Weekends are busier than weekdays:
This is a typical problem I face whenever I opt for full time work. Weekdays get very organised, predictable and sometimes boring. If I feel like watching movie, I don't watch as next day I need to get up early, 'J' gets exactly half an hour of pampering and 3 and 1/2 hours of instructions, orders or scoldings. Yes I have counted it, that a full time working mother (9 hours + 1 hour commute) gets 6 hours of parenting plus housekeeping time and that is if her sleeping time is 7 hours. So that boils down to 2-3 hour of parenting and 2-3 hour of housekeeping plus entertainment (entertainment for me means; one cooking/travel show on TV, two cups of relaxed tea drinking in morning and evening and little chit chat with neighbours/phone or husband).
So all my quality parenting desires (baking, art and craft, playing cards, cosy afternoon nap or story telling) needs to wait for the weekend. I am a lazy woman and so all my not to be disturbed laziness also needs to wait till weekends. Grocery and other shopping and socialising also get cramped in the weekend. We need to do our weekly cleaning up of the place we live in and then we crave for small outings which again needs to be done in weekend. I yearn to do some freelance writing and that too get snuggled in the weekends.
So although friday evening I feel very elevated about the weekend but by end of Saturday I start looking for calm, quiet and boring weekdays!
Revisiting my childhood through J's:
That day, on returning home in the evening, I saw 'J' and one of her friends were walking very fast with fingers closing their nostrils. I asked, "What happened?" "Aunty, trees are releasing carbon-di-oxide now, we need to hurry up otherwise we will also inhale carbon-di-oxide, and that is not we should inhale."
I smiled at them and told them to hurry up and go home. I remembered as a child, I and my friends used to make big fuss about how we should not stand under a big tree in the evening as trees were also inhaling oxygen like us.
Plunging into forming a community:
I need friends for my survival. I need to be constantly on phone or mail or have access to friend's places. I need a community to thrive upon. I cannot live on my own. I am highly opinionated, but I need people to talk, argue or debate on them. My life of endless relocations have taught me to understand the essence behind any ritual, tradition or mannerism of people around me, before being judgemental to them. In summary I need to talk about all the observations I make in my life. Two and half years ago I started this blog exactly for the reason that I needed to talk and I was not able to as all my friends and families were far away from me in different time zones. This blog has brought so many new friends to me. Here on returning to India, I was bit cautious, skeptical and careful about going out and reaching people. But now I am confidently plunging into waves of new friendships. Who says friendship cannot be made once you are out of college? I found many open minded warm friends since then and even now, when I am knocking at the door of middle age.
Keeping the older bonds tight:
Yes, I also try my best to keep connected as tightly as possible with friends who were together with me at one point of my life, specially those with whom I shared golden and toughest moments of my life. Life take turns and sometimes those close friends might not connect to my present emotions, but I try my best to stay close to them. Just recently I felt that actually tightness of bonds remains in spite of physical distances when the efforts are two sided and informal. I have been very lucky that I get so many surprise phone calls/visits from friends whom I have not called for so many months due to sheer time constrains. They yell at me even before saying hello, but they do take time to call/visit me.
The ones who don't give space to egos, formalities or comparisons in their friendship.
On getting older:
Yes, crossed one more birthday, enjoyed the day thoroughly but a creepy feel remained with me and that is, span to live is getting less with each passing day. Almost half of the reel is spent and now I need to be careful with the other half.
As one of the friend reminded me that I am going to lead a much more matured, responsible, poised, organised, confident and sure life than my twenties.
I understood the underlying meaning that fun, frolic, confusions, dreams, ambitions to change the world (Yes, I did have high ambitions!), those typical highlights of twenties will be on short supply from now onwards.
So it is even so more important to stick on to whatever fun and laughter that comes on my way.
This is a typical problem I face whenever I opt for full time work. Weekdays get very organised, predictable and sometimes boring. If I feel like watching movie, I don't watch as next day I need to get up early, 'J' gets exactly half an hour of pampering and 3 and 1/2 hours of instructions, orders or scoldings. Yes I have counted it, that a full time working mother (9 hours + 1 hour commute) gets 6 hours of parenting plus housekeeping time and that is if her sleeping time is 7 hours. So that boils down to 2-3 hour of parenting and 2-3 hour of housekeeping plus entertainment (entertainment for me means; one cooking/travel show on TV, two cups of relaxed tea drinking in morning and evening and little chit chat with neighbours/phone or husband).
So all my quality parenting desires (baking, art and craft, playing cards, cosy afternoon nap or story telling) needs to wait for the weekend. I am a lazy woman and so all my not to be disturbed laziness also needs to wait till weekends. Grocery and other shopping and socialising also get cramped in the weekend. We need to do our weekly cleaning up of the place we live in and then we crave for small outings which again needs to be done in weekend. I yearn to do some freelance writing and that too get snuggled in the weekends.
So although friday evening I feel very elevated about the weekend but by end of Saturday I start looking for calm, quiet and boring weekdays!
Revisiting my childhood through J's:
That day, on returning home in the evening, I saw 'J' and one of her friends were walking very fast with fingers closing their nostrils. I asked, "What happened?" "Aunty, trees are releasing carbon-di-oxide now, we need to hurry up otherwise we will also inhale carbon-di-oxide, and that is not we should inhale."
I smiled at them and told them to hurry up and go home. I remembered as a child, I and my friends used to make big fuss about how we should not stand under a big tree in the evening as trees were also inhaling oxygen like us.
Plunging into forming a community:
I need friends for my survival. I need to be constantly on phone or mail or have access to friend's places. I need a community to thrive upon. I cannot live on my own. I am highly opinionated, but I need people to talk, argue or debate on them. My life of endless relocations have taught me to understand the essence behind any ritual, tradition or mannerism of people around me, before being judgemental to them. In summary I need to talk about all the observations I make in my life. Two and half years ago I started this blog exactly for the reason that I needed to talk and I was not able to as all my friends and families were far away from me in different time zones. This blog has brought so many new friends to me. Here on returning to India, I was bit cautious, skeptical and careful about going out and reaching people. But now I am confidently plunging into waves of new friendships. Who says friendship cannot be made once you are out of college? I found many open minded warm friends since then and even now, when I am knocking at the door of middle age.
Keeping the older bonds tight:
Yes, I also try my best to keep connected as tightly as possible with friends who were together with me at one point of my life, specially those with whom I shared golden and toughest moments of my life. Life take turns and sometimes those close friends might not connect to my present emotions, but I try my best to stay close to them. Just recently I felt that actually tightness of bonds remains in spite of physical distances when the efforts are two sided and informal. I have been very lucky that I get so many surprise phone calls/visits from friends whom I have not called for so many months due to sheer time constrains. They yell at me even before saying hello, but they do take time to call/visit me.
The ones who don't give space to egos, formalities or comparisons in their friendship.
On getting older:
Yes, crossed one more birthday, enjoyed the day thoroughly but a creepy feel remained with me and that is, span to live is getting less with each passing day. Almost half of the reel is spent and now I need to be careful with the other half.
As one of the friend reminded me that I am going to lead a much more matured, responsible, poised, organised, confident and sure life than my twenties.
I understood the underlying meaning that fun, frolic, confusions, dreams, ambitions to change the world (Yes, I did have high ambitions!), those typical highlights of twenties will be on short supply from now onwards.
So it is even so more important to stick on to whatever fun and laughter that comes on my way.
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