Party wear

We went to a company party. We were supposed to dress "business casual".. so while dad got the entire family all dressed up based on the "business" word, the rest of the folk at the party were focussed on the "casual"!

Dad did move a few eyes when he walked in wearing his tuxedo. It was quite a feat, trying to fit into an outfit after six years. Came home and had stomach cramps. After all, you cannot hold your tummy in pants a full two inches smaller than your current waist size, that too for two full hours. By the time we put on seat belts in the van on our way back, the pant buttons were off!

We did have a great photo shoot though!

My darlings were thrilled to dress up as usual!!

The tux episode has sparked a renewed interest to actually do some physical exercise, eat more salad and less ghee fried jeera rice, buttered up tortillas, etc. and basically fit into that tux without the extra effort by end of this year!

Hmmm... only time will tell!

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Could it be?

My wife seems to get on my nerves exactly the same way my mom used to get on my dad's nerves.

If your thought process is drifting towards "Sundar, don't be stupid. San and your mom are both women. You and your dad are men. This is standard operating procedure!",now, hold that thought.

There are a million variations of annoying a guy. My MIL pisses off my FIL, but her modus operandi is completely different. The irritation factor is there, but the things that irritate FIL are way different than things that irriate my dad! I also get to observe similar phenomena with my brother, BIL, friends, other relatives.

Okay, now if you are thinking "Sundar, But you and your dad are genetically similar. Maybe the same things piss you off!".

Granted that I grew up swearing to myself, not to be like my dad when growing up, but invariably the genetics catch up and Sundar at 35 is not very different from his dad at 35. Sundar at 12 was a lot different from his dad at 42, but who knew!

Still, it takes two to tango, or foxtrot, or waltz, or quick step or viennese waltz for that matter. That said, San is not genetically related to my mom! Then how come she manages to tick me off, the same way my mom irritates my dad? This got me thinking last night...

Is San becoming who she is because she has to constantly deal with me? Is that because I am increasingly approaching my dad as I grow older? Or am I becoming who I am because of constantly dealing with her? Are we essentially reliving what my parents lived through? How come we are not reliving what her parents went through when she was young? Or was it very similar? Does this mean that my kids are going to suffer a lot? Why do I sound like Deepak Chopra? etc. etc.

A million (okay, okay, a few dozen!) questions race through my mind now. At this point, cannot even think of a scientific experiment to prove or disprove any of these thoughts! Well, we watched Deepak Chopra on PBS, so at least the last question has an answer.

Should we even bother with the "will try to be different than our parents" bit? Is it pure naivete that drives us to think we will be any better than our parents when we are kids and once we have kids of our own, we grow up and realize why they were always pressed for time, tense, unable to focus a lot of times, make the decisions they made, etc. etc.

As I am about to hit the bed, can only think of one thing an ex-boss told me when his second kid was born (this was during my bachelor days).

"The world has two types of people. People who go through parenting and people who don't!"

Seems to sum up my thoughts for the day!

ps. Apparently this post makes it look like I am "Buddha" personified and that fact alone is getting on her nerves!

pps. We don't always irritate each other. Only when we bark orders to the other person when screaming kids are involved.

ppps. I get on her nerves as much as she gets on mine, but this is MY blog!! ha ha ha..

pppps. The ppps. should have read "I get on her nerves much much more than she gets on mine".. (Thanks to a reader for pointing that out..)

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Buga and Bugb

Bugb looked down at the kitchen sink. He could not see very clearly.

"What the hell do you think he is doing?" he asked Buga.

Don't know. Cannot see very clearly from up here. Let't wait till it gets closer!

The man openend the pill box from the countertop and took what appeared to be two capsules. Just as he was about to pop them in his mouth, he took them closer to his face to get a look.

"You must be kidding me!" said Buga.

"He can't be serious?" said Bugb.

"Oh, I am dying here already.. with laughter! ha ha ha" said Buga.

"Look, he is taking two now instead of one! Can you believe that?"

Can't wait to tell the rest of the guys, "Hey Bugc, go let everyone know, everyone! Everyone including Bugz, and tell them what we just saw!"

Bugc came quietly under the Nose bridge to get a sneak peak...

"Ha ha ha!" this is too funny, they all said...

Bring it on! Like we haven't seen you before!

The above is a true account of two bugs watching me take two tablets of 500 mg amoxicillin religiously twice a day for the last 9 days.

It is almost that funny!

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cooking once cooking twice

For every hour Mommy spends in the kitchen, daddy probably spends 5 minutes. Somehow daddy manages to put pictures and videos in the blog which might probably make people think that :

1. Daddy takes on the brunt of the cooking duties
2. Mommy does not come near the kitchen.

Let us officially put all those rumors to rest with this post!

Daddy usually does the final tasting to check salt and spice levels for mommy. He is more or less the QA dude!

Daddy only comes into the kitchen for:

1. Making tea (he always makes the tea)
2. Making noodles with sambar powder substituted for Maggi masala (the kids love this and only dad can make maggi work with sambar powder)
3. Making Pilsbury parathas (frozen parathas) or Tortillas
3. Making something exotic as part of some cooking experiment (once or twice a month)

Mommy does EVERYTHING else!

The reason mommy's cooking does not get the publicity is because almost always daddy has an audience when he is in the kitchen and interesting things happen when he goes near the stove!

As an other side to this, mommy is able to cook in peace only because daddy has the kids engaged. If daddy spent more time in the kitchen, the kids would also be there which would make the whole thing counter productive!

So, no more giving mommy grief over daddy's cooking posts!

At the end of the day, we cannot sustain ourselves on Kadalai urundai's and maggi noodles...

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Deja vu vu vu vu vu vu vu

One of the things that has made it to our daily weekday routine is PBS Kids. We wake up, dress the kids, feed them and they watch PBS kids, before we cart them off to school or daycare.

The kids automatically know that if Caillou is over, it means they are late and dad and mom are going to get worried and will probably drive like maniacs. Their time sense is infact derived by the end of Caillou and the beginning of Curious George! Jr. is just learning to tell time and the little one has no idea about clocks, but still declares "ees eight ooooooooclock!" when she sees the publice support ad!

San and me were very tired on thursday with work, trying to get tax documents in order, cranky kids... in short, a slightly out of control day. We went to bed late and the entire family woke up half an hour late on Friday morning. It was also dark and gloomy outside with a slight drizzle. The kids were still sleepy and tired when we put them on the couch in front of the TV.

For some strange reason, PBS had a re-run of the previous day's episode. (Must have been!).

Jr.'s eyes suddenly lit up when I switched on the TV and she said

"Daddy, we are back in Thursday morning!"

I did not understand what was going on and said "It is friday already. Eat your cheerios"

Then her surprise turned to fear and she said "Look around daddy! we are back into thursday".

Apparently, we were all wearing the same clothes we wore the previous morning as well.(except for Jr. herself who had changed) and the TV was playing the same thing, so naturally Jr. was worried! Apparently, PBS not only defines 8 o'clock, it also defines day of the week!

I spent a full five minutes on a busy weekday morning convincing my daughter that we had moved into Friday.

Never thought the monotony of our daily lives would cause "day of the week" confusions for our five year old.

Explained to her that PBS is probably playing off a DVD player or a laptop! Had to compare it to her watching the same episode of Toddworld a few hundred times on DVD, or their watching youtube videos every evening. Jr. finally understands the concept of Re-runs on TV!

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