One quality I’ve found common to most mothers I know is selflessness. Mothers always put their children first, sometimes even the husband before themselves but the children always come first. It’s one of the reason’s I guess we love our mothers so much but I’ve been thinking, is such selflessness good?

There are different types of selflessness. One where you forget all about yourself and keep just giving, another is one where you are selfless but you also think of yourself, then there are others like conditional ones, situational ones, et all. But the one that interests me is the first. I’m trying to wrap my head around how someone can give so much without thinking of themselves. This is the image I have of my mother, this is the kind of woman I thought I should be when I grew up.

Now, I’m not so sure. Well, I don’t have children so, technically I am not a mother. But I have 5 dogs and I love them. When I’ve observed other parents I’ve noticed that the emotions I feel, my reactions and my bond with my dogs is not very different from theirs towards their children. I’m not saying my dogs feel what children feel for their parents but I definitely feel motherly towards my dogs.

Over the last four years the dogs slowly trickled in and their tribe grew until now they are 5 to me 1. When my first came in, she brought along with her demands on my time. Some of these demands were directly related to her and some indirectly. At that point all was fine, then slowly the numbers grew and so did the demands, now I feel like I have no time for myself. My day’s to-do list is brimming with more to-do’s for others then my own self.

Yeah, it’s true I don’t have much to-do’s from Che, but between the dogs and the house I’ve been swamped for a while. And after the day’s to-do’s are done, I just don’t have the energy to do something for myself. This ‘myself’ being pushed to the last of the list, constantly being last priority has grated on my nerves for a while now.

Then I watched ‘Queen’ a couple of days before my birthday. My biggest takeaway from that movie was to constantly remind myself to do something for myself. Keep telling myself – ‘I’ is kind,nbsp; ‘I’ is smart, ‘I’nbsp; is important. Over the last couple of months, I’d kind of given up on my hair and skin, so first stop out of the movie hall was BodyShop and Mac, where I treated myself to cremes, lip gloss and an eye-liner. And I’m proud to report that I’ve been using them all regularly. I’ve slipped a couple of times but 6 out of 7 days a week, I’ve taken care of my hair and skin. My skin actually does look better, even if I say so myself. 🙂

Now that I’ve managed that, this year I want to do more for myself. Not that I will stop doing stuff for the dogs and house but rather I’m going to try and make time for myself too. I want to get back to my craft, my reading, my travel and a lot more.

So, this year it’s about bringing the ‘I’ back into my life. 🙂

As I’ve got older I’ve noticed myself getting more and more cynical. The positives have become hazier with time and the negatives stand out. Any idea is first looked at from the perspective of what can go wrong rather than what can be right with it.

But life’s all about hope isn’t it. The hope of a new day, a better day. The hope of future, a better tomorrow. So, I can’t be giving up on hope, can I? Hence the choice of word for my year ahead. I’d like to learn to hope again, so see the positive and believe in it’s possibility.

At this point I walked away, I couldn’t figure out what to write further and so I left to water the garden while I hoped some thoughts would trickle into my blank mind. Did you catch that? Yeah, I hoped for thoughts and that hit me as I was carried buckets of water around the parking area.

I realised that if I couldn’t write about hope, then I was being hopeless and that made the topic even more important. It had to be written. Then of course the whole snake fiasco happened and the post got put off. But later as I lay in bed and scrolled through Facebook, I came across the words of Dalai Lama shared by a friend…

“The very purpose of our life is happiness, which is sustained by hope. We have no guarantee about the future, but we exist in the hope of something better. Hope means keeping going, thinking, ‘I can do this.’ It brings inner strength, self-confidence, the ability to do what you do honestly, truthfully and transparently.”

As I lay there it felt like the universe was screaming the word ‘HOPE’ at me. I mean come on, what are the odds of coming across something like this randomly on Facebook. Then there was the whole snake episode, that had me hoping so hard that the snake had stayed in it’s hiding place, that the snake catcher would get home in time, that he would find the snake and above all that none of us would get bitten by the snake.

I ain’t hopeless, I still have a lot of hope in me it seems. All is not lost yet, there is still hope for a hopeful me! 😀

[This post is late and should have gone online yesterday but I had a bad migraine and couldn’t sit at the computer long enough to finish and post it. So it’s two posts today. 🙂 ]

There are a lot of days when I feel like I have nothing, I am nothing. Most days it’s a passing phase, and some days it’s lasts for a while but no matter which day, what makes me snap out of it are a list of beings. These beings make me smile and make life feel worth while.

Since my word for the year with ‘G’ is Gratitude, I figured I’d make a list of these beings so I can read it when I’m all down and out and snap out of it and smile sooner. 🙂

Mom and Me years ago

The first person I think I met in this world is my Mother and I’m glad I did. She is selfless, always offering her shoulder or advise when I’m ranty, and someone I still go running to when I’m hurt and upset. The days of scraped knees when she blew on the wound and made it feel better are long gone, but even today she makes me feel better with her magic. She has done so much for me over the years that, nothing I do will ever equate it, an infinite number of thank you’s will not be enough. I have learned so much from this extraordinary woman and I have still so much to learn. She reminds me of one of my favourite songs,

“You are my sunshine,
My only sunshine,
You make me happy,
When skys are grey.
You’ll never know dear.
How much I love you,
Please don’t take my sunshine away.”

When I grow up 😀 I’d like to be like my mother, if I can be even 50% the woman she is, I’d have achieved greatness I think.

My MIL and Me at my wedding

The saas-bahu serials on TV had me wishing from early in life that when I got married I get a good M-I-L. I must have prayed quite diligently coz I did get a great mother-in-law. She is so like my mother that when she’s around I don’t miss my own.

When Che and I got married we had a reception in Kovilpatti, a town near Madurai where Che hails from. The morning after the reception I tentatively stepped out of the room (while Che slept) wondering if I could sneak into the gift room and check stuff out until he woke up. Tip toeing my way across the floor I got to the room full of gifts without encountering anyone but as I stood at the door, my MIL looked up at me from inside where she was sitting in the middle of it all and said, “Ah, you’re awake, can we now open the gifts?”. An hour or so later when Che found us, we were sitting in the middle of gifts strewn around with silly grins on our faces. My MIL became my mother that day, how can she have not. That was one of my first impressions of her and even four years later, she continues to amaze me with all she understands and does.

I’m the lucky bum who didn’t get one mother, I got two. It’s a double whammy!

My Five

I still remember the days when Che and I talked about getting a dog but every time talked, we put it off saying this wasn’t the best time. Then one day in August 4 years ago, during a week of crazy torrential rains, Che found a puppy huddled near the dustbin outside our apartment, shivering. He picked it up and looked around for the mother, when he couldn’t find her he brought the puppy home to dry her off and get some food in her. Fifteen minutes later he was looking at me with puppy eyes that said, please can we keep her. The rest like they say is history.

Cuckoo was followed within months by Sentimeter, and then a year later by Buddha. I didn’t know when one dog became three and then five when William and Maximus joined us too. Today I have five dogs and I’m working hard at keeping that number from increasing. 😀

These five fill my life with such joy, only people with dogs will know what it feels like. When I wake up in the morning I have 5 dogs vying for my attention, so happy to see me, thumping their tails with such vigour that sometimes I worry for the grandfather clock that loses or gains time every morning when they thump it. When I’m down in the dumps and no-one and nothing can make me feel better, these five can make the sun come out again. They know just what it would take to make me happy again.

Even when they do something wrong it’s so difficult to be angry with them. Try it, try being angry with someone who looks at you with such unadulterated love while you are screaming your head off. My dogs are my life, there is nothing in the world I wouldn’t give up for them. Nothing!

Bro and Me years ago when I still could bully him

Making this list, I wondered who else would be on it and one name kept popping up and that’s my brother. The little kid I bullied, who bullied me in turn a few years later has grown into a man I’m proud of. Thoughtful, caring, soft-hearted, kind are just some words that describe him. His is the number on my speed dial coz I know he will always be there for me.

All us Grandkids with Gran on her 90th (except 1)

Then there are all my other brothers (coz using the word cousin wouldn’t be fair to how they treat me). Each one of them going out of their way for me with never a complain. As kids when they were around I’d be exasperated but today when they are around my heart smiles.

All those rakhi’s paid off, eh? 😛

The Entire Family on Gran's 90th

Then there’s my family and friends, who are just such amazing people. Looking back at myself growing up I see just the prick I was [not that am not one now :D] and yet these people have loved me all the way. Could I even ask for more.

Last but not the least is that man I married who makes my blood boil so much some days that I want to scream and pull my hair out and yet he remembers the small things I like, eats bland khichdi everyday without a complain when I’m ill coz if he ate spicy food I’d be tempted. He does things that amaze me and leave me speechless when I least expect it.

We don’t fight like cats and dogs, we fight like a mongoose and snake and yet without him I think life would be empty. Come on wouldn’t the mongoose miss the snake, where’s the fun for the mongoose if the snake’s gone. 😀

Gratitude is the right word, for I’m grateful, immensely grateful for the beings in my life. I must have done some pretty awesome stuff on my last life to have all these people in my life. No one gets this lucky, unless they deserve it. Knowing me I don’t know about that, but I do know I’m damn lucky and very grateful.

I can’t remember dates! It’s true, I’m terrible at remembering days and events. My family and friends know this and thankfully they are forgiving when I miss birthdays or don’t remember when something happened. With my terrible date memory there are birthday’s galore I miss wishing friends on. I don’t do it on purpose, I do try to remember but dates just slip my mind; I forget my own birthday and wedding anniversary almost every other year. The positive in all of this is I guess that I don’t hold people to dates. Che of course benefits the most coz there is no way he’ll get called up for forgetting a date (the first time we met, the day he proposed, our wedding date,…); after all I’ve forgotten it already. 😀

Friends are a gift, they make you feel better on a bad day, they listen to you rant when you’re not making sense at all, they rejoice with you even though they secretly think you are overdoing it, they lend a shoulder to cry on when things go wrong and don’t say ‘I told you so’, … the list would goes on and I’d run out of words before I’d finish listing out all friends do.

I didn’t have close friends through most of school. I had friends yes, but they were more acquaintances. I was quite a loner through school; I preferred books and their characters. Until about 3rd standard my school was a co-ed and I hung out with the boys, well, they were more fun. Then after, when it become all girls, I had a bad experience that just left me scarred. I didn’t know if I could trust people when they said they wanted to be friends, I was scared of letting fellow students get too close and hurting me again, it was simpler to just stay away and stay alone. I did find my first best friend in school though, years later in 9th standard. 🙂

But it was after leaving school that I started to understand and value friendship. Pre-university brought new people and new friends into my life, and I learned to trust people again (corny I know 😀 ). What it also taught me was that friends come and go and their coming and going is not to be held against them. That’s life, that’s how it plays out and we don’t always have control over these things. I learned that, what is more valuable than the person even, is the time friends spent together, that is what remains as beautiful memories, forever.

University saw me being a riot, the girl who was quiet through most of school was now progressively becoming boisterous; trying to make up for all those years of solitude and I haven’t stopped yet. 😀 Our gang in college was loud and always up to something. If we didn’t have something happening on the timetable, we were out and about doing other things. A lot of times we didn’t care for the timetable, the world outside the classroom was more fun. We barely scraped though with required attendance and even begged and pleaded when we fell short. But boy, did we have fun!

Those years were something else. Thinking back to all we did, makes me smile now, though back then some of it made my hair stand on end. My friends saw me though some of my best and worst days and not once did they judge. Oh well, some didn’t and we’re still friends today. 😀 We left college promising to stay in touch, to meet regularly, to continue to bring the roof down, and all that stuff but our lives took different paths and the big group became sub-groups. We still keep updated on each other though, in our own weird convoluted ways.

My first job was my last corporate job. I worked with the same company for 5 years before saying goodbye to the corporate world. But after 5 years when I left I had made friends for life. We’re still close today and it’s amazing how we all still connect. These girls are my only girly group, where I can be the tom-boy I am and be loved for it [I think ;)].

It was a friend from work who got me started on biking and with those two wheels a whole new world opened up. Those two wheels also brought along with them a host of new friends, from all across the country this time. And what amazing people they are. It’s a matter of pride for me today that there are very few cities in India where I don’t know someone. These are friends who not only accept me as I am, but when I suggest something weird or fantastical, they will either give me an encouraging nod or say, ‘Sounds good, let’s go’.

It was a friend from this group of friends that brought Che into my life and he in turn brought in the dogs. The dogs not to be left behind, brought in more two-legged friends who have been such a comfort and solace in the last few years. They are the ones who have helped me keep my sanity, both in marriage and with five dogs! 😀

Then of course last but not the least is my blog. I started it years ago as a place to vent, I wanted space to talk and rant. And rant I did, (if you haven’t seen some of my early posts, you should 😛 ) along with sharing stories from my life and travels. But I made friends here too inspite of my ranting. 🙂

I’m awestruck by the number of people in my life who I can call friends. They enrich my life in so many ways that, I lost count years ago. They encourage, chide, scold, hug, embarrass, listen, care, nurture, … and above all love me (I hope). 😀 It fills me with amazement and wonder that someone who spent her first 13 odd years fairly friendless is now overflowing with friends.

Someone who forever is forgetting dates still gets inundated with birthday messages and calls. It’s true, it took me two days and many tears of joy to reply to each message and call I received. I’m smiling wide right now coz I’m still amazed.

I haven’t named anyone here, but you know who you are, and all I’d like to say is – Friend, Thank You for being a part of my life, you make my life so much more beautiful. 🙂

This is one thing I love to do. I love exploring, I have an unsatisfiable curiosity that has taught me so much about the world around me; has also got me into trouble sometimes. 😀 It’s one of the reason’s I think I love to travel. When I travel I explore places, people, food, history,… and come back richer for all that I’ve experienced.

Che and I went on a ride today after a long time, it feels like ages since we did this. It wasn’t a very long ride, maybe 200km both ways but it was fun. I found myself nervous at the start, after all it had been ages since I’ve seen the highway on a bike but as the kilometers rolled past I started to relax and enjoy myself, the feeling of being one with the road and nature came back and I realised I had missed this for so long. The wind felt wonderful and the sun warm (and hot on the return 😛 ).

As always, when riding my mind wanders, inane thoughts come to mind as I traverse strange paths in my head. Today as I thought of what I would write about ‘E’, Jacques-Yves Cousteau came to mind along with the word explore. When we were kids and had only one channel – Doordarshan for entertainment on TV, I remember watching documentaries made by Cousteau. His shows were the first place I experienced the ocean and it’s beauty.

My parents were/are travelers too and I did see a fair number of places with them, but that was all land, I’d only seen the ocean from a beach until Cousteau. I didn’t know what it was like inside there. My swimming days in the Ulsoor pool which had walls covered in green algae had left me with a fear of the deep, I imagined a shark swimming out of those murky green depths and chomping on me. I was so terrified of this vision that I rarely opened my eyes while swimming in the deep-end and that section was where I swam fastest. Cousteau changed all that.

Cousteau's Submersible, The Window to the Ocean

Remember the program ‘The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau’? The ‘Calypso’? The man in a red bonnet? Oh, how I loved watching his programs week after week on TV. I’ve not gone scuba diving yet but it’s on my bucket-list and that’s because of Cousteau. Did you know the Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus or scuba equipment we use today was also first co-developed by Cousteau in 1943 to explore the underwater world longer and more freely.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the man with the red bonnet

Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born in France on June 11, 1910 and died of a heart attack, age 87 on June 25, 1997 in Paris. He lived a long accomplised life. Starting off his career as a gunnery officer in the air-force, a bad car accident changed his life. From the air he moved to the oceans and never looked back. In 87 years left behind a legacy unparalleled by anyone with over 50 books, more than 120 television documentaries, an environmental protection foundation with members worldwide, ideas and designs that changed the way the oceans are seen and explored, he campaigned to save the oceans and more. He’s done so much, that I can’t list it out here. If he interests you, you should check him out – Jacques Cousteau on Wikipedia. 🙂

The Calypso, it's going to be made into a museum

Cousteau was such an influence growing up that to me Jacques-Yves Cousteau will always be the man of the oceans and the word ‘Calypso’ will always mean his ship. When I think of the word explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau is the first name that will always come to mind – the man with a red bonnet who went on amazing and thrilling adventures aboard his Calypso, a modern day Captain Nemo that even Jules Verne would be proud of!

E is for Explore

Coincidentally the word explore also has one of it’s origins in French! From French explorer and from Latin explorare ‘search out’, it breaks down into ex- ‘out’ + plorare ‘utter a cry’.
Explore is a verb defined in the dictionary as ‘travel through (an unfamiliar area) in order to learn about it’.

Some synonyms: travel over, tour, traverse, range over, survey, inspect, investigate, reconnoitre, search.

Last night as I lay in bed I thought about words that started with ‘D’. It was like a word building exercise and a lot of words came to mind. Define, Demur, Deter, Decline, Delete, Doll, … and it went on. Some words had potential but most just wouldn’t work.

I woke up with ‘determination’ spinning in my head but I wondered as I walked the dogs, what would I write about it. Yes, this year I should be determined to reach my goals et all but really, that’s not fun to write about. Or read about for that matter. 😀 So, I let the post be as I got to doing all I hadn’t finished yesterday.

I have a tick and flea problem. No I don’t mean on the dogs, it’s on me. Ticks and fleas seem to like me more than the dogs. Yep it’s eew, but that’s how I know the dogs have ticks or fleas, I find them on me. It’s why I’m crazy particular about the dogs and house being tick and flea free, I’m getting to almost be an expert on them. 😛

With summer setting in and April showers making their presence felt, ticks and fleas explode. Not that they aren’t there at other times, just that around this time they seem to start to show up with a vengeance. I think it’s the rain and it’s temperature change that does it, that perfect mix of heat and cool that they so seem to like.

Keeping ticks and fleas off the dogs and out of the house is like a life mission for me. I have a routine to my cleaning, mopping, changing sheets and more. And my summer cleaning has been due for a while. Over the last few years I’ve managed to keep the dogs and house relatively tick and flea free. Forget an infestation, just the thought of one sends chills down my spine. Seeing ticks climb walls is like a horror story to me.

So I clean and clean like a Monica. Over the last couple of years I’ve tried, tested and found natural remedies for keeping the little critters at bay. Natural methods give me peace of mind when using them around the dogs. Here’s the routine I follow – I sweep the house to remove the first layer of hair and dirt, then I strip all sheets and start my rounds of washing, all beds get vacuumed and kept aside, then I vacuum all edges and skirtings around the house. This is followed by another round of sweeping before the mopping begins. When all is mopped, fresh sheets are laid out and finally all edges and skirtings are sprayed down.

Of course I do do one or more of the above regularly and on different days but this is my tick/flea regime and all of it happens on the same day for that. The vacuum bag gets cleaned and dusted thoroughly as soon as I finish, and it gets cleaned outside the house at a distance, so even if I did catch a few bugs I don’t release them back inside the house. The mop water has extra salt and vinegar with the soap to deter the critters. And the spray is a mix of vinegar and neem oil to keep the bugs from getting into snugly holes and corners.

It’s a long process, tiring and time consuming. And today it was sheer determination that saw me through it. I felt a few twinges in my tummy in the morning but the thought of the lone tick I found a couple of days back galvanized me, and I just kept going. It’s a relief and joy that I feel now that it’s done. It’s a big to-do off my list.

But determination didn’t only play a part in that. Considering that the routine took me about 5 hours to finish and how pooped I was after it was done, it took a lot of determination to finish this post. I didn’t want to miss a day in my challenge.

So, how can D not be for Determination? 😉

Aside: If you’d like to know more about home remedies for Ticks and Fleas, do read my posts on them. I put them together the last time they freaked me out. 🙂

– Home Remedies for Fleas

– Home Remedies for Ticks

C is for Celebration

The dictionary lists celebration as a noun, ‘the action of celebrating an important day or event‘.
The word originated in Latin from the verb celebrare or celeber, where celebr- meant ‘frequented or honoured’.

Some synonyms: commemoration, honour, salute, merrymaking, festivity

Celebrate Every Day

Yesterday morning Che and I got talking as we walked the dogs and he said something that struck a chord in me. Celebrate every day like it’s your birthday he said.

That’s a great idea, isn’t it. If everyday was special I’d try to pack it in with things I enjoy doing. I’d look forward to the day and smile though it, so I thought why not. Why look at each day as just another day to be gone through, like it’s a burden or a punishment.

That’s how I look at most days. I wake up each day and groan at the thought of all the house work there is to be done. The never-ending list of chores, that has actually started to become never-ending. Everyday is just like the one before and I find myself a lot of times looking forward to the night, not because something special happens then but because I sigh with relief that the day is over. If it stopped there it’d be great but that relief is short-lived and before I know it, I’m making a list of things to do the next day and groaning again. 😀

It’s true my birthday is the one day I take an off day, put my feet up and do nothing. Now, when I say nothing I mean house and doggie work and it’s nice not to have to do all that. But really most of the house work is just chores and I do enjoy the doggie work. Not so much the pee and poop collection but other than that I enjoy my time with the dogs. 🙂

So, this year I’d like to look beyond the chores, treat each day like my birthday and do something with it that I will remember. I want to learn to accept the chores, so I have fun doing them. Find ways to actually look forward to work rather than cringe like I do most days. Lately some of this cringing comes from my painful gassy problem, especially on bad days like today.

I woke up this morning in pain, it’s day two of this bout. The plan for today was to vacuum, change sheet’s, spray the house, sweep and mop but the pain I was in had me cringing at the though of the work. Yeah, some of that grimacing was from pain but some of it arose from my not letting go of the plan. I found myself feeling guilty about not doing the work, even though I was unable to do it. I felt terrible putting it off until tomorrow. That felt worse than the pain.

I need to learn to forgive myself, learn to let go, give myself some space and cut some slack without beating myself-up with guilt. Easier said than done. So, this year I’m going to try harder at doing that; at treating myself the way I treat others; nicely. 😀

Birthday’s Are For Everyone

Ok, enough of my sob stories and onto another reason I thought of the word celebrate. Last evening as I was reading a few blog posts I came across Vidya’s post about her Mom’s birthday – Mi. Her post is a heart warming one with lesson’s I so need to learn. What it also did was remind me of a peculiar custom we have in our family.

In our family when it is someone’s birthday, not only is the birthday girl or boy called but parent’s, siblings, spouse and children also receive a call of congratulations or mubarakbadi. Birthday’s don’t belong just to one person, they belong to the family. Everyone celebrates!

Growing up I felt a varied set of emotions about this custom – from happiness to irritation. Today looking at it, I see it as something beautiful. Birthday’s are a celebration, a celebration – of life, of the person and what that person means to everyone else. A person’s birthday is an event to be celebrated by all who are a part of that person’s life. After all if that person wasn’t there, there would be a void, no?

So, Mubarak to all my family and friends out there on my birthday. Thank you for being a part of my life. Let’s celebrate today and everyday! 😉

B is for Balance

As a noun the dictionary describes balance as ‘an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady‘ or ‘a situation in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions‘.

Originating from Old French balance (noun), balancer (verb), is based on the late Latin (libra) bilanx ‘(balance) having two scale pans’, from bi– ‘twice, having two’ + lanx ‘scale pan’.

Some synonyms: stability, equilibrium, impartiality, equal opportunity, evenness, symmetry
Some antonyms: instability, imbalance

My life when I look back over the last few years has been imbalanced in so many ways. I’ve focused on some things and let a lot of others slip. I’ve claimed over time that I couldn’t do it all, I just didn’t have so much time. Some of that claim is true but one part of me also knows the truth, I haven’t tried hard enough.

This year I’m trying to strike a balance, to make time for all that I want to do. Get more effective and productive with my time. Learn to value time, make every minute count. This one’s a difficult one, for the lazy me. It’s been so much easier to sit back and get lazy while claiming that I didn’t have the time or energy. I’ve resisted schedules and regimes. I’ve looked down upon routines and packed days. I’ve wanted unlimited time to do stuff but actually done nothing.

This year is the year of balances, of doing all that I want to do without losing out on one or the other. This is the year of being very active, of using every minute I have in a day to do something I value. Spending time with my dogs outside of walks and feeding. Working with them, training and playing new games. Gardening and getting to know the plants and trees better. Reading and reviewing more and faster! Catching up with friends; I’ve become so much of a recluse and frankly I miss my friends. Getting back to craft; it rejuvenates me but I haven’t created anything in months! The list seems endless, as things just keep springing up on the list – movies, games, work, photography,… oh, it goes on and on.

Above all of this though is my health. Since Nov-Dec last year, I’ve been ill. It started with these cramps and pain in my lower abdomen that left me kneeling over. That was the time though when a lot was happening, we were moving to a new house, settling down in a new place, bringing five dogs under one roof,…; there was so much happening that I found I was being able to block the pain from my mind by distracting myself with work.

There were days though when I just couldn’t, the pain was that intense. On those days, I and my family of Doctors tried to figure what was wrong. We talked when it got that bad in phases and slowly tried medications and eliminated possibilities. We went through the range, from worms to an ectopic pregnancy. It took me a few months to realise it was gas. Yeah, just gas!

I’ve had flatulence since I can remember. My Dad had it, so all these years I just wrote it off as that one thing I inherited from him and learned to live with it without causing myself public humiliation. Yeah yeah, I know how to tell the difference between a loud and quiet fart, a neutral and a smelly bomb; all before the fart actually escapes. 😀 And with me it’s rare for them to escape, with practice I had learned to hold it long enough to walk away and safely release.

This gas was fine, all these years it didn’t bother me but now it does. Some days it’s simple easy gas, passing out and not bothering me. But some days it doesn’t pass easily and it’s movement inside of me leaves me writhing in pain. It takes all my will power to not scream out. It’s silly I know but think screaming in pain is sissy. 😛

After all these months of thinking I must be dying a slow painful death, it’s a relief to know it’s just gas. It was be handled with lifestyle changes, balances, routines and care. It’ll take months and maybe even a lifetime of careful excesses but it can be lived with. Once my tummy settles, I will still be able to indulge in the foods I love – pani puri, deep-fried chicken, spicy andhra biryani, and more, just that now it will have to be in moderation and with care.

Over the last few weeks a system has been put in place. I take tablets before and after meals to avoid the gas. SOS tablets are at hand for when I have extreme pain. I eat every two hours, making sure that the stomach is never empty. Meals are not heavy or spicy. I do get it wrong sometimes but I’m slowly learning what triggers it (sometimes the pains come 2-3 days after the meal). I’m off alcohol for a while. I miss eating and drinking freely but the thought of the pain keeps me in check most often. 🙂

And the system seems to be working!

So, back to the topic – balance. This year is all about balancing a lot of things.

For those who have wondered where I’ve disappeared to in the last few months; now you know. 😀

Over the last year I’ve off and on seen friends participating is an AtoZ Challenge. I’ve wondered what it was all about, after all it looked interesting and fun. But somehow I’ve never got a grip of it. I don’t know whether it can be started at anytime, whether it’s done individually or as a group. I don’t know if I have to declare that I’m doing it anywhere. I don’t know…, so much 😀

All said, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while now. So, today being my birthday and the start of a new year, I figured it’s a good day to start my own AtoZ Challenge. (Growing up, Mom always said a good start on your birthday makes sure the rest of the year will go well. And today is the Tamil New Year too!)

So here’s my attempt at an A to Z Challenge. I’m hoping it’ll break my hiatus from my blog and force me to get back to blogging everyday. I’m planning to chose words from A to Z for my coming year, words that will push me to do more with my life and dreams. Ok, enough of all that and onto the words.

A is for Aspire

The dictionary describes the verb aspire as ‘to direct one’s hopes or ambitions towards achieving something’.
A late Middle English word, it originates from the French aspirer or Latin aspirare, where ad is ‘to’ and spirare ‘breathe’. It’s first known use was in the 14th century.

Some synonyms – aim, intend, plan, propose
Some antonyms – decline, descend, drop, plunge

This year I aim to get productive with my time. Pack in as much as I can do into my day. Push myself to realise my dreams that I’d shelved while I sorted house, dogs, work and life.

So I’m Aspiring, aspiring to breathe. To feel free. To feel the rush of self-fulfillment. To feel happy and satisfied.

14th of April in History

Today is my birthday but over the years aside for that I’ve found that so much has or happens on this day. Some good, some sad. I was born on a day that is significant enough to be deemed a holiday in a lot of places. 😀
Here’s some things that make the 14th of April significant, other than ofcourse the fact that I was born on this day. 😛 How many of these do you know?

• Black Day in South Korean – A day when single people get together and eat white noodles with black bean sauce to celebrate their singledom.
• Tamil New Year – Puthandu
• Malayali New Year – Vishu
• Oriya New Year – Maha Visuba Sankranthi
• Tuluva New Year – Bisu
• Punjabi New Year – Vaisakhi
• Assamese New Year – Rongali Bihu
• Bengali New Year – Pohela Boishakh
• Burmese New Year – Thingyan
• Nepali New Year – Bikram Samwat / Vaishak Ek
• Sinhalese New Year – Aluth Avurudhu
• Thai New Year – Songkran
• B. R. Ambedkar was born in 1891
• Trainspotting actor Robert Carlyle was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1961
• The Sikh Religion was formalised as the Khalsa – the brotherhood of Warrior-Saints – by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699
• Noah Webster copyrighted the first edition of his dictionary in 1828
• Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth in 1865
• The Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 23:40 in 1912
• The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck was first published in 1939
• The Human Genome Project was completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99% in 2003
• Nearly 2,700 were killed in a 6.9 magnitude earthquake in Yushu, Qinghai, China in 2010

I’ve just included the ones that are significant to me coz the actual list is oh, so long! And some of these even I didn’t know 😛

Special Thanks to Vidya Sury, for I saw the A to Z Challenge first on her blog 🙂