Yes, it SNOWED in Houston!!! Barely 2-3 inches of snow and the entire city came to a halt. Colleges and schools closed down, offices forced their workers to go home (with pay!), roads didn’t look the same with white snow fast turning into gray slush lining the sidewalks, white sheet of snow covering tropical plantation that can’t survive snow longer than a day at max, … it was truly a winter wonderland … only because we knew that the snow was not going to last long. It was surely to melt soon and the temperatures didn’t dip much below freezing either. The hope that it’d all soon melt away and we’d be back to normalcy soon with our green plants smiling at us made looking at snow fall out our new house bindows with a cup of hot chocolate in hand all the more appeasing. :) For if we didn’t know that it was going to melt, memories of the cold snowy Canada for 8 months would’ve sent me, if not both me and P, into a serious bout of SAD (seasonal affective disorder/depression).

I do have photos that I’d post as soon as I upload.

That was yesterday. It is Saturday morning today. Well, almost after noon now. Sun is shining bright. There are no signs of snow. I can go out in a light jacket without shivering. I don’t need gloves or a scarf. Ah the freedom!!! I did not have that luxury in Canada of course and I thoroughly love that about Houston. My plants are back to smiling again. They’re still alive. They survived! :)

On a side note, when we were coming home from work yesterday – much earlier than usual cuz all offices shut down because roads were bound to get icy later on – P said to me while driving and observing CRAZY drivers on roads who didn’t realize how dangerous driving in snowy conditions can be, “How sad does it feel to know that someone is going to die today for sure?” I was so shocked to hear him say that, that I looked at him with raised eyebrows and let out a sigh of disbelief, “Come on P, it is not necessary that it would happen. People are going home now, well ahead of time, hopefully, they’d stay home for the evening.” “No”, he replied, “take my word for it … the way people are driving, there is bound to be some tragedies tonight or tomorrow morning before ice melts away.”

Sad to say, he was right. :( Houston Chronicle narrates the tragedies of the night that snow visited Houston. I really wonder why people don’t heed to warnings that are announced and re-announced on every channel possible – on radio, TV, newspapers, friends, family, etc. – and not worry about their safety. They not just risk their own life but also risk others’ on the road too. Sad. Real sad indeed. Thinking that it was obvious that someone was undoubtedly going to be a victim of icy roads DESPITE the warnings that were issued and re-issued by everyone who knew better is disheartening.

Well, the roads are better now. Hopefully, people are more sensible sitting behind the wheel now and not decide that texting a friend about a favorite lip color is as essential as the task at hand – merging on to a highway – where if you take one wrong step,  you might endanger not just your life but many others.

Lip color can wait.

So we moved in. It’s amazing how big a place feels when you don’t have enough furniture to fill it up with. ;D I’m LOVING the new extra space though!! :) We haven’t yet put anything (but furniture, TV and puter) in its place yet. All lies in boxes in a room whilst I am busy cooking in my huuuuuge kitchen with a huuuuuuge island. Love it love it love it!! :) Made Paneer Parathas in the morning yesterday, followed it up with Biryani, baked cheesy et spicy cauliflower and spicy pan grilled baby eggplants and a cheesecake for dessert (happy thanksgiving) later in the evening; today, we’ve done halva poori so far and stomach is threatening to burst out of abdomen. :)

Master bedroom is painted BLUEEEE as planned but the painter didn’t do the best job. I can see loads of areas that the paint needs to be touched up on. :/ But like Pati said, “this is the best you get with the money you gave” which wasn’t a whole lot of money considering cheap Mexican labor here. ;p Yes, I exploited. Sue me. I did pay three times the market rate though. I swearrr I did. The painter dude was so happy that he is coming back again tomorrow to touch up the walls that he messed up on. I don’t know if it will ever be the same again. *sigh*oh well. The consolation is that it’s only paint and when I have more money to waste on aesthetics, I’d get some professionals to do up the entire house. :)

For now, I leave you with a thought that Pati said yesterday which sums up our experience of the new house. When falling into bed (that we’ve had for over a year now) last night, he mumbled, “this bed feels much softer in this house than it did in that apartment” and fell asleep instantly.

Ah bliss! :)

But … maybeee

Maybe it was the scrumptious food that I cooked for dinner that showed its effect by inducing hallucinations and a quick restful sleep. Maybe. Just maybe. Ahem, this is when you admire and applaud my paranormal cooking skills. Thank you. :D

And oh yes, a belated thanksgiving to all of you who cared to celebrate and eid mubarak to the rest who are celebrating it either today or tomorrow. Cheers all. :)

Ah this is what labor pains must feel like!! :(

Going through the process at the mo. Delivery’s getting closer. In other words, we’d soon be settled in. In a week or so. Packing stuff and taking it along for now. Oh it’s not very enjoyable. Especially when your allergies are at their worst behavior ever!

- complaining roo – :+

I took this photo (with phone camera) when Pati’s sister and her 3 year old son were visiting us a couple of months ago. I am sure that you can guess who the human-bird is ;) but the birds on the wall: the bigger one (the painting) is Pati’s and I took the other photo in New York near Statue of Liberty. Strangely, Pati had painted this bird before I took the photograph. It’s amazing how similar the two came out to be. :) Trippy eh?

… who frequently attempts to kick you off the bed in her sleep is as risky as sleeping with the enemy.

Poor Pati. :(

No, not the load of crap that was recently passed out as a film by Bollywood yet again.

(Yikes!! That didn’t sound good at all, did it? haha)

Blue is the color that ‘I’ chose to paint ‘our’ bedroom in ‘our’ new house.

(Please note the stress on the pronouns.)

Blue was an easy decision.

Thanks to HGTV (which has been excessively watched at the R&P household lately). :D All designers on TV say that it is the best color for a bedroom since it is a cool and a refreshing color which is supposed to have a relaxing effect on dwellers who paint their bedroom blue. Since TV people say it, it must be true. ;D

So, blue it was. :)

Just like that.

Who knew doing up a house would be so easy?

(Oh no no, not so fast, Miss Roopie. Trouble is yet to begin.)

And it did …

… when I (with P in tow) confidently walked into a paint store to pick up two gallons of blue for my future bedroom. I didn’t think that there would be many choices at all. I mean, how many blues could possibly be there? Sky blue, turquoise blue, teal blue, blue blue, dark blue, navy blue, … a couple more … that’s about it rite? Nuh-uh-uh-uh roopie, how could you be so daft?

There were far more blue there than I could care to count! Some with a tinge of gray, some with hues of green, some bordering violet, some lighter, some darker … a whole array of them that had me muddled within seconds! All me poor confidence drained down to me weakened ankles. I was deep in blues before I knew it (pliss pardon cliche). :D What next, you ask? Well, as always in times of need, one should not shy away from asking help.

I did not shy either. I asked for help.

Are you thinking that I approached a consultant in the paint store for assistance? Ho Ho Ho! How off can you be!?!  Who needed their expertise when I got my darling husband rite by my side? Sure he was engrossed with net surfing on his phone but who better to ask than the man who promised to be by my side in my rough times in not just this birth but next seven too!?

Me: Pati (in a low voice that you’d normally use in a public place)

P: (doesn’t hear me)

Me: Pati! (voice still at the same volume as before but with some urgency in it)

P: (unfazed)

Me: (a tad louder this time accompanied with a stern stare in my eyes) P_____(his name)!!!

P: (looks up from his phone like he was shocked out of a deep slumber) Wha.. what, pari?

Me: Help me pick a blue please.

P: Sure. (puts his arm around me to show that he cared about the decisions that ‘we’ make for ‘our’ house uh huh)

Me: How is this blue? (pointing at a blue swatch)

P: I like it.

Me: hmmm How is this? (pointing at another one)

P: I like it.

Me: (still looking at the same swatch but with raised eyebrows) Do you?

P: No, I don’t.

Me: (looking up at P’s face now) But you said that you like it?

P: Umm all blues are blue for me though. I like it if you like it and I don’t if you don’t. (he smiled generously with his eyes twinkling with love as he tightened his grip around my shoulders to show me that he was there for me – do you see me rolling my eyes yet????) :||||

Me: Gawd, P, I want to know YOUR opinion if you want to help me.

P: But that is my opinion.

Me: What opinion and on which one?

P: The one you that you have in your hand (referring to the blue I had raised my eyebrows at); I don’t like it.

Me: hmm but it might go well with the mahogany blinds that we have ordered for the window.

P: Yes, it might.

Me: It’s not bad actually. It’s quite good in fact if you see it in a different light. We should get a sample and see how it would look on the wall. Are you sure that you don’t like it cuz if you don’t, then there is no use wasting time even looking at a sample?

P: Oh no no, I like it.

Me: (I could no longer suppress squeals of laughter that only emanate after you’ve given up on a situation and you laugh at yourself to bust stress cuz if you didn’t, you’d hit your head on a wall so hard that you’d break the wall. I swear I did try to keep my laughter sealed up and give him a nice screaming instead. Too bad the man is cute. ;p)

So yeah, we I decided on the same blue now. Sample was purchased. It was painted in the bedroom on the wall behind the door where it wouldn’t be seen. It was seen in different lights during the day and was settled on. I don’t know about it being ‘cool’ or ‘refreshing’ but it surely isn’t irritating and I am quite content with that. :D

Blue is blue after all.

Isn’t it?

;)

frig and more!!!!

I just wrote a longgg post explaining my absence and wordpress froze on me!! Is there no justice in this world? This is not fair! I vehemently protest!!! Isn’t wordpress automatically saving drafts anymore? Because I don’t find it in my drafts either! Disgusting. :( I am so upset. I come back after so long and this happens. I guess wordpress is upset with me. :D As must be you. I have no energy in me to rewrite that post but I can summarize it to you in three words: I am SoRrY!  I am. But I had to leave. Blogging was getting a bit too overwhelming for me. I needed a break. And one day, I … quit. I walked away. Simply and quietly. And didn’t log back into this blog until today. It has been much over a month now. I owe you a longer explanation, I know, and I did write it out too but, as luck would have it, it’s somewhere lost in the tunnels of cyberworld. :+

Thank you so much for your concern to all of those who asked for me. :) I am much better now than I was two months ago. A few circumstances were such that needed me to be away from here. My sanity was much under question. By me of course. :D I needed to get the screws and bolts of my head back together before coming back on here and unscrewing yours. Talking of screws and bolts, our house is ready to be moved into!!! Yes yes, that quick. It started on August 14th and we signed possession on November 12th! How fabulous is that!?? We are moving in gradually. We are there every evening in any case. Can’t stay away! :) Can’t wait until when I’d be spending day in and day out there. This weekend, party’s on me at the new place. Would you like to sneak a peek???

Here we go :) … I left you with this in September:

And now:

:) Yep, that’s Pati in the last photo. Haha. Looks enthralled, does he not?

For the amusement of those who missed Pati stories, the man’s head must be an amalgamated mass of copper wires, circuit breakers, modems, routers … whatever electrical/techy sounding name you can think of. We are quite sure that is the case although we are not quite sure about what component is in exactly what proportion though. We can’t even risk getting his head MRI-ed fearing that our health insurance may not cover breakage costs of the machine after it senses all the aforementioned clutter where it is accustomed to seeing a chhota sa nanha sa human brain in normal majority of people.

So today’s story goes as such … We got Vonage today. Yes, the phone line through internet. Yes, the same one with unlimited calls to US, Canada and India. Yes Yes, that. Surprizingly, voice quality is excellent. We are quite pleased at 25 dollars a month. I thought he’d be satisfied with the deal as well. But no. Right now, he’s running tests to dial through his Iphone and making calls to my cell phone using Vonage as a carrier somehow. Umm you would think that picking up the regular phone and dialing would take just as much effort as picking up his Iphone and dialing, isn’t it? That’s what my chhota sa nanha sa human brain says. But no, the machine feels differently. I told you I married a machine. :+ No further comments.

And jes, please don’t forget to welcome the ‘me/us’ back!!!! :D Love you too.

I have to have to … rather MUST … post this rightaway.

I am in my bed at the mo. Just woke up. Saturday morning. And Pati came into the room with Parul’s Bringing up Vasu: That first year.

Omg, yes.

Why am I hyperventilating??? Well, because I had mentioned the book to him in passing a while back. I had told him that I love Parul’s blog and that I’d like to read her book but never got around to buying it because of various stuff going on at the mo; his family being here et al.

And he remembered that …

And he surprized me with it …

Omgomgomg, how lovely!!!!! :))))

Thanks Parul!! :D In some indirect way. I owe you a review. :)

Every morning when I go to the studio around 7 AM, I chat with the security guard at the building entrance and the building’s maintenance manager who is often at job that early as well. Both of them are my good chat-buddies, I can say. Today, as usual, I ran into the maintenance manager again. He took the same elevator as me. Normally, we just joke around about random stuff, chuckle a while, and say our goodbyes. Today, something different happened. He dropped his cell phone by accident and leaned over to pick it up. When he did that, his locket slipped out of his shirt and hung outside; It had a picture of a young soldier.

“Your son?” I asked expecting a proud look on his face.

Instead, his eyes that I’ve always seen laughing turned dark and brooding.With the same grim expression, he pointed towards the roof of the elevator.

“With God?” I tried to speak his words for him.

He nodded. I’d never seen him quiet before.

“Where …?” (‘Where did it happen?’ is what I meant to ask but I couldn’t find the words myself.)

He didn’t understand my question. “Yes, with God,” he replied in a voice that couldn’t resist choking up.

“Yes, I am sorry … but where did it happen? Iraq?” I said as softly as I could.

“Yes”, came an almost inaudible reply.

I had no words after that.

It was he who smiled at me first. I smiled back. And then he said something funny and I did my best to fake a laugh. Thankfully, I’d reached my floor by then. I stepped out of the elevator and waved back at a man in his fifties (or older) who despite having lost his child was smiling at me with the best he had.

And that’s how I started my day.

Humbled, quietened, and amazed with the survival strength of my friend.

Just a few days ago, I heard on TV that there have been 4258 casualties in Iraq up until now since the beginning of the war in 2003. It felt terrible thinking that so many young men and women lost their lives and so many families lost their children for a purposeless war. But it also had me thinking that I didn’t know anyone who had lost someone in the Iraq war. It’s ironic that I finally met someone so soon after I was thinking about the same and, no, it did not feel good at all.

I have two cousins in the US army: both girls. One of them is deployed in Iraq at the moment. So far so good, and I hope and pray that it always stays that way. It’s a scary thought knowing that your loved ones are always in a danger zone. My respects go to those thousands and millions of families who have sent their children overseas to fight a war that rich #$#$#, who we vote into power, decided on sitting in the comforts of their orthopedic chairs in their cozy boardrooms chugging down beer obviously.

When I got back home today after the show, I told Pati that I finally know now as to why I don’t meet anyone who has lost a family member in Iraq. It’s because a good majority of these kids come from blue-collared family backgrounds. The same immigrants, the same colored people that some of the politicians and news channels who have a racist agenda continue to attack are the ones fighting these wars for the same politicians who attack them.

Irony at its best.

But this post is not to discuss the pros and cons of political policies and decisions. I don’t want to do that on this blog at the moment. Plenty going on in real life that demands energies that I can’t spend here getting involved in heated – yet informative – discussions. Maybe soon we shall fight blogging wars for causes – social or not – again. Inshallah.

Through this post, I just wanted to share the incident that happened with me this morning … and maybe that’d light up your thinking and/or empathy nodules too as it did mine?

Also, RIP Patrick Swayze. :|

Life truly does go on, eh?

Oye guess what? I’m going to share a nugget of trivia with you that you might not have read anywhere before. It’s easier to go North from South than it is vice versa. Ahem. “Whaaa”, that’s probably what you’re screaming in your head at the mo. :D

Well well well, my mother in law (god bless her; she is a sweet and a heart) is visiting us these days. She’s a full-on South Indian cuisine expert. Obviously, you say. She has X number of years of experience behind her. Then there is the Punju me with my x number of months of experience of cooking a fusion of this and that. I can take any cuisine cooked any which way but when it comes to desi food, it HAS to be Punju style. Full shtop. I can handle South Indian shtyle daal-sabzi for one day, two day, but third day, I begin to get cranky and start throwing childish tantrums where I have to be lured to dining table with toys as a bait. At that point, I NEED my tarka!! Full and final! As they say in des, I am like this only! Pshh.

So in order to avoid any such tantrumish situations, I’ve devised a way to keep my Punju taste-buds happy in the midst of all the multicultural cooking that’s going on in our house these days. The strategy goes as such: Amma cooks daal and sabzi her style, everyone but me eats, and I add cumin, ginger and garlic tarka to my portion. Tain tain taiiiinnnn!!! :D How EASY and FABULOUS IS THAT!!! Saves me the work of cooking!!! And I get to please my tastebuds too!! :D

Don’t get me wrong … mother in law is a fabulous cook … I absolutely love her food over any South Indian restaurant food I’ve ever eaten … but c’mon guys, a kuri’s gotta have that garlic and ginger kick to her daal after a day or two, innit!!!

Without digressing more, point of the post is that it’s so much easier to ADD tarka and convert a South Indian daal to a North Indian daal … but how would you reverse the process, kaaliaa? :D :D :D Unless you add imli to any south indian preparation, most of them can be perked up (or down as you might perceive it) to a Punju palate. The reverse can’t really happen with that ease. How are you going to remove tarka from tarka daal, bhai log? :D

Ah I think I am liking this multicultural wedding deal. It makes you much equipped with worldly knowledge that might come in handy when you are fighting off demons that attempt to destroy this world in our lifetime.

Now you can pliss thank me for this piece of life-saving important post in the comment space. :p