Hostess with the leastest (c'est moi)

Today I invited some dear friends over for a snack but nearly ended in tragedy when I almost killed their little boy for whom I would give my life. We recently bought a house and thought we could fish for compliments. Also, hubby finally managed to put together a bookcase and I got rid off all the cardboard boxes which were part of our house décor until about 3 pm today. So what better way to show off our superior engineering and housekeeping skills than to call dear friends (under pretext of providing snacks of course) and have them ooh and aah over the whole thing? It was all a brilliant set up, I’m telling you.

I invited them all proper like and mentioned the time and RSVP and all that, but forgot to tell them our address or phone number. Because you know we are REALLY FAMOUS people and I mean really, it is not my fault that they couldn’t find it. I did tell one of them 3 weeks before that we live near a lake and we all know there is only one lake in Florida. But finally they did come thanks to a phone call I made at the last minute.

So they all came and said it was a nice house and everything. Grandma B (my friend’s mom) said that I was a super woman (I love you!) when I know that when guests come over, I stash everything inside the closet and lock it with a padlock. Haha it’s easy to fool everyone. Okay, I am getting long-winded here and let me get to the main part. There is this dish today that I served (cutlets), which most people love. Last time I made it for church dinner; one person said that it is so good he would pay for it. I have been fluffed up ever since. But alas, as the Good Book says, pride comes before a fall. When I made it today, it was a bit too spicy. Well, they ate it and suffice to say, cleared their sinuses. The worst part was when the small kid ate it when no one was watching him- No words describe it-You had to be there. Hubby summed it up well. How the mighty have fallen!!!

And then as if what I did was not enough, I woke up a sleeping baby and made work for the already overworked mama. (Sorry H!) So with all these bloggity awards going on, if there is one for worst hostess of the year, please don’t forget to nominate me.

Thanks for all the love.

ME

Trip Down Memory Lane

Ten years is a rather long time in a 15 year old’s perspective. I could not at that time imagine myself being 25. I thought 25 was a grand old age where you are responsible and married and you know all responsible. Life at that time was still full of possibilities and the sky was the limit. The autograph books were full of poetry and lines of meeting later down in life. It has been 10 years since we graduated. Up until I went to college and met this wonderful group of friends, I was like Kipling’s cat- walking my wild lonesome way. But, in college six of us got together and formed a “group.” They are a wonderful set of friends, with whom I would have liked to keep in touch with every single day. But life happens, and now we are a long way away from sweet sixteen. The college we went to was a pre-university one (like last two years of high school here) and after that we all chose different paths. We all scattered to different parts of India and later on to different parts of the world and I think I can safely say none of us are in a career relevant to our undergrad degrees.

The memories of those two years resurfaced today after a long time starting with an email from one of the girls. Some of us had maintained contact with one or the other sporadically and I was especially lucky to have been able to attend the engagement of another friend while I was on vacation in India. Our lives today are probably different than what we envisioned it would be. I know mine is. None of us can plan for what happens to us. Life sometimes throws a curve ball and then all you can do is ride the tide.

We are at different stages in life. The last one of us is getting married. One is already a mother. Two more are on the way to sweet motherhood. When I write this, I think of the years that flew by, one picture that comes to my mind for some reason is sweet bright eyed J (you know who you are!) in a black top and black and blue jumper posing for a picture on a rock in the middle of the lake. I look at her picture today. She is still beautiful and bright eyed, and there lurks a hint of something naughty in her face reminiscent of MIC days. But there is something else too- something that cannot be put into words- in her face. Maybe it is because of the tiny human sitting on her lap which added the strength and character to her face which was not there at giggly sixteen. The choices we made, the experiences we had, the people we met, the places we were all made us what we are today.

Here is to us, dear friends… I wish us all a life filled with miracles. Let the fire never be out at our hearths and love always fill our hearts. As time flies past, may we experience joys and wonders anew. May the happiness make us grateful, the trials make us sweeter and the sorrows mature us.

I love you all and miss you!

Can I please live?

If you have read my blog before, this is not my usual everyday rant on a lighter vein. Today I am going to blog about something I feel very deeply about. I try to stay away from hot button topics in my blog, but something I heard today morning compel me to write about it.

I have heard somewhere that the measure of a society is judged by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members. My husband told me today morning that the girlfriend of an acquaintance of his was getting an abortion. Now this topic has been debated among pro-life and and not so pro-life people that there really is not much for me to say that has not been said already. This is more of a catharsis for me than anything else. This 27 year old lady doctor was getting a "surgery" done to get rid of a life so that she could "get on" with hers just as we were speaking. I was midway eating something and it stuck in my throat. I do not even know this lady, and I cried for the precious life she chose to end.

The whole day I was thinking about the issue and I remembered a movie I had watched a couple of months ago called March of the Penguins. If you have not watched it, it's worth watching. It shows the hardships the parent penguins endure to bring a baby into the world and how they take care of it when it is at it's weakest. It was a very moving documentary. We superior and intelligent humans have something to learn from these dumb creatures.

In this day and age of instant gratification, (Right Here Right Now, Just do it) we talk about precautions and birth control and all those wonderful measures to do what we want to do. We fail to see that the issue here is not the lack of birth control, but SELF control. These measures and controls do not always work as is evident from the above case. Will you get in the car with me if I tell you that there is only 80% chance that we will make it to our destination alive? There is no clouding the matter there.

Researching, I found that 48.6 million babies have been aborted just in America since 1973. By the time I finish writing and posting this entry (say half an hour) , 81 babies would have died. That is one scary statistic.

The Bible says it so wonderfully.

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!

Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed.

I thank you Lord, I am so fearfully and wonderfully made...

Just because

I hate shopping for clothes. There I said it. In grave danger of being branded as an iconoclast, I dislike window shopping even more. Now, I am your mediocre person-I have a job, I got married at the “right” age, have a mortgage, might be a reluctant owner of a dog in the not so distant future-nothing very radical about me. Oh, but by everything I hold sacred and true, shopping leaves me with a bad taste in the mouth.

I get these flyers in the mail, like everyone else in America. I saw these beautiful models in these beautiful summer dresses with their oh-so beautiful smiles and I was beautifully taken in. Thinking I could look like that if I had just that dress. Yesterday I was getting ready to go to office and hubby goes “Hey, isn’t this the top you were wearing when we went to Maumee Bay? How old is this? It looks like something cut from the fashion when you were 12 years old!” I know it is time to get myself some new clothes when hubby becomes the fashion police. Along with the fact that I haven’t bought any new clothes in the past 7 months, I set about to a clothing store in hopes of finding something suitable.

Now I am what most people would consider tiny. I am 25+, but I still comfortably fit into clothes I had when I was 12. Maybe not comfortably, but I will still fit. My size is not because of lack of eating. This is how the good Lord made me, and I am not complaining. But rarely, very rarely do I find adult clothing that fit me. So shopping is a challenge for me and not something I look forward to. As for window shopping, I plain don’t get it. Why would I in my right mind want to look at expensive things I have absolutely no intention of buying?

I walked from one end of the store to the other, trying on cute polka dresses that fit at the waist and did not fit a little higher up. Yes, I am putting on inches on my tummy like nobody’s business, though the rest of me is not keeping up. And then I tried on these cute shoes. They were so stylish. Looks out of place on me. Sigh. Would have been great with the polka dress though had it fit. Also the heels on them were long and thin and pointed enough to: 1. Kill or do serious damage 2. Give you a backache 3. Sprain your ankle 4. All of the above. I will go with all of the above. I did not buy it. And then after 45 minutes of wasting time shopping, I got out of the store empty handed.

Oh and by the time I got out, the traffic was so bad, I knew I was going to be taking a while getting home. In an effort to be smart, I took a lane less traveled and ended up taking a forced left. Did nothing to improve my angelic mood. I am sure the people in the other lanes were smirking or was it my imagination? Finally made it to home sweet home half an hour later than usual, tired out, disgruntled, grumpy, and grouchy. So, I won’t be going shopping again for clothes -until the next flyer. Unless it is the juniors department in Target.