Backyard critters

Now that the flu has come and gone, went back to do Yoga after a week. It was one of those classes where your body knows it has been there before, as does your mind, but things have become rusty. You think you are lifting your leg up 45 degrees and the mirror and all those images of your 4th grade math teachers tell you.. "are you kidding?"

Anyways, as usual I meander away from the topic. Things will get better again over time, till the next set of germs come.

Decided that some time will be spent just sitting in one place, camera in hand, to photograph the things that move around in the backyard. Was not disappointed..  

These two are raising a family on that tree. 

This fellow makes quite a racket on the bushes.. 

 These baby robins were playing around. It was a treat to watch.

 I have no idea what this bird is... but he visited us for a very short time.

Then came the bunny.. our new neighbors need to be warned about this guy. 

He has quite a reach!

Sat there for a good hour trying to capture this hummingbird in flight. Not a single shot came out okay. Need to put a bird feeder in the backyard. There are at least 8 hummingbirds in our backyard. Their acrobatics are amazing. Will try to take pictures of them.. has to be easier with a bird feeder.

The bumble bee was too fast to capture too..

While all this was going on in the backyard, my wife calls and says, we saw a deer in our front yard.. come take a picture of that.. It was like all the animals knew that I was ready with the camera!

This one was posing for me!

Feel much better today.. sometimes all it takes is to do yoga, have a good lunch, nap with the little one and sit in one place in the backyard and see (and mostly hear) nature sounds. 

Have put water in a bucket for the critters. The ground is parched because we had shut off the sprinkers. Today, I turned on the sprinklers for some time. The worms are out and the birds are now on the ground. 

The drought is probably hitting them a lot more than it is hitting us. Dry lawns, less flowers, no veggie garden this year to attack for the bunnies.. 

Everything said and done, an afternoon of peace.

Life without Maggi

Maggi is an inherent part of our diet right now! The Nestle made noodles are a favorite evening snack for kids at least once a week and also a dinner option for daddy and the kids at least once a week! 

Daddy is the Maggi expert and can make it in many different ways with any combination of vegetables, as a soup, just with enough water or cook it so that the "noodles don't stick to each other", depending on what the kids feel like on any given day.

When we come home after any all day outings, dinner is always Maggi, as it can be done by the time kids go take a shower. 

So it is a rude shock to see headline news that Maggi has lead and a lot more MSG in it than it is supposed to. Given Nestle is an international brand, the expectation was always that there will be "some" quality control. 

One good thing I do is to not use the Masala packet that comes with the noodles. Instead I use a combination of :

Salt + Sambar powder (made in India with my Grandma or mom's recipe) + turmeric powder + a small pinch of asafoedita (kids like it, I skip it)

and we save the masala packets. Think I have posted on this earlier as well. 

Given all the Maggi consumption, we have a drawer in the kitchen just dedicated to noodles and masala. Today I decided to go clean out the Maggi drawer and this is what I saw..

poured it on the ground and counted the packets to clear it out..

That was 670 packets of Maggi Tastemaker masala! This is just from Jan of this year. 

Going by some crude math, we would have possibly injested enough lead to make us brain dead for the next seven generations if the reports are true!

Then again, we do not know how much of the stuff is in the noodles. Will watch the reports. Maybe the New Jersey Nestle that imports it from India will do some spot checks?

It is also true that noodles (be it Maggi or Ramen) have a lot of wax in it.. so I do boil the noodles to remove the wax on occasion or dry roast it to get rid of the wax before using the noodles. 

Given the data, we are not an occasional noodle family! So we should take this seriously. In the meantime, we are going back to adai, dosai, kunukku for "tiffin" where possible.

Responsibility 101

Jr. went to Great America for a day to perform as part of her school band. They were done by 11AM and the rest of the day was play time till the school bus dropped them back at 7:30 PM. She "termited" us (kept pressuring us till we gave in) to pay 60 dollars for this outing! 

Around noon, something falls into her eye. She tries cleaning it with water and no luck. Given a choice between calling us ASAP and telling us she has something in her eye, or continuing to go on rides with her classmates and attempting 6 more washing eye routines all with no success, she choose the latter. 

To top things off, she develops light sensitivity and to solve that problem, buys herself a dark 5$ sunglass of poor quality that makes it worse if anything. When she stepped down from that school bus all teary eyed and in dark sunglasses, our first thought was "did someone abuse our daughter?". Once we got the full story and saw how bad her eye was, we knew how the rest of the evening was going to go..

Spent the rest of our evening in ER, mostly waiting. Finally when our turn came, they put a numbing drops into her eye, put a dye in there, looked at it under a powerful scope, found the thing under her eyelid and pulled it out. By the time though, the damage was done and the white of her eye was bloodied. 

So we came home with antibiotic ointments and a moping Jr. 

This morning I was talking to my mother on the phone and told her about the experience while Jr. was listening in. Then I mentioned that "if she had called us as soon as it happened we could have solved this earlier, with a lot less drama and for 20$ copay instead of 250$ emergency visit". 

Jr. was upset over this. She tells me "it is my eyes we are talking about! you are upset over 250$ vs. 20$?"

That kind of pushed me over the edge because I don't think she understands how difficult it is to make 250$ vs. 20$.  The fact that she is my number one concern doesn't change. The fact that I bring this up is to worry about a daughter who doesn't undertand the value of money. 

Then she came up with "it is not like you didn't have accidents when you were my age! Paati(grandma) told me all the stories about how you got hurt so many times doing stupid things!".. I muttered something to the effect of "good that she doesn't have a FB account or I will not be able to have any conversation with my kids"

True. True. Very true. I almost ruined our Poonal ceremony by falling off a parapet wall and getting stitches on the back of my head and that is just at the top of a long list of things. To my credit, I promptly told my parents or grand parents or any nearby relative of my stupidity, so they could take timely action!

It is not easy to have Responsibility 101 conversations with kids, given they know everything already! Wonder why a kid smart enough to argue with me on technicalities is not making the right choice when it concerns her own eye?!

The good news is that she is doing fine now and her eyes have cleared out. Good enough to go to school tomorrow. I am also happy  that this happened while I was in town or it would have been very difficult for San to handle on her own!

For my part, I did apologize to Jr. if I sounded like the money was more important than her eyes. For her part, she has promised to be more responsible and call us ASAP when it comes to any medical emergencies! 

Lets see how the promises go..