Reading on a Rainy Day

1. Coffee. The husband bought me a Nespresso for Mother's Day and I couldn't be happier with my morning coffee. I've been eyeing this machine ever since I returned from San Francisco because its coffee is exactly how I like my coffee - thick and creamy with a wonderful aromatic flavor. We had tried the Keurig in the past and I hated it. It was barely strong or tasty. This coffee, however, is perfect. 2. Friends who are almost family. A close friend and her daughter have been staying with us this week. They are new to the country and are still working on getting settled. Most of our evenings are filled with movies and there may have been too much icecream and brownie snacking this past week. We've been trying to do something fun even if the weather has been dreary this past week. So most of the outdoors fun has been in the form of shopping. 3. Cape Cod. This trip is technically not until the Memorial Day weekend, but I cannot wait to head up there. I am ke...

Last week, I said that the week was going to be busy. That was quite the understatement. Not only was it busy, it was also a difficult week. Shreya caught something at the end of the previous week. It started as a cold that appeared to get better two days later. However, on Sunday night, she woke up a few times coughing. One day later, she was down with bronchiolitis - something the doctor told us to expect to follow any colds that Shreya gets. So going forward, in addition to getting the boogie wipes ready, we have to make sure the nebulizer is set up and ready to run every time we see that telltale sneeze. This obviously goes without saying - but seeing babies cough or struggle is the hardest thing ever. Work was at its busiest too this week and I struggled to give it a decent amount of attention. This was despite working half day on Monday and taking a day off on Thursday. It took everything I had to not go dancing like Daffy Duck in the rain on Friday singing " Thank G...

Hello, there? It's me, I'm still here. I realize I've been out for almost two weeks now though it feels longer than that - probably because my last four posts were reviews and I haven't put up a personal post in almost a month. I toyed with the idea of taking another week off because things are crazy right now but so much has been going on and if I don't pen this post now, it may never happen next week either. Happy Mother's Day First of all, Happy Mother's Day! This is my first after being a mom and I am feeling all kinds of emotions about this journey so far. Also, nothing makes you appreciate your mom more than being a mom yourself and, especially when the going gets tough on my end, I whisper a few apologies to my mom for anytime I was a pain in her behind. Being a mom is the toughest role I've taken on (and it's only been 10 months so far) but it's also the most most most most.... rewarding experience of my life. Sometimes, I just cannot...

After all the time I spent on my Day in the Life post , I should have realized that a long blogging break was on the horizon. Honestly, it was unplanned. I just didn't have any posts typed up and every free minute I had, I chose to spend it reading. Until the great virus outbreak of last week. Which, I'm excited to announce is now behind me. It took three whole days. That's all. Just three miserable days when all I wanted to do was bury my head in the sand and hope that the world moved on and chores got taken care of. But enough griping for now. We are just done with lunch and settling in for a lazy afternoon. The husband is traveling to Cincinatti this week so I had just dropped him a few minutes ago at the airport. He will be sorely missed but I will gladly take these occasional and short travels over the regular weekly travels that he had to do in our first year of marriage. Besides, my dad is here so I will still have plenty of help with Shreya and food. Remember I...

Currently / 3.27 pm. We just got back from spending the afternoon at a friend's place, where we had some delicious food and plenty of fun. Now, everyone is snoozing the afternoon off, so this is my cue to get some blogging done. Update at 3.33 pm: I guess a cup of tea will go well with writing. Update at 3.41 pm: Of course, the baby has to wake up right this minute. Update at 4.03 pm: Tea's ready and the baby is sleeping again, so blogging continues. This past week  / Has been wonderful. The pace at work has slowed down, enough so that I took a day off on Friday. Getting this long weekend for myself has been nice. I got some things done around the house, I spent a lot of time with Shreya, and I started a new book - Eleanor by Jason Gurley (even if I read only a few pages). I wish I had more time off and I didn't have to go back to work tomorrow but you can't have too much of a good thing. Grateful for / My dad arrived here last week. It has been a long ...

None of the posts I wanted to write this week actually happened. Except for maybe the one review I posted. But I had other stuff I wanted to share that never got written about. So this is going to be the list of all those things and more, if I can remember what all that was. The birthday weekend Last Tuesday was my husband's birthday. However, the party had started during the previous weekend. His brother and wife arrived on Friday night, followed by his best friend, wife, and daughter the following morning. We had a blast last weekend. Games, cooking, outings at the park, cake, and just plain fun. The husband didn't know of these visits until the day before - the surprise was totally worth it. I gave him a telescope for his birthday, since he had been talking about getting one for a long time but been reluctant to actually commit to it. An aside: The husband and I have very different interests generally - Introvert me loves home-bound hobbies like reading, knitting, wr...

So, BBAW happened this week. Although it was a 5-day event, I only posted for two of the days. I had intended to post on Friday as well, but well, it was just fitting that I didn't have time to post about blogger burnout. Still, this week was fun. I discovered a ton of new bloggers and my Feedly is going to curse me for it. It's not like I am great about commenting at the ones I follow but I'll worry about that later. But, I also discovered a ton of new books that I wanted to read - something I wasn't expecting. Not often have books been such a huge part of a blogger event, even though we all blog about books and these events are a result of that love affair with reading. I have been keeping my TBR under control lately because you know, short life, slow reader, life happening, and baby, but I still managed to pile on more books to it. The below are just some of them. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell This is one of those books that many of you raved about. I a...

This is where I am going to ignore the fact that it's been a month since we got back from India. Because I am still working on my posts about that trip. You know how that goes when you don't have time to even get the camera out and gather the photos. Butttttt, I've been working on this post for a while, if not by actually writing it, then by composing it mentally. One of my plans for the trip even before leaving was to visit a certain bookstore when we were in the husband's town and grab books written by Indian authors. I had been to that store (DC books) four years ago and had a vague memory of seeing many shelves of such books. However, when we went this time, we didn't see as many books by Indian authors as I had imagined there would be. That was a bummer but we still got some good books there. A week later, we were in Chennai when we decided to go to another bookstore (Starmark) at a mall. This wasn't in the plans so I am glad this happened because t...

If I had to describe 2015 in three words, I would pick pregnancy, travels, and Shreya. But my reading didn't suffer either. Despite all the reasons I should have been busy in 2015, it was a pretty good year for my books. Life, mostly... January started with me being three months pregnant and finally out of the first trimester nausea. We had celebrated the New Year in DC (interestingly, that's where we were this January 1st as well). The next few months were a haze of work, ultrasound scans, and a feeling of impatience while waiting for the baby. We took a couple of weeks off in March to visit Toronto, Quebec City, and Niagara Falls, where we had a really amazing time. Plus, I brought home a truckload of books, so the trip was productive as well. Mid-June onwards, we started waiting for Shreya, who had her own schedule and would come out only after five weeks. By that time, all the dates that the family was betting on had come and gone. Shreya's first month was probab...

Currently /  We had a rare opportunity to sleep in this morning! I am in shock. We didn't wake up until 8 AM. Yesterday, I woke up feeling like a brick so I'm glad for the extra couple of hours of sleep this morning. This past week / We are in mourning. A very close uncle of mine passed away on Friday after suffering a heart attack earlier in the week. The sad thing was it looked like he was well on the way to recovery and minutes before he actually died, he was drinking tea and chatting with his wife and daughters. We have been feeling so broken this week ever since we heard this news. I hope his family will have enough strength to get through this. Speaking of tragedies, I have way too many people around me suffering right now. A family member had a bypass surgery a month ago only to have the spot infected. Another person is suffering from a life-threatening fungal infection that has destroyed half of his face already. A family friend recently found out she has cancer ...

This weekend I started reading this delightful book, Sleep is for the Weak , that contains tons of parenting essays written by several bloggers. In one of these essays , blogger Risa Green decides to make a New Year resolution to live life as her 55-year old self would want her to. Ever since I read that essay, I have been thinking about what a wonderful perspective that is - looking at yourself as your older self would. There have been times I wish I could turn back time - sometimes to relive a certain day and sometimes to do something differently. But dwelling in the past is not very advantageous, unless you are learning something from it. Reminiscing is good but too much of it can make you upset and not live in the present. But wondering what your older self thinks about you is somewhat inspiring. Twenty years later, the husband and I will be 51. Shreya will be 20 - out of our house and in college. Rue will not be around anymore. Our parents will be in their eighties, if th...

How are you guys doing? It has been a bit too quiet over here these past two weeks though my days weren't anywhere close to being quiet. There has been some mild work drama which has kept me busy at work, my father-in-law is leaving to India today so we have been doing some shopping and packing, and we also made a quick fun trip to DC last weekend. Last weekend's trip was worlds different from the one we made to Williamsburg almost two months ago. Shreya took this road trip well in her stride, she is a champ nurser now so we didn't have to take long breaks, plus we were able to anticipate her needs and decode her cries much better now than we did during the last trip. Moreover, I felt a lot readier to take her on the road. Emotionally, I was stabler - those postpartum blues had bid their adieus long ago. I was happier and eager to be back on our once-semi-regular weekend vacations. This trip did so much good to my moods that I am actually excited about and looking forw...