Trike a Thon

This friday was a special day for me. It was the first event I attended in school as a PARENT ! I have participated in numerous events in school as a student ... so this was kinda a special to me. There was a fund raising event called "Trike-A-Thon" at school. I vaguely remember something similar that I had participated when I was in 3rd or 4th grade as part of "Girl Guide".
A trike a thon is an event where in the kids are to tri-cycle or bi-cycle certain laps. This is a fund raising event and the kids are expected to collect the money. The amount thus collected is donated to a Cancer research center. I think its a noble idea to donate money to cancer research, but wonder how a 2 year old can raise money ???
Anyways, since I wanted my daughter to participate in the event, we donated some amount. The day before the event, we had to leave the tricycle at the school so that the teachers could decorate it. They also wanted to rehearse the event.
On the day of the event, after constant reminding from us my daughter was ready for the event. As we approached the school ground, to her surprise, instead of finding just her classmates, she found the entire school students peddling to glory. She was intimidated by the crowd to say the least. Her class teacher handed me her driver's license card (kinda cute, I thought), and I put on her helmet and encouraged her to peddle her tricycle. But all in vain ... she was not to move. She felt lost in the crowd. After a few minutes of looking around she started spotting her classmates at one corner of the playground. That put her to ease. I could see the sudden rise in her excitement and all she now wanted to do was peddle with her classmates. It was turn for her class to peddle around the ground and my little was all set by then. She looked adorable with the helmet and a little license hanging around her neck.
I tried to capture the event in all possible angles with my camera :) It was definitely lots of fun for me. Soon it was time to come back to classroom and all the little ones soon formed a train as per the class teacher's instruction. Soon, I waved bye to my little one and got back home.

Unrelated blabberings

• One of my good friends and collegemate moved to the bay area on a long term assignment. She visited us last weekend and I met her husband for the first time. We chatted for a while and recollected some our silly moments in the college. One thing we both haven't forgotten is our regularity in postponing the internals during Engineering days. There was perhaps not a single internal test which we didn't postpone .... still makes me wonder how we managed to achieve that feat !!!
• Daughter of another good friend of mine turned one over the weekend. I still remember the planning for her surprise baby shower we hosted last year ! Time sure flies so fast !
• We finally decided we needed to take a break from work (the last few months have been especially stressful for my husband). We have finally booked our vacation tickets in December ! I have something exciting to look forward to !
• Not making a habit to blog regularly makes to forget blogging altogether ! Hence decided to write ... even if it were unrelated events !

Dumb

I was expecting a call from my personal banker this morning. She had left a message for me that she would call me at a certain time today. So I knew, it was her when my phone rang. I thought she was quite punctual and admired her time keeping. I answered the phone with a low tone, saying "Hello"... she kept repeating "Hello, Hello..." and then hung on me after a few seconds. My low tone was so low, that she hadn't heard me .... I was dumb (pun intended). You see I have a sore throat so bad that I am hardly able to talk audibly. Its been so bad that I am using internal messaging to send across my comments / inputs for the office meetings that I am dialing into.
My daughter has learnt to reply back in the low tone (almost like whispering) as well. I don't want to think she is teasing me ... I will assume she is being patient with me. But I miss my voice when:

• I read Dora books to my daughter. This morning the first thing she wanted to do as soon as she woke up was watch Dora on TV. Since we would not oblige on that demand, she settled for reading. My husband was too sleepy to read a book and so I gave in to her request. I must admit, I almost fell asleep reading the book in the most inaudible voice.
• Attending office conferences
• Talking to my sister over the phone.
• Humming a few songs in my free time.
• Answering my daughter's never ending questions of curiosity.
• Discussing the day spent with my husband.
• etc etc

I have taken some medicine... but it hasn't proved too helpful. I miss my voice ... I hope I am able to talk / sing / chat / discuss / shout soon .....

Had a bad day .... what bad day ???

Kink Kink ..... The alarm rang at exactly 5:15am this morning. I promptly put it off to catch the last few minutes of sleep. (There is something satisfactory about getting the last minutes of sleep after the alarm has gone) I woke up at around 5:30am ... had double thoughts, if I had to work from home or drive to work. There is an important meeting to attend said one part of my mind followed by well, you can always call into the meeting remotely said the other part.... but you have already packed your lunch, laptop etc and are all set to go to office came another thought ... oh well, can always eat the same for lunch when working from home as well said the other.... all in all, I was too confused to decide eitherways ... the bed looked so comforting, yet I told myself, its friday and I could take a longer sleep tonight. So, half asleep I got out of bed and got ready to work by 6:15am. Prepared Dhokla for tea and breakfast (never compromise on food you see... especially when Dhokla is my daughter's favourite, I had to prepare it .... alas I could not see her enjoy her breakfast). Stepped out of house at 6:15am ... still wasn't sure I needed to drive to office.
It was still dark and I drove listening to the music on STAR 101.3 on FM radio. The song by Daniel Powter, "Had a bad day ,You’re taking one down You sing a sad song just to turn it around " seemed very situational. My day had just started, and you ask already had a bad day ? Oh well, I just felt bad for having missed on sleep ... I was not very sad or anything.
I was driving through the curves of the freeway. I had climbed up a hill and as the curve turned downhill, an orange landscape greeted me. The entire surrounding was covered by the tender rays of the rising sun an the whole place was just "ORANGE". It was an amazing experience ... I no longer felt sleepy, sad ... I was in the best of my spirits and I felt like singing "Ruk Jana Nahin... " The beautiful setting just made my day. Reached office at 7:30am and am all set to tackle the day.
Hopefully I will not be singing the Daniel Powter song when I drive back home :) Of well if I do, I will just remember the rising sun experience and my mood will brighten for sure.

Home improvement

Last weekend was 3 days long weekend on account of Labor day. We initially thought of driving to a resort less than 100miles away ... but lack of proper sleep and a hectic week before ensured we did not venture out. We decided to stay home and complete some of the pending home improvement tasks.
It all started with us buying a good bed frame for a guest bed and re-organising the furniture in the guest room. The entire exercise robbed us of our saturday day time. As we were sipping our evening tea, R my spouse suggested we plant some garden vegetables in our patio. I wasn't sure we could maintain the plants and was not very keen about it. But I saw the enthusiam in him and just wanted to support. We headed out to OSH. I was surprised to see the variety of plants available there. After some discussion, we decided to have one flowering bed, a tomato plant, and bought seeds for eggplant, beans, peas, bell pepper, cilantro and Dhil. That also required us to buy the same number of pots. What surprised me the most was the price of the soil .... its so expensive. Never did it once occur to me that we would be paying so much for a good quality soil. It took us a while to figure out the right soil. R could not wait to get started on the gardening project.
He put on his gardening gloves, cleaned the patio and mixed up the different soil we had bought and started his planting. He started with the flower beds. It was almost dinner time by then, so it was decided that the project would be continued the next day. The next day, sunday, saw us rising early from bed and even the morning tea was the last thing on our mind ... we headed straight to the patio. There were some more pots needed and realised that we were short of the soil as well. Also, we needed to buy a stand to place all the pots. We marched towards Home Depot and soon found all the items and the project continued. By around lunch time sunday, the gardening project was complete.
Our kitchen door looks straight into the patio. It feels so good to see the pots neatly arranged there. Everytime I look outside, it brightens my spirit... I never thought I would get attached to them so fast... but I have. I can't wait for the seeds to germinate and grow into lovely plants and fill our otherwise empty patio with fragrance of fresh flowers and a lovely view of garden vegetables.

Gowri- Ganesha habba

The Ganesha-Gowri habba at house was celebrated with much enthusiam and love this year. It was actually fun and it felt (after a long time) very close to the celebrations we had back home in India. I sure missed my parents and their way of celebrations, but sure, tried to make it as close to tradition and fun as possible.
The preparation for the festival ran almost week long. If I were to account for the planning part then it must have been 2 weeks prep work. it was decided that Gowri habba (festival) lunch would be at my place and the Ganesha habba lunch at my sisters'. But there was one hitch though, both of us were keen to have a Ganapathy mangalarathy (customary to invite friends in the evening and share prasad / gooddies) as is the tradition in Karnataka at our places. We both had separate set of invitees as well. So it was decided that after lunch at my sister's place we would rush back home and get ready for the evening gathering of friends and family.
Deciding on the food list for the mangalarathy and not trying to duplicate the items at both my sister's and my place was tasking and fun :) Finally it was decided that I'd make Mango rice, Mosaranna (curd rice / Bakala bhath), Usli (seasoned garbanzo beans), Benne bisuit(baked creamy cookie) and jelebi was to be bought from the stores.
I wanted to make this festival real special for my daughter as well, as she had shown real liking towards the traditional pooja. I wanted to take advantage of her keen interest and pass on some of the traditions my parents had passed on to me. We started the Gowri pooja at around 8:40am (our plan was to start at 8:00am but thanks to my sister, we got delayed). After the pooja, we had a delicious breakfast of Sorekayi Idli / Chutney. Then the men left for some last minute shopping for the next day after helping us with some lunch prep work. Cooking did not feel exhausting at all. (Perhaps because I was done with most of the veggie chopping and stuff the previous night). We had a scrumptious lunch and loads of fun discussing about our festival experiences back home.
The Ganesha pooja was a smooth sail as well. We performed the pooja on time and headed to my sister's place for lunch. The evening was fun with a lot of people visiting us. My daughter was more than excited to share her toys with her friends and play with them. It was amazing to see her come down the stairs every time one of her friends came by and lead them to her room upstairs. The only sad part was that I had prepared all the food items in excess. There was so much left at the end of the day.
All in all, it was an amazing experience and I thoroughly re-lived some of my moments in India.

ps: Its been a week since the festival and I have been lazy to blog these days ... but wanted to vent out all my excitement before it was gone :)