Over Tired and Under Caffeinated

I woke up just before the buzzer sounded. It was a quick 6 minutes before it rang through my ears. I slammed my fingers on the snooze button clumsily and quickly decided I didn't want to keep hearing that annoying sound every 10 minutes, so I turned it off.

My body felt weighed down by some invisible force, and it took as much effort to sit up in my bed as it does to coerce an out-of-shape body to lift heavy weights. But I did it.

Sofia's been sleeping later and later every night making it harder every morning to get up and get ready for school. We have to change that.

Already 20 minutes late I got dressed so fast as to inspire my own superhero name and woke Sofia up by the only means possible. I told my groggy-eyed 3-year-old "I'll give you choco pie" (the latest sugar craze in our house!). No sooner had I said that did she open both her eyes and say with a half asleep smile, "OK!"

I sat her on the couch to watch a little cartoon while she joyfully chomped down on her sinfully yummy breakfast treat. I picked out a cute orange plaid skirt with a white shirt and stockings that I bought her over the weekend, but as G and I are noticing more and more, our little chunky monkey has a very fine taste in her clothing and what she likes to wear. So obviously the orange skirt was out. In its place was a longer, princess-flowing blue and white skirt (said skirt also newly purchased). Having neither time nor patience to persuade her that the orange one was just as pretty, I grabbed the blue skirt and put it on her. With almost ninja-like quick movements I succeeded in dressing her from head to toe and whip her shaggy mop of hair into two neat low-hanging pigtails.

With backpack strapped on, she kissed her still sleeping papa and struted over to me with such painfully slow strides that I almost fainted with impatience (patience obviously is not my strongest personal quality).

We rush to the busy Airport Road so packed with morning traffic, and we must've been blessed by Lord Shiva this morning because we found a rickshaw almost instantly that was willing to take us to Koramangala.

The dark clouds hovered with a thick chill making the auto rickshaw ride nippier and more uncomfortable than usual. Glancing down at Sofia's stockings and warm sweatshirt, I was thankful to have dressed her well this morning, unlike myself who was wearing a thin, long-sleeve Indian shirt with jeans and flip flops. I forgot to bring my usual sweatshirt, which would've actually been used today. Damn. Well, there's a lesson to be learned I suppose. Go to sleep earlier!

Anywho, after giving Sofia a goodbye hug and kiss at the front gate of her school before being led to her class, I dragged myself across two lanes of crazy Bangalore traffic, risking life and limb, walking another two blocks away to fill up on a large cup of caffeine and plop myself down on Barista's thankfully unoccupied brown leather bed.... I mean couch :-)

Hello Neighbor!

We have a small corner grocery store in our complex that I often go to ... I go there almost every day or every other day. Yesterday I was just feeling too tired and not in the mood to trek there with my 3-year-old and then something amazing happened! Whoever said laziness was a bad thing didn't know what they were talking about because that's how I found out how to get them to deliver to my door without me having to go downstairs to the security desk to use their "special" phone to call them! For a couple months I've been doing that because someone told me was that I couldn't use my land line phone OR my cell to call them... I had to use one of the complex intercom phones, which only the security guards had. Welll... yesterday I thought, "that can't be right, there must be an easier way!" I tried many different phone combinations from my home phone (putting in, then leaving out, then adjusting the area code) until I finally figured out that I didn't even need to put that in! Hurry for laziness! :)

OK, back to the initial story... I was walking out of my apartment to go get cash so I could pay said grocery store when they arrive at my door step when a really nice lady across the hall opened her door to let her little boy in the house, noticed me and said enthusiastically, "helloooo!". We greeted each other and she invited us in... Sofia was really itching to play with her little boy, so we went in. We bonded quickly and hit it off really well. It was so comfortable and nice chatting with her... both of us trying to catch each other up on our lives as a way of getting to know each other better. She's from Delhi, north India, living here in Bangalore because of work. She recently quit her job when she got pregnant again, and is now a stay-at-home mom just like me! Her husband works for a major Indian airline and since just recently they moved the International airport from 5 minutes away to an hour and a half away, she spends a lot of time alone with her son during the week. She's such an easy-going person and so sweet! We've already made plans to hang out with the kids next week at the bookstore and maybe even today we'll meet up at the playground. I'm really excited about this new friendship and am so thankful that it's come at such a wonderful time :)