Weekly Plan

I made a time table for the week. If I have done it once, I have done it a hundred times. It never fails to fail. I am all gung-ho Sunday night, but come Monday morning, I don't want to get up from bed. And then I manage to drag myself out and go to work and then by afternoon, my energy level increases. By evening, I am raring to go. And this is for a typical day at work, not the super crazy ones.

Can you say I am a night person? All those late nights at college will have a long term effect on your system. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Yesterday I made yet another time table for the week. I also made a menu plan and (made darling hubby) cut the necessary veggies for the week. This morning the alarm rang, I didn't get up on time and failed the plan already. I got a little late, but I was determined to not let it deter me from the rest. By some miraculous feat, I left home when I was supposed to. And I am hopeful about the rest of the week.

Looks like I am also incorrigibly optimistic as well.

I am going to do what I have never done before here. Share my weekly plan and menu. In the hopes that it will encourage me to stay on course.

Menu for this week
Sunday: Moong dal, Spinach, Cabbage
Monday: Nan, Gobi Manchurian (It is a cauliflower dish)
Tuesday: Aviyal, Beans
Wednesday: Homemade veggie noodles
Thursday: Padavalnga, Paalak Dal, Carrot halwa (dessert)
Friday: Paalappam, Vegetable Stew

It is okay if you did not understand half of what the dishes in my menu are. All are vegetarian dishes. Husband is a vegetarian and I very rarely cook non-vegetarian.

And this is my weekly plan.

Weekdays (except Wednesdays)
7:45-7:50 Wake up, brush
7:50-8:00 Make Tea, Water Plants
8:00-8:15 Light stretching
8:15-8:30 Get ready
8:30 Leave for work

6:00-7:00 Workout
7:00-7:30 Cooking
7:30-8:00 Cleaning, bath
8:00 Dinner
8:00-11:00 Reading, free time, whatever

Easter Picture

Here is an Easter picture of our family outside our chapel. Doesn't our son look the spitting image of his mama? The blonde hair, the blue eyes?




All right, so he is my friend's son. But I love him like my own. Although I have been known to bite him. Ssh, don't tell his mama.

What would you have said?

I am getting into bed ready to sleep after my half hour reading time. Hubs was already asleep. Feeling some movement next to him, he announces: "I don't have a tail." I wish I had replied "I am real glad honey, cos you know it would be really weird otherwise. Now go back to sleep." but I could not stop laughing soon enough to say that.

PS: True story.

PPS: Hubby dear gave me permission to publish this.

Hanging worn clothes

I keep all our socks in a plastic bin on top of a rack in the shoe closet. When I had this brilliant idea three months before, I never thought of sharing it with bloggityville. And today I saw that Shannon has posted the same thing as her WFMW tip.

The other dayI discovered a practice of cloth hanging which really helps me, but I thought it was too silly to be posted. But I am going to do it today anyway. This applies to you only if you wear you shirts/tops more than once before washing.

When I get home from work, I change into my house clothes and hang up the outside clothes. Then I wear them some other time when I run out for a small errand if it is in good shape. And it usually is. Air conditioned room, in front of a computer all day, how bad can it be?

I used to hang up the clothes and then later I have no idea if it is worn or not without aid of my olfactory senses. So now what I do is hang the worn clothes inside out. It works for me.

For more tips, visit Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer.

A SAHD commentary and thoughts on grace

This post has been brewing in the back of my mid ever since I first heard the podcast of Kevin Swanson about stay-at-home daughters. I think he calls himself a pastor and he is the most graceless and arrogant man in cloth I have listened to. I don’t remember the entire message, but a few minutes of that was enough to make me irritated.

Truth be told, I have never heard that idea before of stay-at-home daughters before entering blog land. When I heard it first, I thought it was pretty weird, and 8 months later, after hearing both sides of the issue, I still do, although I kind of understand where they come from. I am not even going into detail on how people make it into a Biblical/sin issue. Maybe it is my background, but the very fact that some parents are denying their daughters college education raised a lot of red flags for me.

Kevin Swanson went into great detail trying to defend his claim for SAHD by name calling and all kinds of accusations. Some of his accusations were that women who go to college have 3 abortions; women who work outside their homes sell their flesh cheaply on a one night stand etc. Listening to him, I was trying to see how this whole SAHD movement started.

Feminism did not achieve what it started out to do. Instead of freeing women, the third wave feminism put a lot of pressure on them, and their stance on abortion is something I can never reconcile with. They started out well with the suffrage movement, but on the way, they went horribly wrong.

In my opinion from the single idea below, this is where it went.

1) Feminism caused a lot of problems in the society
2) The independent spirit is created in woman by being in the workforce, so let us take them out of there
3) They are home now, and children are a blessing from the Lord, so let us have as many as we possibly can.
4) Well, if we have all this education and it is only useful in staying home and looking after children, why bother going to college?
5) Oh, these many children are difficult to handle, and my daughters can stay home and take care of the other kids. Anyway she is going to be doing the same thing 5 years from now.
6) Enter Stay at home daughterhood

And then there is the other flow.

1) It is wise for a mother to stay home with the kids especially during their formative years. By the time the kids grow up, the mother cannot go back into the work force; she has been out of it so long. The mother feels her college education is a waste.
2) Well, if I am going to be a SAHM, might as well be a SAHW
3) If I am going to be a SAHW, might as well be a SAHD. Best not to be tempted by what the world has to offer.
4) Enter Stay at home daughterhood

I agree with the first point in both flows. And then it goes south.

There are wise decisions, and then there are scriptural decisions. For a mom to stay at home with her children might be a wise decision, that a family can make, but it does not make it a Biblical one. If it were a biblical one, it should be applicable all over the world. I know most of my readers are American, and you probably have no idea what life is like in a Third World Country. There is poop out on the streets, (not where I lived, thank the Lord!), no water from the taps. Kids are cloth diapered not because it is a fad or environmentally friendly, but people cannot afford it plain and simple.

The purpose of this post is not to make anyone feel bad. After all, people I look up to, love and admire are SAHW/SAHM. Feel free to comment for or against the post. I should also make it clear that I DO NOT judge individual choices. If you have been reading my blog any amount of time or have corresponded with me by email, you would know that. We all travel different paths. The Lord has all called us to different things. In the end, if it all glorifies Yahweh, rest assured we are on the right path.

I am proud of my biblical choice at this stage of my life to work outside the house and be a blessing to the household. And I have a large household. It includes my husband, our parents, mine and his extended family, church family, friends, starving kids in Africa, and poor families in India.

Let us all dear friends, extend grace to one another. To the mom of two whose kids are sick and who is working long hours, to the stay at home mom of a large brood whose finances are tight, to the single woman who is living alone, to the childless couple who is doing a lot of traveling, to the stay at home wife. I gave these examples as these are areas where we jump into conclusions and judge them for their choices. Most of the time, we do not even know half the story. Let us encourage and uplift.

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs Eph: 4:29

Golden Week

The thing about both of us working is that there are some weeks where both of us are super busy and I am incapable of doing anything more than coming home and doing the bare minimum before plopping down on the sofa. Those days are rare though. I make it a point never to bring work home. I might stay late to make sure that my work gets done, but I won't come home and continue working. I might sit in front of the TV though, but I kind of like the idea of a clear distinction between work and home. Which is why I could never work from home. But I digress.

Most times R is way more busy than I am. He manages a team and rarely has relaxing days. But last week was different. I was swamped with work while his client took a week break making it almost a holiday week for him. Every day we went to work together. He dropped me off at work and then went to the Starbucks to work on other stuff. He would pick me up at lunch time and we would got to the park and have home-packed lunch together. And then we would drive back home late in the evening together.

I had a stressful work week. I was working on a brand new project. I was going where no man or woman in our company had gone before. In an area where I had no experience at all. My panic level was at an all time high. R is my biggest de-stresser. He gets these panic calls and he talks me through it and calms me down. So it was an incredible blessing to have him free when I needed him the most. One evening we walked around in the mall, bought Godiva chocolates (heavenly, even for a non-chocolate lover like me) and watched a movie. We ate out every evening for the 5 days. We did not eat anywhere fancy just shared one Chipotle bol. We went to Borders and pored over books on Europe travel which we are hoping to do this summer. And later into the evening we walked hand in hand on the floating bridge in the park. We talked about our plans and dreams for the future. We sat on the bench, watched the birds on the water and had beautiful silences together. As Anne says in one of the Green Gables series, I cannot improve it with imagination even.

Taking the tummy to task

It finally happened. For the first time in my life, I saw a three digit number in the weighing scale. I am officially 100 pounds now. I blame my parents and my in-laws. My in-laws were here for 3 weeks and I started eating 3 meals a day. I guess I put on 2 pounds or so. But at least I was working and doing things around the house. So there was some balance.

And then I went home.

There I ate 3 full meals a day. Then I ate sweets after every meal. And snacks like 5 times in between. And between all the eating I read books and slept or talked non-stop. The most strenuous thing I did was to go shopping. Well, thanks to all that when I came back I was 96. And boy, it didn't take that long to add 4 more pounds. All I know is that at the beginning of December I was 87. In two months I gained 13 pounds and I am not with child.

And apparently not with any sense or self control either.

Now I am not obsessing about a Hollywood figure and I know lot of people who would LOVE to be 100 pounds. But my problem is that out of the 100 lbs, 90 seems to be in the stomach. It is seriously big. I am doing around 100 stomach exercise every day.

Out of my own volition.

It is that bad. What is even worse is that I am tiny everywhere else. So just use your imagination. I wish I was pregnant for more than one reason. Then I could use that as an excuse for the hideousness that is my stomach.