Ever After

Heyyy, we should renew our vows.
Arre, no need. We haven't had time to stop meaning them yet.

Even cuter considering the first line came from A and the second from me. We're definitely going to miss being just us two.

Random

Do people still call on your birthdays? I mean those relatives who used to call at 5am, or from different countries, so they could catch you before they left for work. A Facebook greeting from them isn't quite the same level of enthu.

**

Someone's wedding photos are the highlights on my news feed... not complaining, I love weddings... but this one's interesting, because it's a second wedding. I find it just a bit eerie that the poses & the comments from family members so closely resemble the ones from a few years ago. People don't change? Not the best take-away for a new marriage.

And still, I think this one could work, simply because I always want everything to.

**

We went from DINK to SINK to NINK. And it's exciting! I'm hoping to see a bit more urgency from both of us now that we've officially been cut off from all salaries. But first, we vacation.

Moving

Sales roles tend to make me really nervey in the long run, but in short bursts, I am Rocket Singh.

I love the adrenaline rush of bargaining over a price and closing a deal in a single meeting... or two, if I absolutely must.

My writing's going slo-o-o-wly, but in the meanwhile, at least I seem to have written some best sellers on Kijiji. Anticipating watching our furniture fly out the door.

Home?

I'm slowly starting to freak out about how many things are more expensive in India than in Toronto.

A is trying to convince me that I can't actually buy photo frames/flip-flops/lip gloss for the rest of our lives in one shot.

... Less than two months before we leave.

Baggage

This year, we've gone on more trips with other couples than usual. It's always fun to add more people and watch the dynamic change. It also brought home the fact that A & I are so used to travelling together that either of us can plan the entire thing, and the other will be just as happy as if they'd planned it themselves (happier, really, because we're both lazy like that).

We're off to New York today, mostly because I'd a bunch of freebies to use up before they expired. Last night, A was a bit busy, so I offered to pack his luggage for him. I was a bit nervous, even as I offered, because he always wants things done just so. You should hear his treatise on opening chips packets. 

Anyway, he agreed, and reminded me about three times not to club our stuff in one suitcase. Ehm. I packed one bag for 2 months' travel; so obviously packing a full, albeit smaller, bag, each, for 4 days, is sub-optimal. 

And yet, as I packed his stuff up today, I realized travelling with separate bags is probably one of the biggest contributing factors to our comfort when we go to places together. 

... I was just interrupted by his walking in and inspecting his suitcase. No comment, which I consider high praise. Ah, persnickety perfectionists. So funny. 

Us

After a week of Jillian Michaels, it hurts to even sit. I try to focus on all the carbs coming my way soon, and grunt through the pain. This, incidentally, is also what I do when I start thinking about how much I'll miss the husband.

It's been interesting telling people that I plan to travel on my own. Part of it is typical Indian double standards, because I don't remember anyone fumbling for a response when the husband went on his African vacay last year. Some of it is just universal though. I've had an equal number of firangs and Indians say, "I just can't imagine vacationing without my partner."

Which I totally get. If there was any way for us to do this together, we would. But as it stands, I have this year off, and he doesn't. I can take two months off to travel, and he can take 10 days. So we vacation together for 10, and I do the rest by myself. It's just not a big deal.

I like knowing that there's space for us to be individuals in this marriage - not out of ego or anger, but just because we are two individuals. There's no need to meld into one entity.  I slightly take it for granted, but I do realize how rare it is.

I look at all the posts on Women's Day, and I'm reminded again of how proud I am of my husband. I'm all kinds of lucky, and not just because I have a bucket-load of carbs in my future.

Babies to my left, babies to my right

It's so weird, four different people said they were preggers today. I wonder if it's contagious?

(Not a hint. The only bump I'm expecting is a food baby from my time in Italy).

Verbose Workouts

I'm an unfortunate product of the flash fiction generation which no longer feels the need to spend five paragraphs itemizing the petals on each daffodil in that meadow which has nothing whatsoever to do with the story you're about to read, but which the author rhapsodized about anyway, so your English teacher has something to jump on and attribute metaphorical meaning to when you're forced to study said author's 'classic' prose years later (these days we just praise terse writing for the complexity in its simplicity - much like the critique forthcoming from the judges on Masterchef - and all's fine and dandy until you step over the invisible line into the mysterious area where things are suddenly pronounced 'too' simple, a principle which Zen masters beg to reject).

That sentence had over a hundred words in it, in case you're wondering. And as is often the case when I'm encouraged to ramble on rather than succinctly state my point, it may be fun to read, and grammatically quite sound, but you & I are both left feeling I could have done the job in about 10. 'It's weird dragging out stories when you don't need to.' Yup, done.

I'm gradually overcoming my natural instinct to get straight to the point and finish the story (while not getting sidetracked with the pfaffy asides I've a tendency to fall back on. And remembering that overused brackets are annoying, even to me).

I practiced with short stories and opinion pieces for the last couple of weeks, pulling at both ends of each thing I put down, like I was making pizza from scratch. And today, I finally felt the idea of the novel I've been carrying around widen itself into more than a one-line summary with some accompanying bullet points. 

I have a structure now, and it doesn't feel forced in theory, though time will tell. I wrote three chapters today, which I quite like, but will have to go back and completely re-write tomorrow, since the first chapter is ridiculously rushed - it reads like someone's being frantically clever for the drummer with the pada-bing flourish at the comedy show. I am my harshest critic. But it's coming along. 

The characters seem like individuals now, rather than Frankensteined jumbles of various people whom I'm cramming together to make a point which doesn't need to be made. I could possibly see myself emailing this to someone I know in real life some day, and being okay making eye contact with them when we meet in real life afterwards.

I think it's safe to say that at this point, I don't run the risk of filling space with empty words, or letting punctuation help me procrastinate any more. The only challenge left now is to streeeetch. 

I doodled this for the blog because I was too tired to sleep, and thought I had no words left. Silly me.

Winter

The library in our condo is always abandoned, and the gym's thriving at all hours. If the situation were reversed, I'd be happy to use either; but as it stands, I steer clear of both. Instead, I walk a kilometer to the next nearest library, and feel like I've had a decent workout along the way. 

Yesterday, it stormed through the day. By the time I walked to the library at noon, the snow had piled up neatly, and no attempt had been made to rein it in yet. No salt splashes, no brown slush marks, just a sea of white for the entire kilometer. 

Midweek, midday, everyone else seemed happy to stay cocooned in their offices. The roads were empty, there were maybe thirty people out, and any noise they made was lost in the snow.

It was magical.

Kaput

I miss school. Between English exams & Eco exams, I was capable of writing 117 words a minute, and delivering 7k words every 3 hours. Each answer paper was practically novella length. I was a purposeful automaton capable of word-vomit on demand (and it was usually coherent too, unlike Rahul Gandhi's interview last night).

Six years later, I can still churn out pages in mere hours... as long as they're Excel sheets. Switching programs to Word, I average 67 wpm. I'm literally picturing my brain working in slow-mo here. I don't think it's age alone that caused the slowdown either. I blame it on thinking in 140 characters, 500 for a blog post.500 words used to be the requirement for a 'short' answer on an English exam!

I've a hard time remembering that short stories don't need to be wrapped up in 4 paragraphs, and I can't even imagine writing out a novel that doesn't sound like a bunch of blog posts put together in chronological order (I hate reading books like that!)

Maybe I should just go back to school.

Much too much information (aka, it's well past my bedtime)

I wrote this.. disturbing.. set of two-sentence horror stories on one of my other blogs back in August. I figured I'd recycle the post here*, even though I cringe at absolutely anything I write mere seconds after putting it down (retrospective maturity). 

This blog's prime fodder for that, it has posts from back in college! I archived the posts for any private embarrassment I may want to put myself through, and then hid most of the oldest ones from the blog. They're from a whole lifetime ago. I was, literally, a different person. 

Going even further back, I'm torn between gratitude and regret over the fact that my brother read a page of my diary when I was in school (the horror of him discovering whom I had a crush on!) and so I insisted on binning all 3 volumes straight away. So dramatic. I'd been writing my first ever novella at the back of the diary! It was about these teen twins, Julie and.. someone (Sweet Valley alert!). And the summer they fell for Sam and... Tom?... while working at the pool. Anyway, Julie got pregnant. It ended with a proposal in the labour ward. 

Swiftly changing the subject... I've far too many blogs. There are 3 which stand out. This one, which is private, which means no family members see it, and it's not discoverable on search engines. Then there's one which is anonymous, but public and searchable. And there's one which is public, searchable, and has my real name on it. 

I like the last one the least. I always sound like a sixties weather girl on that one, overly bright with no opinion on anything. Awks. 

It's fairly clear from how often I post on this one, but I like it the best. I like not having to censor my opinions, knowing that my unnecessarily tech-savvy relatives won't stumble upon it. I'm such an Indian ponnu, it's not funny. 

As for the anon one, that's where I'm doing the non-personal writing stuff for now. It's the reason I'm awake at 12:40am (horrors) scribbling ideas in my notebook. I don't think I'll actually transcribe onto the blog tonight, so this is in lieu of that. I'll share the link at some point, I'm sure. For now, I kind of like the idea of writing like no one I know is watching :)

*Maybe I should've just posted the two-sentence piece from the other blog without the introductory context-setting? I'll remember that for next time.

Also, apropos of nothing, because clearly that's the theme with this blog (and the primary reason why I can never make any AdSense money off it): has anyone else read Mad About the Boy? Bridget Jones without Darcy is like Pride & Prejudice without Darcy. Really, what's the point? But the observations on Twitter, reluctant chuckle, were most astute.

Sayonara

Slighta one Stockholm syndrome-ish effect is happening. Despite leaving my laptop at office, and leaving office, I'm on my laptop, logged into work email. I don't even work there any more! What can I say, I'm just a little senti at all the nice things that were said about me at the awks farewell speeches. Happy tear. Overall though, as my husband put it:

And also:

BYE!

#happydays

Last 'Oh God, why isn't it Friday' Thursday morning.

Last '4 o' clock, eye on the clock' Friday evening.

Last 'Argh, it's going to be Sunday soon' Saturday night.

Last 'staying in bed trying to ignore it's Monday tomorrow' Sunday morning. 

Last Monday morning.

Last endless Tuesday afternoon.

Last hump day Wednesday.

Ear-to-ear grins. The longest notice period in the world is finally drawing to a close. People have joined, and left the organization, and my notice period's still gone on. My manager commented yesterday that I was working so hard, it was as if I didn't realize I was leaving. Be-lieve me, I realize it. It's finally starting to seem real now though. 3 working days to go!

What happens now? Well. A lot less whining on this blog, that's for sure.

I'm going to... write at least one full length book, and many other things besides (such as long letters to old friends!) Cook loads, eat every single meal every single day, and fatten up my husband. Attend a roomie's wedding with all the happiness that entails. Catch up with people back home, in person. Travel through Europe, hoping for more of the 'woah' moments that Spain inspired. Take a summer holiday with my husband and friends. Do lots of long weekend trips. And that's just the things I've already committed to!

This year's going to be about no excuses, no compromises, just doing whatever I think will make me happy, and then being happy. Isn't that what we all wanted to be when we grew up?

Life's good.