My Lady of the Lantern

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...