The other blog..

First of all, yes, I am on vacation. No, I'm not logging in from where I am (then it wouldn't be a vacation, would it? :-p). I wrote the posts on Friday and set a publishing time, so that you guys wouldn't miss me ;-) (as if!), hehehee. Actually the reason is that I can pester you even when I am away. Double fun :-D.

Now coming to the title of the blog, no, I'm not starting another blog. I hardly find the time to update the one I have :-p. But my better-half (hey, i think I'm the better half here :-p), has decided to blog. Imagine my surprise and happiness when Sri told me about it. I thought my dream of him writing a series of mushy posts for me (like I did for him) was finally coming true. Alas (with a filmy style back-hand on my forehead), that was not to be..

He's writing a technical blog, here it is if you want to check it out - Bubhutsa. Don't worry if you don't understand half of the things he's talking about, I don't either :-D. I have just decided to assume that he's writing a mushy post for me in a code language ;-).

Hey, a girl can always hope ;-) :)).

Balloon blast off!

I seem to be posting only something related to photos these days :-\. Arey, what to do? As usual, I have so many "non-photo" things to write about, but somehow putting up the ones with photos seems easier, even though its actually more work (have to select and upload photos and edit them to fit into the format I want). One reason for this might be that I don't have to think about the post as such, just remember what happened ;-).

Oh well, time for our annual Bluegrass balloon festival trip :-D. For the not-so-regular-readers, the balloon festival happens the last weekend of September every year and it consists of races in the morning and glows in the evening. The previous 2 years we have been able to go to the glows only, mainly because its so inconvenient. Louisville is just an hour drive away, but the early morning races begin at 7 AM and to be there at 7, we atleast have to be ready by 5:30 AM :-p. In 2007 I was in the third trimester of my pregnancy and last year had a small baby. This year I wanted to see the race (my dream was to see a sky full of hot-air balloons :-p), so we thought of staying the night in Louisville, seeing the race and then driving back. But well, plans seldom have a way of going right :-p.

It rained cats and dogs all week. So till the last moment we hadn't even decided whether to go, leave alone staying for the night. The festival happens in an open field, so one of the main concerns was obviously the rain. Other meagre ones included the cancelling of the festival itself and the muddiness of the field (its one thing to let your child play in the backyard where even if she gets wet, we have a set of dry clothes ready and a whole thing altogether when you are out :-p). Finally we decided to go come rain or shine on Friday evening. There were a few drizzles predicted, but we thought we could manage.

So off we went. The evening was fine with a few rain drops, but the 3 (!!!) umbrellas we "back-packed" with us literally went to a waste :). The first sight that greeted us was a tethered balloon ride. They started this newly this year hoping to mint more money :-p.




$15 wasn't too bad for a 5 min ride, but babies weren't allowed much to my dismay :(. And somehow I didn't feel like going alone :(.

Anyways the evening went on without any sign of the rain and we were able to enjoy the glow :).




Except for one thing. Snugli was petrified of the balloons! I think I mentioned this in one of my earlier posts - these days we see fear instincts slowly creeping into her. But I was still surprised. She loves balloons, I guess she just didn't understand a gigantic balloon making loud whooshing sounds :-\. She clung to me and even refused to let Sri go anywhere (not even to throw the trash!). For a moment there, I had no idea what to do. I was getting frustrated more and more minute by minute. We tried clapping whenever there was a glow, making fun of the whooshing sound, jumping up and down (basically acting like a clown) and nothing seemed to be working.







Apparently, something did work :). After some time, she started enjoying the countdown to the glow and clapped when the balloons lit up :)).




We were upset about only one point, the parking this time was a bit far away from the balloons and walking for long without any shelter in the muddy road when there was a chance of rain was not really wonderful, to say the least. After enjoying a few glows, we decided to head back. As I said, we had decided to stay the night and so we did.

Next morning woke up early and headed back to the field. It was cloudy but not raining, so I was hopeful that we'd be able to see the race. We waited for a long time for the launch as they kept postponing it. Snugli was totally awake and started checking out the inflatables. Since they were wet, we couldn't really let her play on them, but she had a good time nevertheless..




While we waited we also got to see the Meijer cake balloon getting blown up (later even fly) and several other balloons.






But I was in for a major disappointment as far as the race was concerned. The race was cancelled as the conditions were not really proper for balloon safety. I understood the dangers, but felt sorta bad. I felt as if we stayed over for nothing :((.

Well, on the bright side, there's always next year..

BTW we are heading on another of our trips this weekend, so you have a travelogue and many more photos to look forward to :-D.

Plenty potted plants :))

I challenge you to say the title of this post 3 times fast :-D.

I've been meaning to put up the pics of my plants for days now. Don't know where the time is going (I know where it goes, but just saying :-p). The plant saga in going on in our lives as usual - I tried out a couple of new ones which were big hits, some which were miserable failures, yet others which overgrew and made me tear my hair out with frustration. But thats what gardening is all about..

Last year October I was a happy woman. I had pestered Sri into buying about 60 tulip bulbs, all of which I planted in my rectangle shaped-pots (or maybe they are containers) and was really anticipating a wonderful tulip show come spring (as you should know by now, I have this hugggggge tulips huchchu :-p). But I was in for a major disappointment. Tulip bulbs usually love cold temperatures, but hate too much wetness. Thanks to the crazy winter storm we had and the ice that deposited on my containers, the tulip bulbs rotted away. Imagine my dismay when not even a single sapling showed up in spring :(.

Anyways a disappointment is no reason to give up ;-). I bought gladioli bulbs and petunia plants and planted them in the containers. And boy, did they succeed (totally opposite to the tulip disaster ;-) :-D). But lets not rush, first, presenting the regulars - 4 jasmine pots that I have (bought 2 years back, so yes they have survived 2 winters :-D)...

This is the common jasmine (it looks a little similar to our Kakada mallige and I bought it in Florida)..




Next is Arabian Jasmine or our dundu mallige (albeit single layer). This too was bought in Florida. The flowers aren't that big or that impressive, but hey I'm growing dundu mallige in the US :-D!!




This is Star jasmine which is American and looks like our paarijaatha (have had this one for more than 4 years now :-D).




This next one's interesting though it hasn't flowered yet. I bought this pink jasmine or our jaaji mallige last year through Ebay. Last year it was too young, so lets see how it does this year (its supposed to flower in winter)..




Other than these I have my roses (I lost my red rose in the winter, but have double pots of these orange ones now)..




..., Gerberas..




.., Chrysanthemums..




And (this is new) Kanakambra!! I saw it in a friend's house and was told that its called Crossandra and is available in one of the stores here :-D. So guess what I did ;-).




I have also have my Tulasi plant (they somehow die on me each winter and I get a new one from the Indian temple in Louisville)..




.., Mint plant (a regular plant, comes back each year), 2 Karibevu plants (again got through ebay :-D) and BasaLe soppu (don't even know the English name. Got it from Indian store and then planted the stems).




Now comes the best part - the Gladioli :). They were a pleasure to grow :)).




Peach coloured ones and purple ones..




Yellow ones (which also decorated our dining table for quite a few days)...




And the best, red ones...




*Whistles :)).



I hope they come back next year (don't know whether they are hardy). Now that winter's almost here, we have to start moving atleast some of the containers inside, which is a problem since I don't have the tile space that I used to have in our earlier house. I have to keep them on the carpet, so we are looking for huge lid-kind-of-things to place them in. I do have the bottom plates for all the pots (to catch the excess drip), but I have had this problem of them overflowing and the mud wetting the carpet would be a big No-No. So there's much to do :).

Before I forget, yup the Petunias were a pleasure as well, which slowly went on to border irritation. They grew like weeds and the containers slowly got covered and then start to overflow with them. Well, the irritation is the reason there aren't any pictures of those ;-).

Other than that, I'm not really giving up on the Tulips. Plan to buy another set of bulbs and this time cover the containers with tarpaulin so that there is no excess moisture getting to them. So you can look forward to more set of adventures with plants as they happen ;-).

Fair and lovely :).

Its been 2 months since the fair came and went and I still haven't written about it. Oh well, better sometime than postpone it again and again :-p. This is not the first time the Bluegrass fair is coming to town. Its been there for a long time and we have been there every year. Somehow all this time I never really felt like writing about it. One reason maybe that compared to the amusement parks we have been to, this fair is pretty small and the rides are also not that grand ;-). The last 4 years that we've been there, we have hardly ridden any rides. Yet this year's visit unknowingly turned out to be pretty special, you can guess why :).

We didn't know whether Snugli would enjoy the fair or if so, for how long, so we thought it'd be better to tackle it once she was fed and rested (:-D), so we went there after 4 PM. The fair is actually very close to our house (practically in the backyard :-p), but unfortunately, the road is round-about. But got there pretty quick.




One of the first things we did was to put Snugli on the Merry-go-around..




Next we headed to the giant wheel or the Ferris wheel as it is called here..




Snugli enjoyed the ride and loved looking at things from that height.




Once that was done, I wanted to take her on a small roller coaster that was there, but Sri was afraid that she might be scared.




I pestered him till he gave in ;-) and took her on it - its the caterpillar.




She absolutely loved it! The first round, I held her, but later I let her enjoy it by herself. She really liked the downs and her expression was as if she was on a swing ;-). When the caterpillar stopped, she made a fuss and actually refused to get down!! Hehehee :)).

From then on we enjoyed the thrills of a typical fair, the roaming around, the eating junk - boiled corn, softies (they are called cone swirls here) and funnel cake (this is like a big jalebi, only the floor-made swirl is not dipped into sugar syrup here, instead its covered with powdered sugar ;-) - here is a picture).

Usually the fair has some shows (in the earlier ones, we once saw a bird show - eagles doing the owner's bidding, etc and a cannonball show in which a person is fired from a cannon), but there weren't any setup on that day. But there was something new - a petting zoo. And I've told you several times about how Snugli loves animals. We went into a shed like place where she touched (more like grabbed-and-tried-to-lift :-p) sheep, goats, lambs, rabbits and a horse. But sadly since they were minting money taking photos, we weren't allowed to take any. But later we went into this barn where they had cows and we got to take this one :).




We roamed for some more time talking about how it'll all be next year, when Snugli would probably be able to enjoy the rides on her own (there were more than 10 rides just for kids, but not age/height appropriate for Snugli). And I'm sure it'll be lots more fun for her and a whole new trouble for us :-D. Anyways soon we said bye to the fair and headed back home. We did want to go another day, but simply couldn't make it before the fair shutdown for the year..

Hmm, anyways thats it about the fair. But thats not it about Snugli. So many things have been happening that I thought that I'd include a Snugli update in this post itself :). Well, its my blog ;-). I don't even know where to start..

1) Her vocabulary is growing leaps and bounds. Its simply amazing to see her brain process things and her speaking words she simply didn't even know till the earlier day! She can say so many words these days that I can't even count. She also started to string 2 words together - she says "Dood maani" (Good Morning), "Appy budday" (Happy birthday), "Yech papa" (Yes papa in the Johnny Johnny poem), No papa etc. Yesterday she actually strung 3 words - she said "Amma mammu khaali" (Mom's food is over) when she saw my empty lunch plate! Moreover, she understands most of the things we say (me in Kannada and Sri in Telugu), but its another story whether she obeys or not ;-) :-D. I have to concede that she obeys for 75% of the time :)).

2) Sometimes its difficult to understand her. As parents we are able to differentiate between the empty blabber and the actual words and translate it to our kith and kin, but sometimes some words stump us too. We have to make her point and somehow figure out the context and then in turn figure out the word. Recently I bought a Legos Duplo set for her (it has bigger blocks and right now she's only into putting the blocks in and out of the box rather than play with them, anyways) and she started referring to the box as "Chakki dabba". We understood the dubba (means box) part, obviously, but not the chakki part. I hardly give her chocolates so it certainly didn't mean chaaki. We pondered over it for 2 days, until Sri finally realized what she was talking about. During Janmastami I had made Chaklis, put them in a big box, kept them on the dining table and we told her that it was "Chakli dabba" :-D, hehehehe. Now we are trying to correct her to refer to the Legos box as "Lego dabba", but its still chakki dabba :-D.

3) Trust a 1.5 year old to destroy something you viewed as indestructible. A few days ago, Snugli erased all the data from my digital diary. I thought the "Delete all" functionality was complicated and very (over)confidently handed the diary to her many times for her to play with it. The fault is mine. I guess the probability of 3 keys being pressed in a sequence out of 100-odd keys by a 1.5 year old is not so low after all :-\.

4) Its strange how things change from one day to another. Till about sometime back, Snugli absolutely loved the slide and started to climb/slide on her own. One day suddenly it all changed and she was petrified to slide down. She'd climb the steps on the slide, but refuse to slide down! And she didn't really fall or anything. Its a sudden fear of heights that too only for the slide (she climbs down stairs at home without any fuss). I was simultaneously amazed and frustrated (its a new instinct generated in her, but its like a taking a step back for us) :-p. Well, now I have to sing songs and somehow distract her when she's sliding down and it usually works :-D.

5) A new thing we have introduced her to is drawing. As you can very correctly guess, the drawing is more on doors, chairs and tables than on a book. Thankfully I've gotten washable crayons, yet don't know how the washable part of it will work on walls and the carpet (she somehow has missed "drawing" on them so far). Also, I'm extremely proud to announce that one of the crayons has narrowly escaped from being swallowed by the little one, though unfortunately it did lose its tail to a bite from those powerful teeth :-D.

6) Another thing I've introduced her to is a show called Teletubbies (it used to come in Doordarshan earlier, don't know whether it still does - its that 4 different coloured alien like creatures doing all sort of things - I used to simply hate it earlier :-p). One of my friends told me that its targeted towards toddlers and that her boy enjoyed it, so I thought I'll give it a try. Well, it didn't work for a long time, she used to watch for 5 min then run away. Recently she's become very interested. She loves watching the thing - says 3/4th of the words from the title song, jumps when they jump and imitates them in a lot of ways. Whenever she wants me to put the DVD on, she says "Teli Tubby" (she doesn't get the wish fulfilled all the time ;-) :-D) She also says "lala" and "Po" (names of the characters), "Thump" (Jump), "Appai" (Up high) and dances to the songs. The video I have has a song called "Head shoulders knees and toes" in which they point to various parts of the body and she imitates that :-D. Its kind of fun to see her do all that but I'm also worried it may become an obsession (the worry started when she cried "Teli tubby" in her sleep yesterday :-D). Oh well, bring it on :-D.

7) On the PT side, things have improved a bit. She almost always poops in the potty now and sometimes says "Potty pee" when she wants to pee or when she wants her diaper changed. Not everytime, mind you, but its like once or twice in a day, and very rarely in the night too. We are really proud of her and ourselves for keeping at it. The awareness seems to be coming in and hopefully is in the right direction :).

Thats all I can think of right now. Will come back with more soon, I hope :).

BTFYA 1 - Back to 5 years ago

They say that you have to sift through loads of coal before you get to a diamond. But 5 years ago, the darkness of the soot from all the sifting was very close to touching my heart, still there was not even a slight shine. It was hard to hold onto the hope when there was simply no prospect in sight. It was not really that I was that desperate to get married. It was more like I was weary of all the pressure and all the repeated questions from relatives and friends (which is one of the reasons I pledged that I'd never ask anyone about "marriage" or "kids" plans :-p). Moreover my self-doubting was causing even more of a distress to me than anything else.

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if the situation at home had been better. Dad, God bless him, wasn't really worried or atleast he never showed his worries to me but mom was the worse affected of it all. She was the most influenced by the society as such and she was wondering whether her daughter will ever find a groom. Since mom and I are very close, she'd confide in me about her anguish, making matters and my feelings worse. I used to ask myself whether marriage was the sole purpose of life, the start and end of it all and well, I didn't have any answers.

Each time I "saw" a guy, I'd be all excited. Maybe he was the one, the one with whom I would know I belong. I used to wonder how anyone knew that they were meant to be with the other person. How would you know a person until you actually live with him/her? Again no answers except the elusive "You'll know". The only decision I made was to have no regrets whether I said "Yes" or "No". And I held onto this rule with all the guys I met, but I did come close to breaking it for one - lets call him V.

Before I even got to a decision, the whole "Yes" or "No" deal would go through my parents first. That was my first filter level, so though I met somewhere close to 20 guys and even more sets of parents, more than 60% of the prospective grooms got rejected with a "collective" "No" :-D. V was the exception. He was quite handsome, met all of my parents' criteria and his parents were gems. But I somehow felt that he was too serious. I'm not into philosophy and spirituality at all and 3/4th of the time he talked only about those. They said "Yes" immediately and maybe I shouldn't have encouraged it, but I was kinda coerced into meeting him again. The 2nd time only re-enforced the feelings I got from the first time and I was able to say an outright "No". Mom was not too sure about my decision and it was quite frustrating for me to even explain to her why I thought it'd not work. But well, ultimately, she knew what I was talking about and she convinced his parents somehow that I wasn't generally into marriage (V's mom even said that he could live separately if joint family was a problem, which honestly was never the issue. She was such a sweetheart!).

Around the end of August 5 years ago, as I said, I had just said goodbye to the last prospect in sight and was very close to regretting not having said "Yes" to V. But I still wasn't in the phase of marrying the first guy that came along. The last guy, A was one of those guys who are great as friends, but just don't cut it as husband material (maybe for some other girl, but not me). We had exchanged emails for quite sometime and one thing that irked me majorly about him was the fact that he smoked as well as drank socially. My problem wasn't that he chose to smoke or drink, but the reason he gave for it - because his friends did. That kinda took me aback, you live your life for your friends? Anyways smoking was a total no no for me and we both decided to stay friends.

The experiences had only made me more frustrated. Before A, I had communicated online with another guy N who kept talking about how looks aren't important. He left me wondering whether it was his looks he was talking about or mine. Well, I didn't have to wonder for long. After months of chats, emails and online communication, I got a pretty good idea about his lack of humour and his quite-a-big inferiority complex. Our so called communication never went offline, stopped at the online part ;-) :-D.

Anyways you can see how this ordeal can lead to mental unrest. I felt like running away from the pressure. To be with myself and think about where I want to be, rather than meet guys and talk about it. And I did. I went on a trek trip all by myself with a trek group to Bisle forest. This was the first time in 24-odd years that I went anywhere without my parents tagging along and though it was scary at first, it was exhilarating. And it was the beginning of my love for adventure :). I'll probably write another separate post on that, but one thing I was able to do there was exactly what I wanted to do. I remember sitting on the banks of a river alone and thinking that it was the one of the best days of my life after a long time. I felt free and not pressured. I also felt refreshed and ready to tackle the next set of guys ;-). Later I went on another trek, this time to Yedukumeri with mom (you heard it right, she joined me on the total 34 mile trek!) and we were able to spend time together (make that hike, rappel, cross rivers on rope together :-D) without thinking about guys and marriage as such ;-). I feel the trips kinda brought me back from a bad state of mind that I was getting myself into.

Coming back to today, I have had one of my best friends ask me "You are fair and pretty, how come you had to go through this?" and I remember saying the whole deal doesn't have anything to do with looks. Looks are a part of it but just looks are never enough when you are going into a marriage. There are so many things to consider that its all quite mind-boggling. And to imagine, many of us have gone through it and many are going through it right now! I have also had other friends ask me as to how I knew he was the one when I met Sri. I have said "I don't know, I just did". I still don't know why. Yes he passed my parents' filter. Yes, he had many of the qualities I had in mind. But I cannot to this day say why I said Yes to him. I'm only glad about one thing. I said "Yes" after thinking and not because I was tired of "seeing" guys. I said "Yes" in a very clear state of mind and not because I was pressured into it. I said "Yes" because I felt like saying it and not because I felt I had to. It doesn't mean that I haven't had doubts but whats more important is that I haven't had any regrets whatsoever :).

Epilogue:

This post is the start of a series and I wanted to write it because I started this blog after I was married. Had I been able to keep a record of my feelings 5 years back, it'd have been a different side of me. I have been wanting to post about a series of things that happened before this blog did, but you know what my usual excuses are :-D. Well, Sri and I are reaching our 5th anniversary soon (No, today is NOT our anniversary), so I felt this would be a good time. And just to get the point across, this post is not really about Sri. Its all about me and what I was going through. This is usually what most people in arranged marriages go through unless they have a diamond glaring at them on top of all the coals, which is what happened to Sri ;-) :-D.

Heartquake!

Snugli has this habit of walking backwards blindly and falling into the laps of anyone who's sitting in her path. Yesterday this habit of hers literally gave me a shock. We were in the laundry room and I was transferring washed clothes from the washer into the drier. Now the laundry room is in the upper floor directly facing the staircase. She was blocking the door of the drier, so I asked her to move back a bit. The rest you can guess :-p. She started walking backwards directly towards the staircase. The moment literally freezed and my heart stopped. I jumped and caught hold of her right at the moment where her next step would have hurled her downwards in the staircase. Thank God! My heart was beating so fast and I almost felt like crying. The whole episode served as yet another reminder to why I don't take my eyes off her anytime she is near the stairs. Even now, thinking of that, I feel a chill going through me. That was one of the scariest moments of my life..

No wonder they call her category of age - the terrible twos!