Mr. Rules - Everything must be just so

Sonny Boy rules my life (no, I'm NOT proud of it). He has rules for everything. He has rules for every ritual in his life  -- each activity in his everyday life is a ritual. I'm not joking, its FRUSTRATING. Here's what's pissing me off these days...I just endured an episode early this morning, at about 4.30 a.m.

1. Mummy must never pee. He seems to have SOMETHING against it. I have talked it out with him, tried reasoning with him, always keep the bathroom door open lest he thinks I'm going to get sucked down the commode...I've told him I can't pee where I stand in the house, or in a diaper like him at night...I've pointed out that he pees! And waste must go out of the body or we'll be ill blah blah....he listens with big eyes and then weeps to say "You must not do soosoo"!!!!!!!!!!!!

2. His nose must be wiped in the precise strokes he specifies -- it must be pressed hard with a kerchief and you must wok on it from top to nose tip -- the hanky must never be inserted in the nostril. We've tried telling him he can please wipe his own nose whichever way he likes, but no. WE must only do it, and it can only be done HIS way, or there's more tears and snot.

3. Now that Bangalore's getting colder, he pees himself silly through the night. However thick the diaper, he leaks out the front from top (aaargh the boy thing!). He's smart enough to wake me in the middle of the night most of the time and tell me "I've done susoo", which usually indicates his diaper is FULL. But then, I'm supposed to change him without switching on the lights! Bleary-eyed blimey me... If I switch on even like a night lamp he'll wail like a banshee and wake up the entire apartment. I cannot wash hands, throw soiled diaper in dustbin, basically get out of his radar....Oh and yes, it must be his brand of diaper or he has issues with that.....I know a whole lot of parents are nodding their heads as they read this, thinking I'm this loser complying to his every demand. But really....it's really challenging to put up with his tantrums at the end of a long working day.

4. He has a set order in which things must happen -- saying goodbye to my parents every night is done in a particular order and way, if its sandals he's wearing, only he must put them on -- any attempt to help buckling up results in a tantrum, dinner must be served in an order -- chapati first, rice later. If it's a holiday, by noon he has to be at his grandparents', there must be just that amount of toothpaste on his brush, the water to rinse his mouth must be put into mouth in that one same direction/angle always

I've considered if he suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)... is it possible to have a child checked for it? I wonder sometimes if it's a sign of anything else...don't want to take names unnecessarily...I wonder if its just me who needs to see a therapist, giving in, as I am, to most of his stupid "rules". Anybody out there with an insistent child like this? He'll be three next month -- I can't even blame it on the Terrible Twos anymore....

Lesson learnt the hard way: old is gold when it comes to Maid In India

It's so difficult to let go of your ego and beg. And yet it is so easy.
Of late I've stopped praying. I don't light the lamp in front of god.
I last went to the temple only to ask God to let my aunt's soul rest in peace and to allow me to sleep at nights in peace.

That's one thing I do very well, shamelessly. BEG.
Even when I'm on one of those trips of "Oh God doesn't exist because he's making my life so miserable", I beg him to help me.
I had already begged my cook/nanny to stay when she threatened to quit. I had begged my father to let her stay...ugh that's a lot of begging.

Yesterday I begged my old maid to return.
Really, she left me cursing I'm sure, that I shouldn't find another.
The last few traumatic days have been spent "interviewing" new help... finding them in the first place. That's become difficult too. (Any woman in India knows what I'm talking about, unless you belong to that one-odd percent who has found Miss. Wonderful)

And they have numerous demands (I believe Bangalore's maids are very different).

And I have no washing machine. So really bad combination.
So they would come home, negotiate exorbitant rates and tell me all those things they won't do -- in various stages of desperation and depression, I gave in to most of their conditions, and to the terms of pay.

But. BUT they just didn't turn up for work on the designated day. Yeah as my fellow mom blogger Aparna (Noida) pointed out, I do have some rotten luck when it comes to maids.

One lady finally seemed to work out and she worked brilliantly for a day -- one of those "experienced" people who know where everything is kept and how to go about their work by themselves and do it well. I knew she was too good to be true. Next morning she called to say her former employer was at her doorstep in his car, offering her a jump in pay that she found irresistible. I didn't want to bargain and out-do the guy on her salary so i resignedly let go.

Yesterday another lady, with whom everything had been settled, (but on whom I had my own doubts because she seemed too old and, well, un-agile, weighed down by her own weight and the amount of gold she was wearing!) worked a bit, decided she can't work at our place because it takes up too much of her time, walked out mid-way!She left behind some unwashed vessels and soaked clothes!

That did it. So off I went, looking for my former maid. Admitted to her she was right all the way -- I can't find another like her. She seemed relieved too (something i didn't expect; I was mentally prepared for some loud abuse, but I still had to ask before moving one with the hunt). She agreed, pointed out how she already knows her work and how it works out best for the both of us. She slipped in quietly this morning into our house and back into her routine. And I into mine.

In the meanwhile I had gone into a tizzy -- I was seriously reading reviews on dishwasher models available in India, how they worked etc etc. I had firgured I had no provision of space/inlet-outlet to get one installed in my kitchen. Even a washing machine will be a tight fit in our teeny-weenie place (I'll probably have to stand on it and bathe!). I had looked up robot vacuum cleaners that you switch on and leave on the floor to sparkle the house on its own. Nothing seemed plausible.

Yes, I know a lot of people manage without any help, I know. I admire them. But I'm not one of them. I DO HATE housework. I never did it ever. My parents, grandparents always pampered me and told me not to enter the kitchen, not to bother with the dishes -- something I gleefully and willingly did in my youthful days and something which unfortunately got engrained into my very being.

It's a horrible feeling-- this being so dependent on someone. But I am. And that's my life. As far as I want to keep my job and remain a working woman (no I can't handle office work and house work on my own. Imagine coming home at 8 to do the laundry while eating dinner). It will be so, till I'm pushed to the point of inevitability -- the inevitability of independently doing all my work by myself. And not cribbing about it.

P.S. : Rama, thanks for poking me into blogging again. :-) I was so frustrated, I didnt even want to blog. Imagine!

Doffing my hat to stay-at-home mums

Honestly, how do you do it? It's a plain simple question. Please don't read any meanness into it.

I'm quite a workaholic and in my 10-year career I must have taken a max of 10 days off every year for some sort of "enjoyment". Most of my leave gets gobbled up by sickness.

Sonny Boy's bout of chicken pox has grounded me, and poor him of course, for almost a week now. Not easy for me. Not easy for him either. Specially so, since I haven't stepped out of the less than 1,000 sq apartment in all these days, except one. And that has a disastrous effect on me. I'm feeling like a caged animal, puffing and huffing and walking up and down my cage in rage. My wings have been clipped. My feet tied. It's just that I'm so used to being away from home for at least seven hours a day for the last 10 years of my life! Of course I can at least vent all this here.

Poor Sonny is taking it out in tantrums. Understandable. I mean what kid would want to be in a confined space? But for his sake and for other's, we must be isolated :-(.

Which brings me to admire stay at home mums or SAHM. Wow! It must be crazy, to be doing so much work (that goes unappreciated mostly I think), and to be taken for granted. Hubby now comes from office and expects me to make tea, because I've been home all day anyway. Else, we would both get back from work after having stopped for a quick chai somewhere on the way.

I find it difficult not to have people to talk to. Yes, the phone is there, the Internet is there. But I crave humans like vampires crave blood. Face to face interaction. I crave to write. I crave to speak and be heard.
I don't think I'll get back to work another two days and the thought is making me morbid with fear. I've realised I have a fear of staying home.

I'm making extra food, because I'm home and it's like I feel obliged that because I'm home, I must pitch in with that little extra effort in the kitchen. Uff...I'm sounding all messed up.

I'm also getting worried because I'm worrying so much about me, and so little about Sonny, who, in fact, is in far more a mess. He can't meet grandpa, he cant walk in grandpa's garden -- two things he most loves.  feel terrible for him.

I found my mother selfish when, once, soon after i forced her to retire after having worked well over 30 years, she turned around one day and told me i had robbed her of as life. Now i understand what she means. I was a student then, and hadn't a clue about the like of a working woman.

There's so much to do at home, so much to constantly keep doing. When I'm at work, I switch off the home button. But at home you can never do that. I've hardly got to see any TV or read books I've been longing to read. I have no time to myself.If that's the life of a SAHM, god, I don't want it. (Again no offence meant to such mothers. My respect for you has gone up several thousand notches this past week.)

I'm bored, almost depressed, dying to go out, shop, eat at a restaurant, just chat with ol friends...even colleagues will do ......is anyone out there?????

Sound of Music

I love M.S. Subbulakshmi. I love her solid voice, her devotion-laden singing. I can even sing along to many songs I've been listening to from my childhood days.

But as much as I love her, I don't relish listening to her at 6.30 a.m, when I'm catching up on my last leg of sleep, and more so when it's someone in a neighbouring apartment playing it.

A new family has moved in. Not in our apartment block. But in the one that faces it's back to ours... on the next road. But hell! He plays his "Suprabhatam" and "Vishnu Sahasranama" and "Bhaja Govindam" LOUD. And since I know most by rote, I automaticaaly start chanting/singing along. You can't help it.

But honestly, all I want to do then is sleep.
Living all my life in an independent house, this experience is irritating.
I'm sure the same people will object if I played a Hindi film song every morning THAT LOUD as my suprabhatam