping peacefully with the fans going as well as the AC.

And I have so much to do yet before I can call it a night. 

Poor little Anju caught a stomach bug and started vomiting yesterday evening.

Of course, it coincided with my book club night.  When I had to drive to the meeting at a friend’s house all the way across town, about 40 minutes.  Amber, the babysitter, called me when I was minutes away from my destination.  “She just threw up…twice.”

So around I turned, and drove all the way back. 

Anju proceeded to throw up several more times that evening, and then into the night.  I was worried enough that I slept in her room on the floor.

Of course, Nik woke up during one of the sheet-changing episodes and got freaked out by me sleeping in the nursery.  So he had to lie down next to me. 

Needless to say, Anju and I did not get much sleep last night.

And Nik? 

Slept all through the night and woke up extremely rested.

So a couple nights ago, I went upstairs to put Anju to bed.  Nik was downstairs, watching Law & Order (!).  After I was done with Anju, I walked over to the top of the stairs and called down to Nik. 

No answer. 

So I called out his name again, and waited.  And heard nothing.

Then, a quick slam of a door, running footsteps, and then his little face appeared and he said, “Hi mom!”

And I asked, “What were you doing?”

Nik: “I <mumblemumblemumble>”

Me: “What were you doing?”

Nik: “I <mumblemumble> room.”

Followed by a sheepish grin, and not quite making eye contact.

Thinking that he meant he was in the guest room, whose door I generally keep closed (thereby making it an extremely desirable place for a certain little boy), I said, “Okay, now come upstairs for your bath” and forgot about it.

The next evening, I went into the laundry room to start a load of pukey laundry (story to follow!), and this is what I saw:

One of his little chairs pulled up next to the washing machine.  All the clothes that I had tossed onto the floor over the past couple days were in the washing machine.  The top was off the detergent bottle.  The measuring cup was right next to it.

I’m glad I called out to him when I did!  Or my little helper would have made a right mess. 

One that I would not have been able to be mad at.

Darn.

He said he wanted to draw a beaver.  Then he said: “Lets draw some feet.”

And he did.

We’ll have to work on the standard number of feet for animals.  Seven feet seem a little too many.

I’m just sayin’.

on my little girl.

Why yes!  That is an extra beauty mark on her cheek.  If you click on the photo, you will get to see all the other little marks she made on her cheeks and chin with markers. 

We had a fun and relaxing day today.  Going with my new attitude regarding expectations, I decided to make reservations for brunch, instead of waiting for Pete to do it, and then get upset when he failed to!  We set the timer, got ready, got the kids ready and were there on time.  The kids had a great time: Nik had pancakes with chocolate sauce, and creme brulee french toast; Anju had a little bit of everything- omlette with bacon/spinach/mushrooms, sausage, strawberries, french toast, crepes with berries, pancakes, pineapple, carrot cake, lemon bar, almond croissant.  You name it, she ate it.  Her little belly was so full, she fell asleep in the car on the way home. 

And it was a 5 minute car ride.

We went to the little shopping center near our house, which is beautifully laid out with a large pond, fountains, lots of peaceful seating…very picturesque. 

There was a local art and wine fair going on, and after taking some pictures, we wandered through the fair.  Pete bought me a really beautiful aquatic life necklace made with artisan glass and austrian crystals necklace that caught my eye.  (The artist was really sweet and I took her information, in case some of my friends are interested!)

Then back home, where the boys watched “the robots” while Anju took a nap.

A nice day.

Finally!  I got my sh*t together and loaded some pictures here.  Go take a look.

I’ve been thinking a lot about days carved out to appreciate this, that, or the other.  Some things are deemed important enough to get whole months in their honor.  I wonder if this phenomenon has come about as a response to the need for tradition.  Western culture, or lack thereof, is very limited in its traditions.  They have some religious holidays, some pagan ones (which they have claimed for themselves as religious), and then everything else is just randomly assigned lets-remember-this-important -person day. 

Cultures that are still close to their roots tend to have a strong sense of family and community.  No made-up holidays for them.  In the Indian daily life, religious activities are interwoven with days that honor the changing of the seasons, and at any given time, there is a immediate knowledge of where one is within the context of our relationship to the earth, our gods, our family. 

That sense of connectedness is not automatically present in western life.  So I feel, days honoring the Mother, Father, Grandparent, Secretary, Boss, Black History, Native American History, Columbus, Veterans, etc. have been created to attempt to form connections with each other.  Except, for the most part, it has all become commercialized into one big shopping expedition.  Anticipation of the various days are mostly related to the sales where you can score that big plasma tv!  Even India has not been spared in this.  Along with the continued assimilation of western ideas and clothing and toys, these fake-o days have been adopted, and the ensuing sales.  “Two-for-one!” and “Best deal” and Cent-percent-discount!”

Where am I going with this?  I don’t quite know.  It’s just a stream-of-conciousness post, I guess.

In this post, I had talked about how my desires for the perfect birthday had changed.  I guess that’s a form a maturity? 

I guess I would like to see that maturity become permanent.  Don’t get me wrong…I love a good sale.  But I don’t need to wrap it up in a fake appreciation to enjoy it. 

And I’m afraid that I’ve assimilated into the western world too well in that I have lost that sense of community and relatedness to family.  Moments like this where I can part the veil and see with clarity are few and far between.  Because, frankly, it is easier to just live day by day in a blur of rote activity.

Living each day with purpose is hard.

But necessary.

Happy Mother’s Day.

 
Nik and his Paati, October 2005

 
Nik and his Kollu Paati, November 2004

I took the kids to Nik’s friend’s 4th birthday party.  She had ponies there for the kids to ride, and finally, right before the ponies left, the birthday girl’s dad was able to get Nik onto a pony.  It was under the guise of saying goodbye, but once he got him close enough to the animal, he asked Nik if he wanted to ride it.  And Nik said “Okay?”

That was all Steven needed and he swung Nik up onto the horse and away they went, for two laps around the little park!

Once he got off, Steven made him pet the pony and say thank you, which he did, ever so sweetly.

This is how Anju looked when I asked her if she wanted to get on as well.

Nik loves babies…he spent much of the time at the party entertaining this little one.

A couple days later, Pete was asking him about the party, and asked him what the horse’s name was. 

“SPUNKY!”

And he was right.

Found this on a friend’s blog.

These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded.
Bold the ones you’ve read,
underline the ones you read for school [I wasn't able to figure out how to underline, so I put a couple of lines before the book name]
italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.
add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend. Even if you read them for school in the first place. [I added more * based on how much I liked the book!]

The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
American Gods
Anansi Boys
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir
Angels & Demons*
Anna Karenina*
Atlas Shrugged
Beloved*
The Blind Assassin**
Brave New World
The Brothers Karamazov*
The Canterbury Tales
__Catcher in the Rye*
Catch-22
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo*
Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time*
__David Copperfield
__Don Quixote
Dracula*
Dubliners
Dune*
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Emma*
Foucault’s Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein
Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything*
The God of Small Things
__The Grapes of Wrath*
Gravity’s Rainbow
__Great Expectations
__Gulliver’s Travels
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Historian: a novel
The Hobbit*
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
__The Iliad
In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
__The Inferno
Jane Eyre*
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Kite Runner*
__Les Misérables
Life of Pi: a novel
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
__Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex*
__Mrs. Dalloway
The Mists of Avalon**
__Moby Dick
The Name of the Rose
Neverwhere
__1984
Northanger Abbey
__The Odyssey
__Oliver Twist
The Once and Future King**
One Hundred Years of Solitude
On the Road
__One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest*
Oryx and Crake
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Persuasion**
__The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible*
__A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice*******
The Prince
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran
The Satanic Verses
__The Scarlet Letter
Sense and Sensibility*
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-five
__The Sound and the Fury*
__A Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D’Urbervilles*
The Time Traveler’s Wife*
To the Lighthouse
__Treasure Island
The Three Musketeers
__Ulysses
The Unbearable Lightness of Being*
Vanity Fair
War and Peace*
Watership Down*
White Teeth**
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West*
Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Now go forth and peruse the bookshelves of your mind.