Run down of 2011

Like every year...here are the highlights of my 2011...I had written this down before I left to California but had no time to edit it or make sure I got everything right while I was running from city to city. So a delayed year end culminatory post...

• January was fun. Babs got to spend a lot of time with her cousin who spent a couple of weeks with us. We were at the mall everyday playing in the play area.
• February was the coldest month of the year. We had five snow days and spent a whole week indoors. I had to get creative with keeping Babs busy. 
• We did Holi for the first time with Babs in a big way. She had a great time with her best friend and us with her parents and I am beginning to enjoy getting colored up. Then of course I had another birthday. A Birthday where I thought I was a year older than I was...that was a pleasant surprise.
• April was a trip to Chattanooga to meet the parents and NC to meet with the older bro. We rented a cabin, stayed in the Smokies and drove all the way to the coast to meet up with the other brother and did all that in one week. It was super fun.
• May we spent a weekend in Austin after a long time with some very close friends. It was fun catching up and seeing the kids bond.
• I was trying my best to save myself from the heat and kept low through the summer. Babs and I did attempt at playing some tennis on good days but most of the days we were stuck indoors doing whatevers.
• In July we celebrated the fireworks with her cousins and friends atop our office parking lot enjoying the view and fun.
• August, was the fun month with the trip to NJ/NY and made tons of memories there.
• September had busy weekends
• October, the Babs and G both turned a year older and we celebrated it on the same day one after the other until I was completely exhausted and the word Party made me gag.
• November saw us taking the amazing trip to Oklahoma...
• December made me re-bond with a very good friend whom I thought I had lost. And of course the fun trip to SFO, LA and Vegas before we welcomed the New Years!

The year 2011 was definitely not as busy as the other years but it saw a new Babs. A grown up girl who had started to sleep in her own room. A girl who was open to trying out Mac & Cheese, or chicken nuggets. A Babs who still wanted to go back home or eat Dal and Rice. A Babs who had her first Ballet Recital, started to write, started to read...A Babs who was my very own 4 year old, with a personality that I am beginning to love, to enjoy and get frustrated with too...Looking for many more new discoveries in the New Year!

Happy 2012 everyone! 

Love

ART

Posting for December 2011

As I browsed through the Washington Post page I realized how soonly we are approaching the end of 2011. Every thing everywhere seems to be winding down to "The Best of..." It freaked me out that 2011 came and left so soon. I will not add 2011 to my best year in my life but then looking back, it was not that bad at all. A few ups and downs but majority of it was flat and then I realized that I was happy in 2011. So, I sat down to wonder which year as being my saddest? I could not. Every year had it's share of sucky points and then its share of happy points. My mind randomly tried to blank out every sucky point and only place the bright ones above. I was happy. I assured myself I was a happy person.

Obviously, it does not end there...brain has this funny thing, it starts rummaging through past once it realizes that there was more than what met the eye...I remembered 1995...It was the year I had to choose college. Those few days was very stressful, for reasons I do not wish to write. I remembered 2008, the year where both G and Babs took amazing turns at making me spend most of the year in the hospital. I remembered 2005...again, cannot write why but I it was bad...I clearly remembered giving my 10th boards in 1993 and praying every day for 2 months that I pass in Hindi. It was stressful. Oh! How I hated Hindi and to think that now I speak it every breathing moment...well almost...

Awesomely, as I browsed through sadness, I still continued to remember only the happy times. Like the time we moved to Chennai in 1989 and meeting my BFF's K & S the same year. The year 2000 when I moved to a different country. 2005...when we got married in a raining Chennai...The year 2010 when I visited friends in EU. The year 2007 when my daughter was born. The year 1995, when I chose the college and I was happy with it...in spite of every thing. The years from 1993-1995 when K and I re-discovered friendship. The year 1993 when N and I became friends. The year 1992 when Ramachandran Sir and I met for the first time...and so much more

Well ya...more things to write about happy memories because I stopped after listing only a handful...a few sad ones too but then what is life without salt and pepper? So here is to all of us for chewing down another year like sugarcane and spitting out the bad images. Happy 2012 and hopefully more fun memories than bad ones to make.

Love
ART

My first ever project in my first year in Architecture school was to design a Children’s bedroom. We were given a room dimension and we had to add architectural as well as interior elements to make the room as kid friendly as possible. I chose to design a bed for the child that was built-in but slightly raised off the ground making it cozy while being adventurous. I don’t remember many other details now, fifteen years later, but I remember one thing. I wanted to add fluorescent stars and a moon stuck on the ceiling which would glow in the night when the lights are off. Seriously this was fifteen plus years ago when getting your hands on anything fluorescent in India was impossible. I loved that idea, to feel like you are sleeping under the sky. I don’t know if Babs will ever know what that is like, the feeling, the soft wind wiping your face now and then, the rays of the sun literally waking you up, ethereal, but I wanted to simulate that feel…when I was in school.

Yesterday as I lay in the room staring at the room with Babs tugging on my ear it came back to me. I saw the ceilings lit up, with stars. Stars that took over every surface in the room, small and big, constellation, it was the night sky in her room. My first year in architecture school came back to me. I went through college life in the few minutes I lay there waiting for her to drift away. Simple things in life trigger powerful emotions and hidden away memories, like an odd tune, or a color, a smell and this time for me it was seeing the stars on the ceiling. Something I had wanted to do so long ago and I had completely forgotten about it in the mad rush to make a life. It made me happy that at least one of my ideas have happened and my daughter was enjoying it, with me.

Unlike my fluorescent stars  These stars came out a turtle that projected stars in your room in the dark. I had used it for her first year and somehow it had gotten hidden behind the amount of toys that she had collected. Randomly a couple of weeks ago Babs had pulled it out her box and she wanted to know what it was. Together we played with it, changing colors, projecting it inside the comforter to have all the stars within our hands and then out into the room. It was fun and now has become a part of our daily "lying down with Babs before she sleeps" routine. I am loving it.

Love

Starry ART