Thanks Giving

...I like this time of the year when thing slow down a lot at work. like to see the lightings, wreath christmas trees go up with decorations at the office buildings, malls and all places around..and ofcourse the sales. I especially like thanksgiving as its one of those fairly big break you get here. Right from when I landed here me and M use to travel to (mostly lake tahoe/reno) stay for a night gamble have fun and come back as he likes to visit tahoe. The very first time we went there it was snowing and that was the first time I experienced snow fall in my life, it was exciting. One other time I remember the trip was when I was pregnant with the twins...I think I was in to 24 weeks that thanks giving when we went to Reno, I being so big and tired with the pregnancy just went and slept thru the night an M gambled alone and I remember he won a jackpot ..before every one wonders how big it is...let me say it was just $250 dollars. Its not a big amount but if you had gambled on those slot machines you will understand how big a deal it is....
...and that was the last thanks giving we travelled and alone for a while..needless to say how our life took a ride on the roller coaster after the twins arrived and I vaguely remember how I spent the previous 4 Thanks giving..Last year we decided again to continue our little tradition of travelling, now with the twins tagging along with us. We went to Monterey beach stayed there for a day relaxed and came back. It was fun in a different way, we had the responsibilty of entertaining and engaging the girls which was both enjoyable and a gruesome excercise. This year we are planning to just chill out at a local game place and a bit of shopping on black friday ..happy holidays

Indian ghost

I was actually planning to write about this years Halloween but has been putting of as there din't really much out of ordinary happened. Same princess costumes...same parade at school..photos..poses...carry the basket and go for trick or treating in the evening and me just tailing behind them around the neighborhood. Yesterday I happen to read the book "Poultrygeist" at their bedtime. Sandhya had picked that book from the library for this week. I had made a habit of reading books with them at night, so it was sort of spending some one on one time with them at the end of days mad rush..of course there are times I had felt frustrated when they call me to read books when I'm dead tired I had to literally pacify them to just take a book and see the pictures..but I should say they really got in to reading books for which I'm so happy. Coming back to the poultrygeist, it is a story about 2 noisy roosters in a barn who would not listen to the cow and a pig who wanted a quiet environment..so when the Halloween neared, the cow and Pig disguised themselves a ghost and try to scare the roosters to make them not be noisy..after I finished reading the story..Divya was silent for a moment and then asked me "amma, what the difference between a vedhalam and a vampire.." I had already introduced vedhallam and vikraman stories which they liked well and also gave me good space to build up my imaginary stories using the 2 characters vedhalam and vikram...So as I was trying to answer Divya, Sandhya got up with her hands out broad with a gesturing manner and head slightly tilted, with a grown up tone in her voice as if Divya's Q was a silly one.."Divyaa..aa Vedhalam is an Indian ghost and vampire is an American ghost. Vedhalam speaks tamizh and vampire speaks english. vedhalam hangs upside down from the tree but vampire does not and also vampire likes to drink blood from people.." saying this she went back to lie down..I was like Wow that was good, even I would not have thought of so many differences.

 

I was arranging the photos on my home computer when I came accross this photo. Divya scrambling and messing around with the contents of this steel almirah. As early as 4 months before they were born M started to get concerned about all his properties...books and his precious eloctronic tid bits..of all the things that we were about to face as new parents of twins. He would just add on "oh, when they start moving they are going to mess up with my stuff..we have put away all my stuff safely out of their reach.." as a suffix for any thing I say or bring up like. That was more important for him, and so when they were around 5 months just about when they started scooting on their tummys, M jumped up and ordered this steel almirah which is generally used only in work places. I was so against getting this as it was looking awful and did not fit the decor of the house,but as skilled as he is in arguing me out logically if he wanted to get something he went ahead and bought this. He claimed that he couldn't find anything with a lockable door. I think he was stuck with this steel one from the beginning as it was similar to the ones we had (and still have, the infamous Godrej ones) in India in each and every home. All this was fine until one day I saw Divya comfortably crawl inside and blissfully messing around with the books. As I noticed this I grabbed the camera to get a picture promptly...a good proof to get on him that his idea din't work, that with his forgetfullness he din't even remember to close the door and so eventually I can make him get rid of this..

Nnevertheless my idea to get rid did not work, its still occupying space in one of the rooms..please don't ask me ..why still?

Gay "marriage" or not

I would not say I'm an avid follower of politics but neither do I turn a deaf ear or blind eye on the news on it. But the current election even made people like me to closely follow the happenings, may be because I was eligible to cast my vote this time so I was more interested or may be the candidates for this election aroused the curiosity. I think I started following the news and articles on election right from the Iowa primary caucus in which Obama won. After hearing some of his speeches and articles on him I should say I started leaning towards him. As the primary started dragging with Clinton not bowing out I remember cursing her involuntarily as I was listening to the news. It really surprised me as I had always had a "who cares" attitude in politics before. And on the night of the election day Obama's speech made me mushy..emotional, he really is a damn good orator.. One other thing which pressed me more to do my duty as a citizen is the issue of gay marriage on the ballot. Prop 8 is a ban on gay marriage. I wanted to register my role in making prop 8 successful. By this I would not say that I'm against gays as such, I do have gay colleagues and friends and considering my up bringing I should say I really adapted to accommodate them well and with ease. I understand its a personal interest,every person can decide what kind of sexual orientation they believe  or will have but when it comes to marriage I think it should be preserved to be between a man and a woman. That's what marriage means, it has evolved and is part of the process of making a family which helps the species thrive and proliferate and to change its meaning, I think its against the nature..

Identity crisis....

Recently I started noticing things what Sandhya and Divya says regrding there likings or their opinions, be it a song or food or color or whatever they could spin their conversations on. If I play a song in the car and if Sandhya says she likes it Divya makes it a point to dislike it, same with food..Sandhya likes rasam..Divya likes only sambar..Sandhya hates vegetables divya always asks for a second serving especially the ones which Sandhya refuses to eat even if I force her..on the other hand Sandhya like to have spinach in any form and Divya never touches Spinach..and lateley Sandhya seems to pick up math better than Divya but Divya does better job in reading and writing...the more Divya says she likes to write the more I see that Sandhya does not want to write. I'm sure Divya likes pink but the other day I heard her say she doesn't like pink the moment Sandhya said that it was her favourite. It is as though they wanted to prove that they are different in all aspects..fighting for an identity, as if they no more wanted us to treat them as "They" or "them" but instead as individual persons. It is ok to a certain length but it started to concern me a bit now as this process finds its way in each and everything crossing their life from dawn until dusk.Me or M are as careful as humanely possible to not to utter any word of comparisons between them but still they tend to do this. Expressing their feeling is something but developing an opinion purely based on the other twin sibling's liking is not a pretty scene to watch...

I feel that they always have this little competitiveness running between them (may be to catch our attention more) M used to comment that for us it a competitive world outside the house but for them its right inside and exists all 24 hrs. I'm sure this happens with all siblings to some extent but with twins I think its more vivid

I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping that they would grow out of this as they grow up...

..A broken heart...

As the girls get settled in their new Kindergarten environment, Divya got her first invitation for a birthday party from one of her class mate A who happens to be in her day care too. The invitation had a castle and a princess theme set for the party which no wonder made Divya all excited. At the first glance I did not notice the day of the party so I promised her that I would take her to the party. One of the reason , the most important of all, for which she was super excited was the fact that Sandhya did not get invited. Since the girls are in diffrent class rooms and since the birthday girl was from Divyas class, Sandhya was not invited. Divya had been watching the bithday girl describe her costume and stuff as they were spending most of the time together at school and the day care. I had stuck the invitaion on our fridge and when I tried to RSVP I noticed that the party was a weekday that too on a Monday 5 pm. As I commute a long distance there was no way I can leave work for a silly bith day party I thought, and decided we would not go. All I thought of was about my commute and work but I totally missed from Divyas point of view(Can I get any more self centered than this :( sigh..) Afterwards I totally forgot about this until I went to pick up the girls from the day care on monday, the moment I entered the day care Divya came running to me with wide eyes asking "are we going to the party now.." but it was too late already.. so I had to say "Next time ..not now.." poor little thing, she was so devastated..she would'nt want to stop crying , din't matter what I said or offered her...infact I had brought her favourite lolly pop that day but she did not even bothered to touch it...I had to literally half drag and half carry her to the car and she slept after sometime still weeping...and she continued to cry until I forced her to have something to eat and she slept with her eyes still wet...I felt guilty , bad that I'm not fit to be a mommy..I felt I deprived her due right to go to her friends party..ofcourse this is not the first time I felt this way but every time I would just console myself that sometimes or somethings need to be sacrificed because of my full time work which is in turn for the chideren's good, I would console myself blindly..but this time it was different.. I could have spared a half hour , come early and taken her to the party...bad me. What has happened is happenend and as usual to suppress my guiltiness I bought her Pizza for dinner the next day..she pulled the invitation which was still stuck on the fridge and said or rather demanded that she need the same kind of castle in her next birhtday invitation , at the same place and wanted to invite A to her birth day..I nodded cheerfully as if I'm absolved for my guilt..

Appa and the Internet

In the mid ninety's (it makes me feel so old when I write this) when the act of creating or having a yahoo and hotmail email accounts were considered geeky and classy my dad sat down next to me one day and asked me to explain this whole thingy about the email ...internet and stuff...I got all enthu and started by saying the procedure to create an account first which can be used for sending and receiving emails.. given the fact how detail oriented my dad is he started off with his questionnaire session...what is that you call a password....when u hit the send button where is your content exactly stored , in the satellite...what is the meaning of yahoo....what do you mean when you say right click the mouse or left click ...to be honest I tried my best to control my laughter at certain instances and tried to say that it is enough if he knows the procedure in steps to start with..but at some point he got frustrated and he got up and said he would better join a class to learn these things and there it ended. After I got married and came to the US I had told him so many times to learn to use the internet and send emails as it will make the communication better instead of calling or waiting for my call...and now after 8 years he is visiting US again, he asked me to teach him about the whole thingy about email and stuff...I kid u not the whole saga of questions came out again...he is so apprehensive in trying out or exploring for himself that he intmidates himself more with his questions...finally I said that I will create an account on his name and would operate it on his behalf. He has been happily giving out his email Id to whoever he is talking to and my job is to get a print out of his emails and type the reply for them as he dictates...fun !!