My Lady of the Lantern

~~TMI Ahead~~ (Sorry, can't manage to write anything unless body fluids are involved) So, Wow! I almost wrote a positive post yesterday because, I hadn't been spotting for the last two days. But guess what happened again today? What happened when I was in the middle of a workday and felt a gush? Hello, brown spotting ! Not that I had been missing it. It can shoo away already. I came back to my cabin after a loo trip to see if any clothes were damaged. It was just the undie. I swallowed a Tren.axa. I put a newspaper on my office chair because I did not want to ruin it. I went through my day just like that. I couldn't have been happier to have come back home. I washed my underwear. I have been washing my underwear separately very frequently this month because I keep on ruining it. I brought myself some medicine that I had barely stopped taking on Monday evening. I found a bottle that's still got a year to its expiry - a tonic that I took post-pregnancy for dysfun...

~~TMI Ahead~~ Last fortnight has been a flurry of activity. We had a belated birthday party for M turning 4 on Dec 1. At that point of time, we also had guests at home. The party went well. What happened next day was unexpected. I suddenly fell very, very ill. I had the chills, and fever. The blood test next day indicated I had severe UTI, even though I did not have any of the symptoms. My fever recurred every six hours. Once I woke up at night, it would take a couple of hours for me to feel comfortable again, and it was a full seven days before I broke the fever cycle. However, what complicated matters was that I began fresh periods on De.cember 7. They came in super early given the fact that I had finished my last periods on Nove.mber 23rd itself.  This time my periods have been heavy, and though I am on CD7 today, in the morning, it felt more like CD3 than CD7.  I still feel very tired, and both my knees are aching. I still don't feel very good. It is winte...

I would never just go away from here, without telling so. If I ever just stop writing again, I will come back to still write a goodbye.  Life has been a whirlwind grindstone. I headed our flagship student event that concluded on No.vember 2, 2018. I was out of town for a week after that.  The whole task of getting to that actual event was just a lot of slogging that took up most of my working time, and some of my holidays and weekends too.  Somewhere around that time, Figlia got very sick, and had to be hospitalized for about 4 days. She is fine now.  We hired a private tutor for M. He continues to lag in writing/identifying alphabets and numbers. He has improved with his tutor, but the progress appears to have slowed down now. I am not expecting him to be an ace quickly, but would have him evaluated in case this persists.  In our future plans, we will be shifting back to our hometown early next year. 

We did go eventually, and I have already re-joined work. I was thinking the other day that life would be simple if I just sat at home, and they sent my salary home every month. But nopes, that is not how life is, is it? I worked the premise that taking one child with us for the vacation, was better than managing two, and boy, I forgot that I was leaving the reasonable one behind. M had epic tantrums through our vacation, and he sustained that behaviour even in the tailing visit.  See, I look quite alright but inside I am pot of boiling and bubbling insecurity and frustration. Gee, I can even shout when I am squabbling with my Mister. I have gone from being happy go lucky teenager to a really wound up adult, pretty angry with everyone around me. And though, there are a few good days when I am good, I am not good most days.  But I did not freak out when I realized that Figlia had li.ce in her hair. Yep! Combing and medicated shampoo, here we come! I do look at my yo...

The May-end plan for an off did not pan out.  What actually panned out was a mini-vacay plus trip to the hometown in June first week.  DH would have returned a bit early, and I would have stayed on for a couple of days. And then, work happens! Deadlines, the screaming witches of professional life, and crucial visits, inspections, reports....everyone wants to be here at work mid-June. Guess whose vacation sits precariously on the flip switch? But here's the other thing that has happened. A thought that has been swimming lazily for a while has become more prominent now. I am planning to shift to my hometown with the kids, early next year. I intend to shift as soon as their school term ends here. There is a huge list of challenges that go with that decision, and I will take that up later.  It is now firmly established that DH's business is not picking up, and he is in a professional deadlock of the stone wall kind. Maybe another post on that later. His day ...

Figlia and MIL are going to our hometown on Sunday to attend a wedding in DH's extended family. And then Figlia will go stay with my mother for a few days. My parents have already signed her up for a few activities, so she is pretty set for a good summer vacation. Today morning, M did not cry before going to school/did not have a tantrum right before boarding the school bus/did not throw all limbs in air while being forcefully pushed into the bus. Such a pleasant thing it was. M creates his own ruckus. Couple of days back, Gracy came home with colour drained off her face. Except that when she entered the front door, she did not know if she needed to yell or laugh. She had taken M with her to the Daily Needs store in our neighbourhood, and did not realize when M left the shop. When M came home, and sat with me, I had no idea that he had come back home all alone. He picked up his lollipop, and came home.  Next month, it will be DH, M and I at home. DH's entire expect...

I have been busy. And did not feel like blogging till today, so I took a mini-break in between. So many things have happened, an eye infection and fever for M; new school sessions for both the kids, MIL's cataract operation of the second eye, Gracy's season of taking too many offs (and she is on an off today as well); tantruming kids! DH is not doing well business-wise, and it is taking a toll on a lot of things.  Figlia will be gone to my mom's house in May for her summer vacations, and she is excited.  M is doing very well in a lot of spheres at school but is still not picking up writing. He is not interested at all, and even when he does attempt, nothing shows rather than vague lines falling over each other on the page. 

Figlia, who among other things has no trouble walking from the living room to our bedroom in our non-big flat, or using the loo alone, has suddenly started acting jumpy, and scared. She needs to hear, or sense the presence of a living adult to do these kind of things.  When adults (MIL plus the Nanny plus the Cleaning Lady) talk all the highfalutin about "Sigh, the house is so empty, lonely, does not feel like a house anymore, and the spirit is always with us, the body is gone, and he is looking down upon us, and he is here but we cannot see him", and there is an impressionable six year old listening to the reel playing on loop, well... Now I am gently feeding to Figlia that spirit is not a ghost, and that FIL was benevolent to her in person, and will never be anything else as a soul. And that there are no ghosts in the house.

FIL died last Monday. Keeping his wishes in mind, he was not cre.mated. There was a rush of people and things in the week past, and tonight we leave for our hometown for a couple of days to complete a few rites. Figlia and M have exams next week. I have mixed feelings about him passing away. He was in vegetative state for last six months, and despite a lot of nursing care and timely feeds and whatnot, he lost a lot of weight, and muscle mass by the end. I did not have a very linear relationship with him, and my feelings on his passing away are all over the place. My MIL will continue to remain with us, from this point on, even though she may visit the hometown at times.  I met my PhD guide a few days back, and well, there are very few people who can hit me with a bat on my face (not literally, obviously) and I still value their take. He shook me up. He made me realize a point I had completely overseen in my overall perspective towards professional and personal relation...

Some moments require far more thoughtful responses than others. And one such moment presented itself recently.  Figlia has been all over the place recently. We found a clump of dark hair, about four inches long, that had been hastily pushed under a bed in her grandfather's room. She wouldn't own it, and then she admitted to chopping her hair. "But it's just a little bit". Unless that hair were found, there was no way that we would have realized what she did. She swore off it. She assured she would never do so ever again. Then, on Saturday morning, while I was getting ready, she told me about "a dirty thing that P (the neighbour's six year old daughter) makes her do". I think all my senses went racing at the same time. I sat down, and asked her. She was like : "You will scold me, I know you will". And I was like, "No, I won't". Ultimately, it turned out that P dances with Figlia, and two steps of that routine are d...

~~ TMI Ahead ~~ That infection that I had been having every cycle last year, has returned. I had an evil bout in December, and since then, I have been having a recurrence again.  Last year, I did have some investigations, and while a bacterial infection was identified, no other levels went wonky. I don't have thyroid issues, and my blood sugar levels are absolutely in range. I do not have hygiene issues either. Then why was the infection recurring? I had to take antibiotics in December. In January, I only used an ointment, and did not take antibiotics.   I now strongly suspect that wonky hormone levels during the cycle are somehow causing this? I think that the stressful episode from a couple of years ago, has somehow thrown my endocrine system off-balance because it is from that time of discovery that this whole every-cycle-joy started. That anxiety produced a lot of health issues in these two years, and I think this is just a lingerer I have? In...

Figlia has again picked up the topic of death and dying these last few days. Since my MIL keeps asking her to not ask about "such topics", she follows me and asks her questions in hushed voices. Asking he to not ask a question is actually not such a great idea at killing the topic. Answering her is. But death is not an easy topic to talk about. So there is a neat barrage of questions she has: Do I have to die? Why should I have to die? When will I die?  She has a theory that people live upto 100 years, and she keeps asking people their age lately, even the visitors to our house! Little do the people know that she is probably calculating how much time they have left.  Her questions on dying go a bit deeper. What happens to us after we die? She has discovered the concept of body and soul, and that the soul stays even if the body is gone. What will I become after I die? What will they do me after I die (that is, with the body)? She has been alternating b...

A couple of days before I was to depart, I had been considering taking a hotel accommodation (specifically for the day the conference ended because my train the next day was early morning). Since the venue was about an hour away from the train station, I thought I could max out my sleeping time, by shifting from the venue to a hotel within the city. My second issue was that organizers were giving shared accommodation, and I was not sure of who I would get saddled with (I have never shared accommodation with someone else in any of the conferences I have attended before), so I decided on a better idea.  In the three day conference, I shifted to a hotel, on day two, rather than the third day. It was too good of me to have followed my gut feeling. Accommodation at the venue was shizzed out, and staying at the hotel gave me the privacy, freedom and flexibility I needed, and a great bed, and a great view. I used up my first hotel night to go to this plush buffet that was highly reco...

I leave today afternoon to attend a conference outstation. And this trip was not planned. December end when I travelled to attend a conference, I had met someone who said she will send me details of a conference at her institution for February.  And she did send me the details, and here I am, going away for the weekend. Not shoddy at all. M had fever, these last couple of days. He has become extremely naughty.  Figlia, it turns out, would like a very very very slow start to her morning, but the world gets in her way. Every morning lately has been a struggle to get her ready for school. I really feel like a wound up doll, just operating as the functioning part of a well-oiled machine.

M was recently shifted to Figlia's school, and he is continuing his Nursery there. The plus side is that he now goes with Figlia in her bus, and is super chuffed about it. He is still adjusting to the new teacher, and friends here. The new set up is not as cozy as the last one was for him.  My parents were here and they leave tonight.  I attended a conference in December end, and a delegate invited me over to her institution in February. Today, I completed my registration to go to that conference. I feel great about this. I am getting more active in these pursuits and it make me feel good.  We had a small party on the last weekend celebrating Figlia's birthday. It went well, and it was the first kids-only party I hosted. 

It seems a tiny nugget of time has passed since I blogged last. It began with a lack of desire to actually write anything, and then a tiny whirlwind of activity which caught me recently. Lot of things to really update around here... My resistance did not work, and I did turn 4.0 in December. I spent it at a conference. That day, someone told me "live the life you have", and nothing could have been anymore appropriate that day, than those words, at that moment. No one there knew it was my birthday, and the messages I got was more calls/messages/social media kind. I did not want any effusive face to face wishes really. The December end trip went like a hoot. I loved the getaway, and did not want the vacay to end. I had a very pleasant experience watching and doing things on my own, and at my own pace.  I came back to a lot of things awaiting for me. I faced a panel interview for a promotion, which I got. Since the last 3-4 days, I have been quietly muttering Ass.oc...