And Now for Some Random Thoughts

Mood: Calm

Listening to: Little Lion Man - Mumford & Sons. Just because the kids are outside. We can't have that many emphatic (or otherwise) F words thrown around when they are at home, even if it an excellent song. 

I was looking through the key words that people search for when they find my blog. One of them was Getting Rid of Daddy Issues. This made me laugh really hard because the one article I wrote on that was lamenting the fact that I don't think they ever do go away. I'm sorry whoever came looking for that. That must have been quite disappointing to hear.

Can anyone explain Instagram to me?  I totally don't get the draw and a lot of the people I follow on facebook are absolutely nuts about it. I was regretting my loss of touch with new technology and aging (ripe old 30 year old) when I realized that I've been like this almost forever. For the longest time, I didn't want a cell phone. After I got one, it took me 5 years to start texting, and let me tell you, I still don't text more than once a week. I still don't quite get the draw of Twitter. I'm not technology averse, I just am not one to jump on a bandwagon for something that I see as stupid or unnecessary. As I've talked your ear off about, I march to the beat of my own drum. I really don't care if 10 million other people think Twitter is awesome. I still look at it like an enabling device for people with ADD that need lots of attention and will say stuff just to having something to say. 

I've always been the get off my lawn type. I'm also deathly afraid of being sidelined by new things and turning into my mother in this aspect. New technology absolutely terrifies her. She hates computers. I'll give it a try so I keep up with all you young whipper snappers, but if I think it's stupid, I'm not trying again just to fit in. I don't want my kids to have a hold of technology that I don't understand. That happened when I was growing up with some very unsavory results. Parents should not let their kids get a hold of things like this unless the kids are grown. 

Yet another mysterious disappearance has happened at the G household. One of my milk containers has gone completely AWOL. In India, we have to boil milk. It comes in plastic packets that are useless for storing the milk after boiling, so you must go and purchase some containers for storing the milk in your fridge. I boil 2 liters of milk every. single. day. I had 2 containers and both of them get washed every 2 days. Sometime shortly before we left on vacation (but before the maid left for Chennai) the other container disappeared after it was washed. After taking apart the entire kitchen - and I don't have a large or complicated one - I am absolutely baffled at where this went. I asked my housekeeper, but she had no idea where it was, even though she washed it and put it somewhere. 

I am an anal type person about what we have in our house. Everything has a place, and I generally know where everything is. When things go missing (and we have had more small things go missing in the past 6 months than I have in my entire adult life), my brain short circuits and sparks start flying everywhere. The milk container should be on the ledge. Why is it not there? Did the housekeeper hide it like she does the pressure cooker weight? This isn't a tiny metal piece, it's a big plastic container. What. The. Hell?

One of the downsides of us having a housekeeper is that there is another person in our house. There is absolutely no way for me to assure myself that things are not going missing because she is taking them. If it was just the four of us, I would at least have the assurance that unless we took it outside, it is here somewhere. I have no idea why she would need a plastic container....but after taking apart the kitchen, where is it? Daddy G has warned me about seeing ghosts where there are none a few times in regards to Indira, which I have honestly tried my best not to do. I have absolutely no proof this way or that. The thing is, I have never had things disappear like this before. I like Indira well enough, but I'm not naive enough to trust her and rule out anything. 

Grr. Paranoia.

U is for Undone

Listening to: The construction next door – Argh!

Mood: Concerted effort to be Mellow

As you may have heard (did I tell you or not, I always forget whom I tell what to!) I have a housekeeper named Indira. She does our dishes, cleans the floors every day, folds laundry, etc. Our relationship is an uneasy truce.

When Indira started, life was good. She came every day on time, always finished all of the work she was supposed to do, and didn’t take lots of days off. As is the norm in India, now that we’re comfortable with each other (i.e. she is less likely to be fired for not doing what she should) things have changed a bit. The number of tasks she does each day has drastically reduced, sometimes for no apparent reason at all. There are a few basics (dishes, floors, making flat breads called chapattis that are like tortillas) that she just randomly doesn’t do. Yesterday, she didn’t show up at all. No call, nothing.

I know quite a few people who have come to rely on their housekeepers. They whine a great deal when the ladies call off. This is not what I’m pissed about – that I have to wash dishes for myself for the day. No, this is more about me hating to deal with other people’s drama and not even caring enough to call and give an excuse – even a flimsy one. So here is my response to this whole situation.

You know, I didn’t even want to hire anyone. I’m 30 years old, healthy, able, and more than capable. I have been cleaning up after myself and my family for my entire life. There is absolutely nothing around here that you can do that I can’t/won’t do, except for making chapattis, and if I wanted to, I could learn to make some kick ass chapattis too.

I would like to think that I’ve been fair, patient and even kind to you as we settled into our groove and getting things done. I have treated you with nothing but respect. Just because I am not riding you like my mother in law did does not mean I will put up with a whole bunch of nonsense. I absolutely hate having to guess what will and will not get done and whether or not you will show up and if so, when. I have the social skills of an otter sometimes. I am friendly, but I don’t get all of the nuances. I am not good at guess work or passive aggressive nonsense. Since you refuse to negotiate with me or tell me what you need out of this situation, I am left fumbling in the dark. I do not feel bad about the arrangement we worked out because you seemed ok with it.  If you agreed to work in more houses after I hired you, the least you could do was talk to me about it so that you have an agreeable time to come and I don’t have to bitch at my husband every night about how frustrating this has become.

In short, I really don’t need you here. If you can’t get your act together, perhaps it’s time to end this relationship. These calluses didn’t get on my hands from sitting around getting pampered all my life – quite the opposite. It was hard enough accepting the fact that I was letting someone else in my home to do work that I was raised to believe was mine to be done. You have not undone a lifetime of being responsible for myself. I am still very much capable.

Becky

Mutual Hand Jobs

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A Bit of Sanity after the Annual Nuttiness

Listening to: Random Hindi on the ipod

I know some people really love the holidays. Like look forward to them all year. I happen to not be one of them. I’m not Scrooge with the bah humbug stuff, I like the holidays fine. I just don’t LOOOOVVVEEE them. One of the reasons I don’t salivate over the holidays is that every year, the craziness gets ratcheted up a notch. With 1 birthday right before Thanksgiving and 1 right after, the holidays around here last from Halloween until New Years. It’s a long time. The decorations and trees come out a week earlier every year, the amount of people coming and going from our house increases, the decorations seem to increase every year like they’re having ornament orgies in the basement the whole year.   So with a (very quiet, lest I be accused of being said Grinch by my kids) sigh of relief, I have finished packing up all of the holiday paraphernalia and am completely ready to shove it back in the back corner of the basement under the stairs again. I am so ready to have my living room back to a semblance of order without the visual chaos that is a tree laden in trinkets, candles, and “stuff” set out on every flat surface. I love the holidays, but I love being able to pack up the craziness too.

Another beautiful thing after the holidays is shipping the kids back off to school every day. I love spending time with my kids, and I do enjoy the holidays for that reason, but heaven help me, I love the quiet and the school schedule that settles back over our house after the holidays. I’ve never been good at developing our own schedule at home and have really welcomed the schedule that school seems to bring. When the kids are home, life develops into a loosely scheduled free for all that usually includes way too many electronic gadgets. So the quiet of not having 2 kids at home, it’s a beautiful thing.

I think for the first time in my life, I actually got burnt out on having people coming and going at our house. I absolutely love having people over, feeding them, entertaining them, etc. For the first time in my life, I honestly wished I was a hermit that could go ignore the world in my cave. The last house guest who came over and stayed for a week broke the camel’s back so to say. Or perhaps it was the flu that I conveniently got right before she came over…. She was family, so un-inviting her was just not to be done. Anyhow, there has been a moratorium on people coming over. I am refusing to wash sheets, cook for a crowd, or drink too much until at least mid Jan. Sanity must return first.  As I’ve previously made clear, I’m really, really bad at finding limits, and I think I’ve found my people limit. I guess that’s good info to get to know once. Kinda like when I drank an obscene amount of alcohol just to understand my limits. Now I know, let’s not do that again.

Overall, we survived, and probably got some good karma forging some better relationships with family and friends.  But seriously, thank you jeebus that it’s January!