Ten days that shook my world!

It wasn't the longest 10 days of my life. But it came damn mighty close! 

Till exactly a weekend ago, I was going through 10 days of what the average Mumbaikar so colourfully and evocatively describes as "waat lagi hui hai"! Why? Very simply because till then, Angel 1 was off to her country for a short holiday.

So here is a recap of what I did pick up during these 10 long days, 

1. I learnt that running behind 2 kids every waking minute of their day was infinitely more tiring than exercising twice a day & more killing than exercising with even the most sadistic personal trainer! 

2. I learnt that something as mundane as changing diapers could be back breaking and exhausting! In these 10 days, I changed enough diapers and washed enough baby bottoms to suffer from chronic nightmares of me stuck in a room full of, let's just put it politely as, "human waste"! I am not squeamish. In fact, far from it. I am the weird type who find cleaning meat therapeutic. I have gotten frozen chicken with it's head and claws intact & chopped it at home. And then gone ahead to cook and eat it with no qualms whatsoever. But soldiering through cleaning poop can drain even the toughest and the least squeamish of us! Esp if you are doing it about 6 times a day! For each baby!

And as if the Vs were enjoying every minute of this, they had the urge to purge the minute we left home! So I also learnt the location of the changing rooms in almost every public place I go to; at the zoo, at the play gyms, at the beach, at restaurants, at the mall, you name it, I was there changing diapers in each one of them!!!!

3. I learnt that it takes Himalayan self control to cook on an average, 3 different options at each meal time and then watch it being spat out to the refrain of "No that, No that"!

And that reciting Rudyard Kipling's immortal lines "If you can keep your head...." goes a long way in keeping it all together when you watch every single one of your culinary creations being rejected with disdain & when your pride in your culinary skills is being not so slowly chipped away with each meal!

Till Angel 1 went home, I was quite proud of the fact that I was a very good cook. 3 days later I was having doubts. 10 days later, I was willing to befriend even a door post if it could give me some validation!!!

4. I learnt equally painful lessons in patience and tolerance. Esp in dealing with the senior most V, who worked from home these 10 days and did his share of doling out advice that would have made many a pain-in-the-ass mother in law proud! 

I have started to believe that since the ma in law is a sweetheart who cannot even terrorise a fly if she tried, the Universe decided to correct this imbalance by letting my mom and hubby more than make up for this! And never was this more evident than in these 10 days. 

5. I learnt to adopt (more like was forced to) a whole new lifestyle of "early to bed and early to rise", except I don't see anything healthy/wealthy/ wise happening in terms of returns for the same! 

I woke up each morning to see the sun rise, a sight that I hadn't seen in months, if not years. Even though I have cribbed in the past about not getting enough sleep at night, I am primarily a creature of the dark. I prefer staying up nights to feed the Vs & write or read and then like to wake up late. All that went out of the window the minute Angel 1 wasn't there to entertain the Vs in the mornings; and they in turn decided the best way to entertain themselves was by jumping WWF style on my stomach, accompanied by battle cries that would make Ghenghis Khan proud! 

6. I also grudging learnt to accept that outdoor activities ain't all that bad. So from painting and making play dough toys and reading and watching animal videos together, I progressed to taking the Vs on early morning walks (mainly to keep them from wreaking havoc on all my precious artefacts), playing soccer with them on the lawns, chasing butterflies & birds. And I have to grudgingly accept that these have been the best moments in each day! And that they brought back memories of another era when a friend and I stole lemons from our neighbour's gardens and made lemonade on summer afternoons; when we tried making rafts out of the stem of the banana tree and then tried to use it as a boat when the garden used to be flooded in the rain....and many more such crazy moments!

7. And the best part of it all was that I chanced upon the fact that the 2Vs were ready for fine dining long before I thought they were!! Here I was, with serious qualms about inflicting them on a bunch of bored lunch goers/ diners and then came the Vs, proudly proving me wrong by calmly munching on their French fries and sipping their ice lemon teas out of glasses.

I learnt to not raise the eyebrow that was begging to be raised, when V1 discovered dipping his fries in ice tea was the best way to consume it. I learnt to not be flustered about what was going waste when V2 wanted to "tly" by which he meant heaping everything every one else was eating on his plate and then proceeded to eat only the fries!

Still it was a massive achievement that. Less for them and more for Vj and me who worried endlessly about how much stress dining with the Vs would entail. We have now successfully progressed to a stage where the Vs eat their food and we eat ours without acting as if we could be victims of a nuclear holocaust any minute!

7. But above all else, I came to realise that a good nanny is as essential as Oxygen to your system. Life came to a standstill without Angel 1 - there was no going out for dinner, no sudden, spur of the moment visits to catch a movie, no leisurely afternoon naps on weekends, no exercising, no evening walks by the riverside listening to Kishoreda. Hell, even spending 5 minutes in the loo seemed impossible without the Vs yelling for Mammy and trying to break down the door!

I have now learnt to appreciate Angel 1 like never before! And believe that her agreeing to come along with us to London was one of the nicest stroke of luck one could hope for! 

And then finally came Good Friday which for once was truly a "Good" Friday in every sense of the term as Angel 1 came back to restore peace, balance and equilibrium in our world. And when she walked in and the Vs rushed into her arms, instead of even a minuscule pang of envy, all I felt was an overwhelming sense of relief and surety; that now life would come back to normal. And so it did. 

Today, every single one of my cooked lunches/ dinners/ breakfasts are back to being consumed, albeit with protests but nevertheless being consumed and my bruised self esteem has started to heal itself. I manage to catch a few more minutes of precious sleep every morning. And I have the option of taking some "me-time" every once in a while when I feel like it. And each time I do any of the following, I thank the God for Angel 1!!!