Tag Archives: humor

Truesday Tales 3.1

1 Mar

[From around this time, last year]

Q. Which silly goose toots so loudly that he startles himself awake?

A. My silly goose.

And, just like that, we graduate from Newborn to Infant and bid adieu to the Fourth Trimester. I can’t take it, this time whizzing by faster than light. It’s breaking my heart. Slow down, let that baby scent linger!

~

Madness is being passed out on the recliner after a nonstop day of solo caregiving, missing him acutely as his Daddy puts him to bed.

#WhereIsOJAndWhoIsThisFreak #NeedOneMorePeek #BringBackMyBaby

~

‘Tis true, men with Parsi mothers are the yummiest creatures to walk the planet. Case in point:

1) Farhan Akhtar 2) Rahul Khanna 3) John Abraham 4) My son

Q.E.D.

(P.S. Rahul Khanna responded, saying his mother will be absolutely thrilled to hear this. Guess who was absolutely thrilled to hear from Rahul Khanna.)

 

Truesday Tales 2.3

18 Feb

Thursday is the new Tuesday: old jungle saying blogger coming up with new rules.

Let’s just say Mummy is losing a million neurons for every tooth baby sprouts. Onto this week’s Truesday Tales, served up from last year.

~

In which Senor Baby tries to stuff a binky in Mummy’s mouth, since she realized it’s only Tuesday and needs pacifying.

~

In which Mummy informs Baby that Itsy Bitsy Spider probably had a touch of OCD, given his penchant for climbing the darn water spout on repeat mode.

~

In which we deconstruct Itsy Bitsy Spider and conclude that:

a. He is training for a Himalayan expedition

b. He has a touch of OCD

c. He runs a thieving arts academy

d. He is likely to develop identity confusion because Mummy calls him Itsy and Daddy thinks he’s Incy

e. He is not a California resident (hello, down came the rain??)

f. All of the above

g. This family needs help

 

#ThisBabyLife #TheMummyDiaries #WhatDoesYourTuesdayLookLike

Truesday Tales 2.1

2 Feb

[First shared in February 2015]

I stand over him, watching him sleep, gushing about the perfect curve of his cheek, loath to go to bed. Daddy is under the covers with his tablet already, rolling his eyes at Mummy for being this besotted. I ignore him and continue to gaze at Mr. Bean, soaking up every centimeter of his babyness.

Until, something occurs to me and I realize that the pater hasn’t been reading at all. He’s been admiring the 3000 pictures he clicks of our son each morning. While the fruit of his loins is 4 feet away.

But I’m the besotted one. Right.

Truesday Tales 1.2

12 Jan

So it’s the second Tuesday of the new year (yes, already!) and I’m being a good girl and sharing a Truesday Tales snippet as promised in this post last week. If you’ve had similar experiences–or even very different ones, please share! And for those of you who haven’t been through the baby maelstrom, I promise it won’t all be about poo and pee. Only 98.479% of the time. :mrgreen:

[Hashtag #ScatalogicalHeaven]

~

“Projectile peeing should be a bonafide sport at the Baby Olympics. Our son would be reigning raining champion every time.”

~Me to the Boy

Seriously, the kid waters his own face with the accuracy of an archer.

~

Any other bebes with emission quirks out there? Adults NEED NOT apply. Thanks in advance.

The Blogger Formerly Known As OJ

20 Apr

Helloooooo! Greetings from Namibia!

Just kidding.

Or not.

Because SAHMhood is sometimes like being in a desert. Maybe on a desert island. Where you just got done weaving your colorful hammock of artisan rope and are about to climb into it when wait! Laat Saab needs his doodoo-on-the-rocks. Make it a large one. Oh, and could you have that ready in 3.457298 seconds, because there are some pretty pitch-perfect wails coming your way.

So.

I’ve been doing grrrrreat you guys! Just GRRRReat. Training for a marathon and all. Don’t you just love my dedication? We begin training at 6 am (human alarm included in the package deal) and basically drop dead after Diaper #7. The obstacle course, where I get to skip over Blue Ellie and Hormuz the Horse in a bid to dash toward Moaning Myrtle’s just-born twin is where I truly shine. I even have one ankle left to prove it!

And in other news, we now have a Very Valuable Cooking Aunty. Seriously, that’s her name. Or not. I can’t share it with you because then you’d take her away from me and I’d be left to wallow in my dal-less state. Cooking Aunty is a proper Poon-jabbi, so the Boy, drawing on his Dally childhood, educated me about the ways of Them Up Nawth. Apparently, I need to address everything with a ‘jee’. But Cooking Aunty looks at me funny when I ask her not to add the Dhaniajee to the Bainganjee. Why jee? Am I blundering jee? Me, the poor heathen from Bombayjee.

Cooking Aunty firmly notified me that she is ‘vag’. And I’ve been hurling all 700 lbs of puppy fat at that imagery, but it won’t budge from my head. Or ‘had’. You pick, jee. In the meantime, we’ll continue eating…you-know-what jee.

Oops, there stirs my Pork Chop. I have 6 seconds to share the rest of my exciting life with you:

6. I subscribed to Birchbox, received my first box in March, and OMIGOD YOU GUYS! The Boy just got bumped to Love of My Life position #3. You wants this product. You needs this product. You totalutely musts this product. Review coming up soon! (10 years is ‘soon’ if there are no posts in-between. Technically speaking.)

5. I had this divinity last Thursday. And walked the streets of San Francisco LIKE A NORMAL PERSON (a.k.a. Carrier of One Small Handbag). Am I shouting? Could you plug those ears? This could get out of hand.

4. I’m attending what promises to be an interesting event at Santa Clara’s University’s de Saisset Museum this week. The universe and its grandfather(jee) knows about my fascination with the partition, so this should come as no surprise:

Voices of Partition

Thursday, April 23, 2015, 6:30 p.m.

Nearly 2 million people died and over 15 million were uprooted during the 1947 Partition of South Asia. Explore the Partition through a free screening and crowd-sourced survivor footage followed by witnesses sharing their stories. This program is co-presented by the 1947 Partition Archive and the de Saisset Museum with support from API Chaya.

 

3. The Ghost of Reader Past:

The Ghost of Reader Present:

women-and-weight-loss-tamasha

The Ghost of Reader Future:

2. I need cropped white denims for the Spring that don’t look like Jack the Ripper went blade-happy on them. Gimme label/store/link suggestions, y’all!

 

1. We made it all the way to #1! Woot!

Okay, that was my downtime for the decade. See you in 2025!

Just kidding.

Or not.

As they say in OJville,

bye-shy, jee!

*poof*

A Month of Milestones

15 Jul

I’ve been terribly remiss about blogging (as is apparent, how clever of me to point it out!) and am going to blame it squarely on eustress: good stress caused by positive life changes, in this case a new job, a visit from family, travel, several celebrations, and the contradictory urge to romance my couch and see no one but my Boy.
With that long-winded excuse out of the way, let’s collectively acknowledge some fun milestones in this, the best of months:

  • July 1: A bloggy birthday! Wisdom Wears Neon Pyjamas turned 6 and I did nothing but blow my blog a kiss. Finally, I understand all those couples who have to halt a moment and calculate how many years they’ve been married. The ones whose limbs are extensions of each other and those who think in twos. Not-so-Little Blogette and I, we’re at that comfortable juncture. I love her like an old shoe. She knows I’ll be back. I’ve been coming back for 8 and a half years. But in the meanwhile, there are sparkly heels to be tried. Oh, and speaking of heels…..
You likey?

You likey?

  • July 7: On this day in 1994, a girl tapped my shoulder as I sat on a class bench in front of her. “Excuse me, are you OJ?” she asked. “No, I’m Janice!” I replied huffily, knowing full well that she knew my name. What didn’t penetrate my thick skull was that she was trying to start a conversation. A lesser mortal would’ve run for the hills. She, she came back, and for the last 20 years has been my dearest friend, soul sister, and rock of Gibraltar (no connection to the one I couldn’t visit!) Her name means “Jewel of the World” and my lord, how she has shone me through my darkest hours. We now know why we weren’t given sisters: having each other, a birth sister would be a mere appendage.
  • July 9: Daddy blew out a ring of candles on a cake brought by SOMEBODY ELSE. HMPH. That’s right, snatch cake-sending rights away from your first-born now. That dethroned monarch business just never ends. But my Daddy, he had a birthday, and oh how the world is wealthier because his goodness dwells in it! (Still throwing that corner tantrum, though. )
  • July 25: SO excited about this upcoming birthday, not only because hell-0, it’s a BIRTHDAY, what’s not to be excited about, but also because it is another important milestone. Champagne and cake all around! Would it be terribly inappropriate to wear a huge party hat, get one of those tooter horns and be my very own one-woman parade? No?! See, this is why I love you guys. :mrgreen:
Here, make do with the cake our SIL baked on July 4

Here, make do with the cake our SIL baked on July 4th

~

In Other News…
When the Boy’s brother got married last year, I heard a strange word for the first time: “co-sister”. Apparently, in the south of India, this term denotes women married to brothers. Being a similar combination of un-Southern and irreverent, my sister-in-law (the one of cake fame above) and I cracked up over the term, came up with instagram hashtags for it, invented a co-sister ghetto sign, and even harmonized “Hey sister, co-sister” (Lady Marmalade). Can you tell I love her? Will I be forever banned from kanjeevarams and mallige for this? *beats chest at the thought of no more bisibele bhaath in her life and eyes some Angus divinity in its place*

~
My 18-month-old niece called me this morning. She is currently visiting family in Texas, saw her mother’s phone lying around, found my contact on it, dialed, and chirped “Hi OJ Mami!” When my uterus finally un-puddles itself from the floor, I can’t wait to watch her in mid-toddlerhood-almost-preteen action.

~
We’ve been taking visiting friends and family to this Gujarati thali place that serves the most amazing shrikhand and khichdi, among other delicacies, but I won’t be going back for a bit, because the last time I had 5 helpings of khichdi and they started looking at me funny and avoiding my gaze and I’m mortified that I might have eaten them out of business. This redness of face isn’t rosacea, my friends, it’s ignominy.

How do you solve a problem like more khichdi?

How do you turn a seventh helping down?

How do you walk away from yummy khichdeeeeeeee?

Ignore the glutton, she’s just being a clown.

 

~
Swimming: I’ve been the resident hippo lately, breast-stroking gently through cool, turquoise waters on these warm summer days while our American neighbors wear toddler-sized swimwear, chug beers, burn themselves to a crisp, toss their hair and pose, and do everything but swim. Most puzzling, this behavior.

~
Books: Sindh: Stories From a Vanished Homeland, by Saaz Aggarwal, and To Marry An English Lord, by Gail MacColl and Carol McD Wallace. Both recommended for history buffs, albeit very different eras and geographies.

~
Heard in the OJ-Boy home:
Me: I think I’m getting food-averse. I don’t think I’m so interested in it anymore.
The Boy: Good. Now we can buy a house next year.

How large can I make the font for HMPH??? 😡

Adios, my friends, pardon my future busybeeness, although I will put up a recently-published article before the month is out and would love to hear your thoughts!

Spiritual Sundays

7 Apr

The Boy and I, by virtue of living in crunchy granola California, have turned increasingly spiritual and high-minded. Afloat on an ocean of good intentions and noblesse, we invite you to share this beautiful, light-radiant journey with us as we experience it each Sunday:

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Our first act of worship feeds the soul (and other assorted body parts). Gently-poached eggs rest calmly upon a pair of perfect crabcakes, drizzled with hollandaise and a smidgen of paprika. Completing the holy trinity is a side of herbed potatoes that can be best described as divine. The benediction virtually spills out of us and far in the distance, angels tune their harps.

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Consider it your fabulous fortune that you are about to be enlightened: Did you know Zoroastrians in India worship 3 grades of fire at 2 different kinds of fire temples? Agyaris, temples of the lesser fire, are places of worship where the fire consists of only 11 different varieties (from the homes of artisans, farmers, soldiers and civil servants, priests, etc.) Atash Behrams, temples of the greater fire, house a perenially-burning entity (as does an Agyari) that is the combination of 16 unique fires. Why am I sharing this today? Because the picture above is our version of an Agyari. Prostrating before Tiffany-blue platters and paying homage to lemon-print cushions, the Boy and I worship Our Lady of Immaculate Homesteads.

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Our next pilgrimage takes us to this vibrant green wood, a good indication of afterlife beauty. The hum of humanity falls away, and all at once, we are enveloped in A Great Calm. Here, we rest on this bench and ponder Questions of Significance. Like whether we should have ordered one pancake less that morning. Or whether almonds should be coated in dark chocolate or caramel. If our stomachs weren’t that loaded, we would feel our souls levitate.

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Turning our attention to more earthly pursuits, we gaze upon the wonder of this valley. Deer watch us from a distance, and so pious are we that not once do we discuss the venison cutlets at the Rendezvous in Pondicherry. Somewhere beyond those purple-hazed mountains lies an abbey that I would run into after trilling about hills and music and my heart wanting to sing every song it hears.

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At the entrance of our favorite forest, we take a moment to breathe. Heady from the oxygen-and-pine-needles high, we resemble whirling dervishes, spinning our sins away. Our veneration, friends, is about to get intense.

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The forest floor greets us, an emerald ocean of universal compassion, swathing us in its cool, unjudging love. It is the natural equivalent of the Hugging Amma, and we demonstrate obeisance by furiously capturing it for posterity. This is one deity that must grace our humble home.

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Presently, we chance upon a stream, and proceed to wash away our sins by wiggling toes and splashing each other’s sinful faces. Did you know we need to wash before we enter the inner sanctum of an Agyari or Atash Behram? For every cleanliness-obsessed Parsi, there are three rules on how to scrub behind the ears. Heaven seems just around the bend, as we are tempted to float on our backs and sail away to a parallel plane, where our spirit guides dole out personalized M&Ms in silvery gauze gift bags.

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But then, gentle reader, we chance upon this. And our wretched spirits soar to the tops of these cloud-cossetted trees, awed by this magical Land of Wishing Trees, and never mind the mixed Blyton references, have you ever seen a 5’9″ woman this dwarfed??? Even as our bodies shrink and our souls expand, we whisper gratitude into the ether and thank the universe for landing us plonk in the middle of this paradise.  Newly awash in this unique redwood incense, we turn homeward, blessed for being able to choose our definition of spirituality, and for this, the best of Sundays.

 

Of Ghosts & Reliability

19 Mar

As a child, I could set the numerous antique clocks in our home by Nana’s schedule. At 7.30, she left for work. At precisely 1, she was back. Lunch was at 1.15, and tea was on the table at 3. By 3.30, she had begun to eye the aforementioned clocks as Chandra, washer of utensils and bathrooms in our home, had failed to stick to her arrival time yet again. On some occasions, she waddled in a mere half hour late. On others, there was no sighting at all. But we knew to wait a good hour before we gave up and reassigned her chores to other house help. This behavior never failed to elicit a caustic remark from my not-so-gentle grandmother:

“Chandra noh toh bhoot no bharoso!”, Chandra has all the reliability of a ghost.

Pronounced: Bhoo-t (as in toot), no (as in foe), bhur- (as in fur), -oh- (as in go), -so (as in toe)

Since few can claim to discern the inner workings of a spook’s mind, I suppose they must appear rather come-as-you-please to us mortals. Quite inconvenient, yes, but an entire genre of films would collapse if the spirit world gave advance notice of their appearances, not to mention we would never have the pleasure of this song:

Anyhoo, swooping back to ghostly (un)reliability, let’s practice our newly-acquired Parsipanu:

Dolly noh toh bhoot no bharoso. She confirms 6 o’clock and sashays in at a quarter past eight! 😡

You try:

OJ truly has bhoot no bharoso. Sometimes she’ll post every week, and at others, it’s twice a month. 😕

One last time:

Hey, is Behzad coming for the marathon?

Who knows if he’ll wake up? Enoh toh bhoot no bharoso!

~

Who in your life has bhoot no bharoso?  And now that you are armed with this wonderfully evocative phrase, whom will you use it on?  Tell, tell! Bhoot stories welcome too! 😉

Vivaldi’s Fifth

28 Feb

There are actually 5 seasons in America: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and California.

We just keep that last one under wraps to avoid being lynched by the poor sods in the rest of the country.

😛

St. Valentine: Smartly Single and A Patron of the Plague

14 Feb

This Valentine’s Day, because we’re sodding balls of mush, because the OJ-Boy romance is far from typical (who gets a book on financial investing on the very first V-Day of their relationship? I do!), and because it is my moral duty to educate you about the reality of this cotton candy-filled, chocolate-centered, gooey-as-snot emotion, here is a compilation of my Twitter hashtag ‘Things Marrieds Say To Each Other’. I don’t guarantee sappy, puppy-eyed romance. But I do promise this: Someone, somewhere was made for your sense of humor. And blessed are those who land them.

~

“I’m an equal opportunity farter.”

“I love how effective our communication is. The morning greeting beautifully boils down to one word: “COFFEE!”

“I have photographic rights. When we married, you signed off on them.”

“Isn’t Cheteshwar Pujara that Bihari festival?”

“I never find anything soulful. Except maybe a shoe.”

“I will share my life but not my plate /The depth of my heart isn’t quite that great.”

“My needs are simple. Coffee and a little Tiffany.”

“You had me at correct punctuation.”

“Oh good lord, don’t pass out! That’s not my toe lying on the carpet, it’s the Band-Aid!”

“You’re my ardhaangini. So I get half of every cupcake.”

“That’s your ‘We’re getting late’ sigh.” ~   “Yeah, and…?”   ~    “Aaaaargh!! I can identify your various sighs!”

“You’re too far away.” Apparently, six inches of separation is terribly much.

You know that awkward phase between sizes?”  ~   “Hmm.”    ~   “You don’t know! You’ve always been 1 size! Just PRETEND!”

“Ear-digging can be a dangerous business. I just found chocolate shavings in mine.”

“‘Bheeda’ and ‘eeda’ rhyme. That’s proof that they’re meant to be together.”

“My camera, my house, my wife,” he says, when I accuse him of being a stalker. Damn such sound logic!

“It’s MENstruation, not womenstruation, and yes, you can tweet that.”

“You’re so much more than a pretty face.” ~ “You’re so much more than a wild imagination.”

“Sometimes people are broken and imperfect, you can’t reject them because of it!” ~  “Baby, it’s a WAFFLE.”

“I think I’m getting bucktoothed.”

“What do you call someone whose farts knock people out?”  ~  “What?”  ~  “Gaseous Clay.”

“See you in my dreams,” he says, blowing a kiss from his pillow.”Oh, and make dhansak while you’re there.”

“I’m not cooking dal. Then you’ll have a bad air day.”

Me (digging into his IHOP pancakes): “Babe, these are two of the three pillars of our marriage.”

“I’ve had better luck finding a spouse than a coffee table.”

“In this new year, may you realize the critical importance of coasters.”

“I’d say your eyes are my windows to the world, but now you have Twitter.”

“Ooh, baby, you’re so fly!” ~ Me to the Boy every time he takes a plane.

“Even the inside of your nose is cool and nice.”

“I share my LIFE with you. Now you want my mawa cake as well?!”

“It’s so hard to walk around hearing the Canon all day!”  ~ “Wow, that must be loud.”  ~ “I mean Pachelbel’s.”  ~ “Oh!”

“Bless you…now that you’ve sprayed your germs on the wall.”

“That’s it. We’re moving to a nudist colony. I’m not doing the laundry anymore.”

“Repeating verbatim what your spouse wants you to say.”

~

Happy Sweet-Saint-Whose-Head-Was-Chopped-Off Day! Don’t forget to share the things you tell your beloved in the comments section! 😉