As the blogathon ends

I would like thank each one of you, who has been either reading my posts or writing the posts that I read.

As with every year, it has been a wonderful experience this year too. I got to know more about each wonderful person that I stared to follow virtually, experienced their warmth and love, got inspired by many people and enjoyed every post each one wrote. I loved receiving comments too, making me want to write more and more, to share my ups and downs, lows and highs, loves and hates.

I will truly miss all the fun I had this whole month. I will miss the feeling where I felt being a part of your lives and each of you is just around me. Thanks Ani for the initiative and I shall wait for the next season to experience and relive this joy !!!

Randomness at its best

All my college friends have been praising Downton Abbey series on Prime and are making me itch to watch it.

A friend passed on various forms of trying art and my hands have been itching to try them ever since then.

A is quite choosy about how each strand of her hair should be put at a designated place at a designated angle when I braid her hair, and I quite don’t like it.

As the Blogathon is going to come to an end, why am I in two minds, happy that I don’t have to feel the pressure of posting something before the clock strikes 12 and sad that I will not be able to read my favourite bloggers as frequently as now ?

A has started reading John Grisham for the first time today but hasn’t progressed much in the day, let’s see how it goes.

The book that am reading, “Forty rules of love”, is taking forever to move further. Wonder when will I be able to complete it ?

For all the coffee lovers out there, here’s a random drawing for you.

Happy weekend !!!!

Answers

So here are the answers to yesterday’s blog post :

1. Rock music

2. Broken drums, as you cannot beat it

3. It’s Christmas Eve

4. Santa Claws

No googling please

One of my friends asked these questions in our friends group. And here I repeat those “fun” puzzles for you.

1. What music does geologists like?

2. What is the best Christmas present in the world?

3. What did Adam say to his wife on the day before Christmas?

4. How do you know if Santa is really a werewolf?

With changing times

We too change.

There was a time when I dreaded making rotis or phulkas. I haven’t laid my hands on the dough or the rolling pin until I got married. I learnt the basics only after marriage, so that I could feed myself and my partner when we had to stay away from the family. I still remember those times, when we were in US, when I used to pick a magazine and place each rolled out roti between the pages of it, so that they wouldn’t stick to each other, before I placed them on the tawa. Over a period of time, I got comfortable with making the dough and the rotis. But phulkas were out of syllabus, until a point in time, when A started enjoying grandma-made phulkas. This new audience made me stretch my hands a little more and come out of that comfort zone to acquire that skill too.

Now, times have changed so much that I enjoy making rotis and phulkas and keep looking out for that opportunity. Every time, the phulka puffs up like a ball, my heart swells with pride and a smile adorns my face. So was this morning when I was making breakfast for A.

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As a kid, A was a hard core fan of Idli. She used to have Idlis at home, at restaurants. And it was her regular breakfast. We tried many times to get her like cheese so that she could have pizzas or burgers with us and we could have more options when we roamed around. But she wouldn’t give in and stick to her idli, Dosa and the likes.

Now, the moment she hears the word Idli, the words “Idli aa” come out of her mouth. You give her the choice between Idli and Mac and Cheese, she would pick the latter without blinking an eye. Ask her to pick between Dosas and Pizzas, she would have gone to pizza even before you have finished asking your question.

Changes are inevitable, we never know what’s going to change when !

Visha’s questionnaire

So here I take up Visha’s questionnaire and attempt to answer all the questions, simple and complicated.

1. What are the colours you like but the colours you wear?

I like green but I wear all colours. Just that I might be having more clothes in green colour 😀.

2. How many tabs is your phone browser having open right now?

Two. One related to A’s school mail and the other one related to my search for some art to try out. There was a time when I used to have so many tabs that it equalled the maximum allowed by a browser. V used to get irritated with seeing so many tabs on my phone and I being a good wife, changed it to a maximum of 2 at a time.

3. Biryani tastes better next day or third?

Who knows, we ensure to finish it on the same day.

4. What do you do with a gift that you don’t want or need but who gave is important to you?

I would give the gift to someone who might need it.

5. If you were a fruit what fruit would you be? And why?

I would be a banana, bright and soft.

6. How do you tell your neighbour to share what they are cooking because it’s so damn delicious but you scolded their child yesterday for breaking your window?

Both are mutually exclusive. So I can still go and ask for that dish.

7. If you had to live on a treehouse for two nights what all things will you carry? ( tech devices not allowed )

Loads of food and fiction books

8. Your hairdresser coloured your hair red instead of brown. What is your comeback when your family sees you.

They will have to live with it, like it or not !

9. Share one situation which made you laugh uncontrollably in recent memory.

I have short term memory loss when it comes to such things. Pass

Just Add Magic

Am not a person who has watched many web series.

Similarly A is not the one who has watched a lot of stuff on the Internet.

During the lockdown, A mentioned something about the series “Just Add Magic”. She heard about it from her friends and wanted to watch it and asked me if she could watch it. The name rang a bell and I referred my notes app on my phone. The app is a treasure for me, it holds all the information I would like to refer to , books to read, stuff to watch or cook or travel, things to do, professional and personal. Ok, coming back to the point of discussion, the app took me to an entry referring the said series.

We decided to watch it together and agreed upon one episode a day. Both of us liked it instantly and got hooked to it completely. The rules kept changing, one episode limit extended to multiple episodes limit. Only weekends transformed to include little of weekdays. We took breaks and completed home works and then rushed back to clear the next episodes. People around us found it funny that I was watching a kids series. But believe it or not, I enjoyed it totally, specially watching it with A. That way, we completed season after season.

I mentioned this in one of my friends group over a chat and couple of them gave this a try. While some didn’t watch it much, one friend got so hooked to it that she completed at a much faster pace than us. She even dreamt of them and couldn’t get over the characters for a long time later.

Now that so many days have passed since we watched it, we got over the stuff but during that short period where we watched it , we literally got transported to a different world and it was a damn magical world !!!

Let me see if something else is going to revive that kind of magic once again…

Memories from the past

Driving into the future …

Most photos aren’t mere photos, they have so many memories associated with them. Some photos bring us the memories of the times we spent with various people, while some remind us the things we enjoyed. They bring forth those long buried memories just as if they have been experienced a while ago. Some remind us of the planning that went into that travel, the hardships that we experienced, the highlights of the trip, the flop shows of it and the smiles and irks of it.

As much as the memories lay with in us, sometimes it feels good to give them a shape, onto a paper, to feel it by touch too.

It just feels like traveling back in time…

FIL wanted to get calendars printed with the photographs that he had captured over various trips in the recent years, and gift them to near and dear. SIL helped him in formatting them with size, colours and other options.

Finally he got them printed by Pongal and gifted as he wished to.

Here are the glimpses of end product :

May each of us build more and more wonderful memories to cherish in the coming times !!!

The war has just begun…

On one side, there’s one who has painstakingly, with so much love and effort, researched hard to find facts and myths, secured all that’s needed, put heart and soul into it, and has built a sweet home symbolising her love and kept nurturing day in and out, rejoicing in the growth of loved ones.

On the other side, there’s a horde of creatures, with no empathy and pity, fearless of anything, unconcerned about the emotions of the other one and waiting to grab all the fruits of hard work of the other one.

That’s how the war has started.

The war that started with no weapons in the beginning…

The war that started with no ideas…

The war that woke up the fighter residing deep within…

Culminated into this at the moment…

SIL is struggling hard to ward off the pigeons coming to eat all her plants, with CDs, kites, gift wrapping papers, kite flying thread and what not !!

Let’s see how the war is going to get transformed into in the coming days !!

Friday, a Birthday !!

Today is FIL’s birthday

Since we are a sweet bunch of people, we wanted to surprise him on his birthday by gifting something.

Since we are pretty lazy, we contemplated for a very long time about what to gift and procrastinated it beyond limit.

Since we don’t give up, we finally figured out something and placed an order day before yesterday.

Since we needed to be taught a lesson for delaying, the package didn’t arrive until this morning.

Since we are little naughty, A suggested we take a print out of the placed order and fold it and put our greetings on the paper and present it.

Since we are lucky, we got the package delivered by afternoon, just in time.

Personalised wallet that came in the package

Coconut jaggery laddoo by MIL !!