Obsessivemom

11/01/201715/07/2023

Wet towels and crazy mornings #momdialogues

Cool Mom: Is leaving a wet towel on the bed reason enough to spoil everyone’s morning, and that includes yours more than anyone else’s?

Agitated Mom: It’s not just the towel and you know that. It’s ‘put away your plates after breakfast’, ‘put cream’, ‘pick up your jacket from the floor’, ‘take your tiffin’, ‘put in your bottles’ and on and on endlessly. To have to remind them every single day for every single task is just crazy. That towel was just the last straw. Besides, who does it if they don’t? I, right? That’s how I’ll be spending my entire day – cleaning up after them. What’s even more ironical I’ll also have people saying, ‘What do you do all day?’ The kids are grown up now.’ Hah! Grown up!!!

CM: Sigh! Such a long tirade! You could simply leave the towel on the bed.

AM: What?? Just leave it? So the bed and the towel become wet and stinky?

CM: Yeah well it’s the kids’ beds. They have to sleep in them. Let then sleep with the stink. That’ll remind them to put out the towels next time round.

AM: And what if they don’t? What if they don’t mind it at all? What if they get used to it? How hygienic is that? And what kind of a life-long habit am I helping them form?

CM: I’ll repeat – choose your battles. Choose your timing. The other option is of course to lose your patience, to give them an earful and then feel lousy all day long. As for life-long habits – they have time yet to pick them up. You want the kids to look back on their school days and remember only crazy mornings?

AM: No obviously not.

CM: The trouble is not with telling them to do stuff, the trouble is with you losing your cool when you do so. So how about playing some peaceful music, taking up your cup of tea and thinking happy thoughts – like the time N made you tea, remember? They do some good too. Oh and don’t forget to put yourself on repeat mode till they learn to finish their tasks, okay? It’s just one crazy hour, after all.

Picture Credit: Pixabay

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This isn’t the first time I have had multiple mums fighting it out in my head. You can read about other mommy wars here, here and here.

06/01/201715/04/2017

International Blog Delurking Week

Hiya people,

Today I’m not here to talk about myself. I do that all the time, don’t I? But today is different. Today is about YOU.

This is blog-delurking week. Is that a blank look on your face? Don’t know what I’m talking about? The thing is – the number of people who drop by here for a look is way larger than the number who leave a comment – just a minuscule percentage do that.

But I’d like to know ALL of you – specially you the silent ones. If you’re one of those quiet lurkers, now’s the time to show up and say a hello. I’d love to hear from you even it’s just this one day in the whole year.

So come now don’t be shy. A simple hello or a hi would be fine. Of course, if you’re in a garrulous mood you could tell me something more about yourself – your family, your profession, a favourite hobby, a film you watched recently. Or ask me something, anything.

Or you could simply tell me what makes you come here (that essentially means you have to say nice things about the blog).

PS: This invitation includes family members and close friends too. Reveal yourself guys. I know there are some among you who never admit you read me but the one time I blogged about something I didn’t want my parents to find out – a rather scary car accident a few years ago – news reached them faster than I hit publish. So come now, own up, show yourself.

That’s all from me for today. Go on say something.

05/01/201715/04/2017

How can I not be grateful? #gratitudecircle

When I sat down to write the last post of the year, which was supposed to be my gratitude post I drew a blank. Gratitude posts don’t come easily to me. However, later when I was posting the new year wish on my Facebook timeline I realised the one thing that had cheered me through the year had been my friends and family.

And there it was – that one single thing, which I mentioned ever so casually, was the biggest blessing anyone can ever want – the love of friends and family. And this year has been more bountiful than ever because I met up many friends, actually many many friends, some for the first time, in person, face to face.

In all of my ten years of blogging I hadn’t ever met any of my blogger friends, in part because I am in one rather isolated corner of the country and part due to my own rather unexplained reluctance to do so. It was momentous then, that I met Shilpa a dear BARmate right at the beginning of the year. And we chatted for hours like familiar friends, easy and comfortable.

That set the tone for the entire year.

A friend from my journalism days dropped by. Seriously, there really is no gossip as delicious as office gossip. I caught up with who-had-moved-where, who-got-the-pink-slip, who-moved-to-television and who-will-always-stick-to-print. I do miss all of that sometimes.

Then came another friend from my Mumbai days. She was my roomie in the working women’s hostel. She’s the one who would ‘save’ tea and breakfast for me while I slept in on Sunday mornings, the one with whom I trawled Churchgate pavements for books and Fashion Street for clothes. She’s the one who made hostel life bearable.

I travelled to Delhi during the summer and met up with a bunch of school friends. The years fell away as we chatted about dreaded teachers and well-loved school mates and made as much noise as we made during ‘tiffin-time’ at school.

I spent a few days with my first ever mommy friend. Our kids were almost the same age and we reminisced how we celebrated when they first went to play-school, how we’d felt at once bereft yet relieved when we had those two hours of me-time. It’s amazing how the toughest days make the best of friends.

Later in the year, I ventured to the Pune Lit Fest, meeting up another writer friend who was soon to launch a book. She’s the one who prodded me to write my first ever story for the Chicken Soup series. I wrapped up the year at her launch event feeling very proud and very happy for her because I know exactly how hard it is to write a book with two sons and a house to run.

But the most momentous occasion of all was meeting up with my cousins – the Super Six. We recreated a two-decade old childhood photograph and it was absolutely the best thing to have happened. I wrote about it here.

Lastly, most importantly, each time I have been happy or upset I have had all of you to unburden myself to. We haven’t met and we may never meet, yet how can I not be grateful for your presence?

I might not have broken any records, or won any lottery, but the year was crammed with scores of super-happy moments. How can I not be grateful?

Thank you 2016.

Linking up with Vidya’s Gratitude Circle Blog Hop

31/12/201615/04/2017

Raising a cheer to 2017

2016 seems to have slid by without leaving memories of anything exceptional. It was just so Meh! That said, I should perhaps be grateful and stop complaining because friends around me have struggled with illness and loss and much worse. All I had to deal with was a nagging not-so-happy feeling that left me listless, crabby and unwilling to do much, making it difficult to write or to concentrate on anything.

The feeling refused to leave despite trying pretty hard to get rid of it. Maybe I tried too hard and ended up strengthening it simply by thinking too much about it. That sounds crazy and over indulgent I know. I have no real reason to feel sad or sorry and yet I do.

The good news is that …

2017 is round the corner. There’s something about January the 1st, that fills me with optimism and enthusiasm. And maybe there is a purpose in 2016 being a duh! year. Maybe this year was meant to be a foundation for something better – so said my very wise sister. Maybe this was the push I needed to get out there and make something happen. And so my resolution for 2017 is to:

MAKE IT COUNT

That’s my resolution – to make my time and my life count

1. for people around me and

2. for me on a personal level too.

As I get caught up and sink overwhelmingly deeper and deeper in mundane everyday worries and chores the wish to pull myself out of it all seems to be getting stronger too. And that, I know, is a recipe for permanent dissatisfaction unless I do something about it. It might also have to do something with the birthday gone by recently, which has turned me a little philosophical. It has brought about a realisation that I won’t be around forever and that life is, or should be, much more than struggling with (and obsessing over) the kids’ studies, household chores and the freelance work that I am currently involved in.

I realise that it isn’t going to be easy to get myself out of all this. But I do have a plan of sorts and I intend to give it my best shot. I will talk about it here but not just yet lest these become another few of the hundred projects that have been planned but never took off.

I cannot afford to have another dud of a year. Here’s to a more happening, fulfilling 2017.

How has 2016 treated you? Do you have a plan for 2017? A time schedule for accomplishing your goals? Or do you intend to go with the flow? Either way – do be kind to yourself and make time to make yourself happy.

21/12/201621/10/2017

Enchanted!

If you have a child between the ages of 5 and 12 years you’re going to love this. I don’t do product reviews too often, this time, however, I am making an exception because I stumbled upon this absolutely fabulous subscription box for readers – Enchantico.

Have you heard of it?

I’m really really excited and I’ve been longing to share it here. I’ve often rued the fact that H and N are rather selective, reluctant readers. And yet I’ve refused to give up on them. Ever so slowly I see H getting hooked and N coming around too. They’ve stuck with Captain Underpants, Wimpy Kid and Dork Diaries but I’m not complaining — beggars-choosers and all of that.

Anyway so I picked up Enchantico because of the way it matched books and activities. It sounded just the perfect thing to entice them to widen their reading. Of course I wanted to blog about it the moment I saw it but I held on and went in for a three-month subscription before I spoke about it. Now at the end of three months I can recommend it with complete conviction.

A typical box contains:

– At least two books (sometimes three).
– An activity kit related to one of the books or to an upcoming festival.
– and the coolest collectibles.

My major reservation was:

‘What if we already have the book?’ To answer that – the books are picked from Indian as well as International publishers and are all new releases . And I can vouch for them – they are fantastic reads. I’ve been having immense fun reading them, even more than the kids, perhaps. I’ll be reviewing them here shortly.

Some specifics:
The boxes come in four age groups so that the activities and the books are age appropriate 5-6, 7-8, 9-10 and 11-12. I got my three month subscription at Rs 2999/-. There are other options for longer subscriptions too.

Here’s a peek into our latest box:

There are three books along with author cards. Oh I didn’t tell you about the author cards. Each book comes with a small card with bits of trivia – some serious some just fun – about the author.

The activity this week was making a Goody Box. So we got to put together a box as also paints, sponges and decorating material.

There was also this huge stocking with the suggestion that the children fill it up with goodies and gift it to someone.

And lastly there was a Santa pencil stand and a ‘Booked for Life’ badge.

What I love most…

… are the small touches like this card which we’ve put up on our soft board. Then there are the author cards as well as those badges.

The box seems to be put together by people who truly love books and reading. I am sold on it. The kids find enough reading material to last them through the month and I find my Book Club meetings becoming more colourful. Do hop across to enchantico.in and take a look.

Picture Credit: PIXABAY

Disclaimer: I’ve in no way been compensated for this review.