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A DIY perfect day

If you were given the choice to put together a perfect day for yourself what would the ingredients be? 
I’m not talking about special days – weekends, holidays, birthdays, celebrations – not those. I’m talking about that regular, routine day. What would go into making it perfect? 

What are the things that make you happy everyday?

When I was working I used to buy one single rose for my hostel room everyday on my way back home and that was the perfect ending to my day. It could be something like that. It could be meeting your daily deadline at work. If work’s not really happening maybe it’s the daily lunch with office pals you look forward to. Or maybe a glimpse of your office crush :-).
Or it could be turning in a decent piece of writing, publishing a blog post, reading hundred pages of a book or watching your favourite soap at the end of the day. It could be anything that’s part of your routine and that makes you feel really happy and/or accomplished.

Of course you have to cross out things you cannot control

For instance you cannot say, ‘Not seeing that colleague I detest’ but you can include, ‘Not getting into an argument with that colleague I abhor’. Just like I cannot include ‘The kids  going off to school without an argument’. However, I can include ‘Not yelling at the kids in the morning’.
Are you getting the idea?
For me the very basic ingredients of a perfect day would be:
1. A good night’s sleep. 
Like I’ve said before this plays a huge role in beginning my day well.
2. An hour of exercise in the morning and another 15-30 minutes in the evening. 
The morning exercise gets me my endorphins for the day and those 15 – 30 minutes in the evening get me a good night’s sleep and also serve as a reminder of my continued pledge towards good health.
3. A half-hour decluttering.
I’m not obsessive about cleaning but I’m not fond of clutter either. So a half-hour clearing up makes me work better and feel happier.
4. One complete piece of writing.
..in addition to whatever assignments I have for the day. This one’s important. It adds meaning to my day.
5. Healthy eating through the day.
Well, obviously. Healthy meals are a definite check for me. For someone else it might be that single sinful chocochip cookie, and that’s fine too.
6. At least half an hour of leisure time with the children. 
This does not include the morning hours or study time or the time I spend sorting disagreements. This is the time we spend talking or reading or making something together.
So there: those are the essentials that make me feel accomplished and happy at the end of a day. If I manage to tick them all off – well then, I have my perfect day. 
That list keeps me focussed. Of course there are days I cannot get it all done – when assignments spill over or the maid decides to stay home. But even if I manage most of them most days it isn’t too bad.
It’s worth a shot to try to make each day perfect rather than living for weekends. Or hanging about, waiting for a holiday to come by. After all it is these mundane-everydays that make up most of our lives. Makes sense, then to try to make ‘everyday’ perfect, isn’t it?

What do you think? What would your perfect-everyday list look like?
Picture Credit: Pixabay.
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The best sound in the world

You know what’s the best sound in the world? The sound of laughter. And if it is that of a loved one it is even more precious.
As I sat in my room working at my laptop the other day, I heard my parents laugh out loud at something they were watching on the television in the other room. It brought an unwitting smile to my face, just like the sound of H and N’s laughter does, although in the second case there is also a degree of relief :-).
I love the sound of my parents’ laughter because it transports me to my childhood, to days of endless giggles and noisy arguments. My father would complain sometimes – ‘You make enough noise for ten people’, he would tell us. ‘We’re alive, that’s why’, my mom would retort. Over the years he pretty much got used to it and came to put up with our racket cheerfully.
I love to hear them laugh because it reminds me what a boisterous family we are and that perhaps that’s where H and N get their noisiness from. It’s definitely not from the Husband’s side! It reminds me then, that I really have no business to complain, that I should be more patient with them.
My parents’ laughter speaks of the wonderful camaraderie they share despite being complete opposites. I listen to them quibbling and then settling down with their books. I hear them discussing Rekha’s biography which mum is reading. Then as the news comes on their conversation becomes even more animated and veers to Akhilesh and Mulayam Singh Yadav. They’ve come a long way since when they first met in German class. I love how their interests have merged over the years, though my mum still draws the line at cricket.
I love their laugh because it reassures me that they are happy and healthy. It speaks of their spirit that the aches and pains of age have failed to dampen. I can already see my mum raising her eyebrows at the word ‘age’ as she asks, ‘Who’s old here?’.

They left last week but I still hear their laughter ringing in my ears  and I am grateful.
Picture credit : Pixabay
Linking up with Vidya’s Gratitude Circle Blog Hop
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The special thing about shelled peanuts

So the husband came home with a bag of these.

N looked at it curiously. ‘What is this’, she asked?

‘Mungphali’ (peanuts), said I.

It rang no bell for her.

‘So how do you eat these?’ she asked giving the shell a lick and finding no flavour at all.

‘That’s the shell, silly,’ said I, ‘you’re supposed to crack it open, like this, I demonstrated.

Tentatively, she followed and then jumped with excitement .. Ooh this has peanuts inside it, she said, like she’d met an age-old friend. She does love peanuts.

That made me laugh.

And yet it made me wonder at how unaware H and N were about simple things like unshelled peanuts. You know what’s even more interesting? They’ve seen pictures in their science books but cannot connect it with the real thing even when they see it. How strange is that!

When we were young it was ‘normal’ to have to shell peanuts. In fact during the winters it was quite a tradition. We’d sit in a circle bundled up against the cold, monkey caps or shawls pulled up over our heads, with a big tray of peanuts in the middle. We’d shell and eat them with coarsely ground garlic-chili-coriander chutney. And it was the the most delicious thing on earth. Over anecdotes and stories and age-old family jokes time would simply fly.

If we happened to be sitting around a fire we’d occasionally throw the shells into it and watch as they flared up and burned out in an instance. Such a thrill that was!

Sometimes my grandmother would shell some peanuts and fold my fist quietly over them. That tiny fistful of shelled peanuts made me feel the most special person on earth.

Now my kids take it all for granted. They might be getting their peanuts shelled, salted and ready to eat but there’s nothing special about them anymore.

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Another Monday morning

As the alarm rang today morning I got out of bed without hitting the snooze button even once. Some feat, that! For a change I was ready to meet the new week, on this rather warm Monday morning, with a smile on my face. I felt well-rested and happy.

Forty-five minutes later the tiffins were done – snack and lunch, bottles filled with fresh water, milk glasses at the table and eggs beaten and ready to go on the pan.
Then I went to wake the children.
As usual they were reluctant to get out of bed, snuggling in deeper, begging for the last five minutes. I gave them ten. Finally they got up complaining of aches and pains like a bunch of old fuddy duddies —
‘My stomach hurts,’ said N.
 ‘Go sit in the loo and you can skip the milk today,’ I told her.
‘I sprained my foot yesterday,’ complained H as he made his way to the washroom with an exaggerated limp. ‘And I couldn’t sleep all night because I was coughing.’
‘Can you please write a note for my teacher?’
‘To excuse you from football?’ I asked, a trifle surprised since that’s his favourite sport.
‘No, of course not,’ said he, ‘I can manage football. Ask her to let me put my head down and sleep during social studies if I feel tired.’
No, I didn’t ask how he could play football with a sprained ankle. I refused to write the note, though because I figured if he could play football with a ‘sprained’ ankle he might as well sit through social studies too.
Instead, I sprayed pain reliever and wrapped up his foot in crepe bandage, smiling when he said he felt ‘better already’. I gave him his inhaler since the cough and wheeze were genuine. Meanwhile N’s stomach ache had subsided magically at the suggestion of the milk-holiday.
Finally after all the pains, real and imagined, had been taken care of, I could wave the kids off to school.
All it takes, to make a happy beginning, is a good night’s sleep.
How has your week started?

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Why I sweat the small stuff

Dear H and N,

You know as well as I do that mornings aren’t the best time of the day for us. The stepping out of that warm quilt, the quick shower, the scramble for the id-card, the rush to the bus-stop – not quite your favourite things. I know.
A lot of these things aren’t really mandatory at school – like the bath or the ID card. And yet I insist. No you cannot stay up late on a school night, you cannot stay home just because you are feeling lazy today, you cannot go without a bath and you have to put your towel out to dry, yes you have to wear your ID card every day and yes you have to make two ponytails.
“But my teacher doesn’t mind,” you had whined today. You have a point, of course. So why should we struggle and worry and pick an argument every morning?
No I’m not crazy, though you may not quite believe it yet.
Let me begin at the beginning.
I was brought up in a disciplined household where we were taught to respect rules, at home and in school. Like you, I didn’t always agree with my parents. Many days I scrambled for the bus. I trimmed my nails on the way to school, I cut up my ribbon to make the mandatory two ponytails when I forgot. And when I couldn’t ‘manage the situation’ I was prepared for the punishment aware that I was at fault. Not that I had a choice.
It’s tough, isn’t it? Doing it the ‘proper’ way all the time?
As I grew I learnt that it was okay to stretch the deadline, be a little late, bend the rules and then further I learnt it was okay sometimes to not be completely honest. Yes I learnt all of that and I did it too.
So, I hear you ask, when we have to grow up to live in an imperfect world why not begin to learn its ways right now? Why struggle to learn things we will need to unlearn later? It’s the easier way, the more comfortable one, after all.
Here’s why..
Imagine my mum had told me it was okay to lie occasionally, that rules didn’t much matter and punctuality was useless. Would I, then, have even tried to do any of those things? How would I have even known right from wrong?
There lies the difference.
Each time I took the easy alternative I knew it wasn’t quite right. And I did try ever so hard to stick to the rules before I took up the other way. Even while I’m aware that I live in an imperfect world, I continue to appreciate and value a good habit, a disciplined lifestyle, an attempt at doing the right thing. The awareness of good and bad is the first step to striving for the good and it is my job to pass on this awareness to you, dear children, in as undiluted a form as I possibly can.
For now you will simply have to believe that the rules are there for a reason. In another few years you’ll be gone, studying and living on your own. I know then you will dump many of them. Do that, by all means, enjoy the freedom, stay up late, skip the bath, miss the bus. I did it too. What you do later in life, how you use your childhood lessons, whether you use them at all, will depend entirely on you.
I am hoping, however, that when you’ve had your fill of freedom, reason will return, like it did to me. I am hoping, as you grow you will see the wisdom of these age old values. Not all will stand the test of time and that is fine. You will question them and change them and make some of your own.
But when it comes to the really big things, I am hoping, you will know right from wrong and that you will find the courage to do the right thing.
I am counting on it.
That’s why I sweat the small stuff now – because often it is the small stuff that makes a big difference.

 

Love and hugs

MaPic: PIXABAY

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