Paint me blue and nail me down!

 

While the title may sound like something out of an exotic scene in an erotic novel, the content in reality is anything but exotic or erotic!

This post is dedicated to the disastrous adventure of mine, with long nails, that I got on a whim. And of course, as is habit, it had to be the most glaring blue! I love royal blue, and if I had it my way, everything I own, live in, or breathe in would only be royal blue. But alas, I am married to a man who detests any sort of loud colors in anything other than a few pieces of selective clothes. So I have taught myself to survive with the plain and drab colors around me!

It was a Mother's Day treat I promised my mom, myself, and the girls. Off we went to get a mani/pedi. It wasn't a first for any of us, but it certainly was the first time we were all in it together. It was a great way to unwind together. And probably also explains why I got carried away. 

The last time I ever had nails above my nail bed was over a decade ago, precisely, the day I was set up to meet my future husband. I won't lie. From the moment that girl-meeting appointment had been finalized by the family, I spent a few days and a glorious amount of money pampering myself. After all, since the major disaster I had survived in the years leading up to that moment, this was the first time I  was putting myself out there in front of someone, with the intent of getting their attention and hopefully, maybe even consider falling in love. For someone who always claimed that nails speak a lot about a person's personality, that was among the few expensive things I got done for that meeting. From there on, everything happened in the span of a few months. Before I knew it, I was pregnant with our first baby. All the books I read clearly cautioned against getting any infections, so the wary me decided it was time to keep the nails at bay. It was a whirlwind of babies, pregnancies, hospitals, and daily survival since. You know the drill. Amongst all of that, a manicure was never on the list. For a decade. The nails were never allowed to grow, even long enough to feel their presence. It had to be practical, always. I envied the beautiful hands on other people that I saw, but in my head, I always convinced myself that I just wasn't in the right phase of my life for that.

So this Mother's Day, I let my hair down and decided it was time to venture a risk. After all, exactly a day after, I was flying out to be away for a week, on my own. No turmeric or red chilli-based gravy to be cooked for a week. No kids crying to get their hair done exactly the way they wanted. Perfect time as any to give caution to the winds and get me some long, sexy nails. Since it's been a while, I told the manicurist to not clip away the dip nails too much. I was very confident when I told him I love the length. He still decided to get the nails on there with some extra reinforcement. Maybe I sounded confident only in my head. But I left the nail salon, a very happy customer! I beamed. I shoved my fingers in everyone's face the rest of that day. I did nothing else but that. My hands had never looked prettier, and I was vain about it.

Come dawn, I took my neatly packed suitcase and drove to the airport. My fingers never really curled around the steering wheel, because I needed to see my pretty nails even while driving. It was all smooth so far. At the TSA line, I had to get my passport out. No biggie. Done it so many times before..but dang it! Never done it with unusually long nails!!!! Something you should know about me - I am not exactly the most careful person when it comes to my personal belongings. In the past, on my return travel from Germany, where I played in the snow with my passport in my jeans pocket, I had to literally beg the officials to allow me to board my return flight home despite a snow-soaked and partially damaged passport. After hearing this story, one of my wedding anniversary gifts from my husband was a passport pouch. I disliked it much then, but it is honestly one of the most useful things I have ever gotten. Until this fateful day! I am next in line for the TSA verification at the airport, and for the life of me, with those impractical long nails, I couldn't dig my passport out from that pouch, no matter how hard I tried!!!! I panicked, I fretted, I allowed others behind me to go ahead and still continued fumbling so damn hard without success. 

It took a nice gentleman behind me to actually help me out. He must have honestly thought I was the most incapable person in life ever. Or he probably has a wife with long nails! But eventually, he offered to help me get it out. I was embarrassed but extremely thankful. It was either that or miss my flight!

I was fuming. I exited the security line and took my phone to text my husband about the ordeal I just endured. Surprise! I could no longer text. After many futile attempts, I resorted to voice messaging. From there on, this just snowballed. I ended up calling and adding people to group calls because my finger would dial one number and the nail would dial another at the same time. Any forwards or texts I tried to send would inevitably be sent to at least three other contacts, the distance between the tip of my finger and the tip of my nails! I embarrassed myself at every point. Couldn't get my credit card out for payments. Couldn't get to tie my shoelaces when they came undone. Couldn't eat any food that didn't require forks or spoons. Couldn't even hold on to my coffee mug properly without wincing in pain at the nails digging into my skin. Couldn't even be productive at work because typing on my laptop was like learning a new skill. I was at my wits' end with the nails, but pride wouldn't allow me to cut them. After all, I had paid a handsome amount for it and flaunted it so much to my family that it was too late to show regret or remorse. 

Once I was back home, I tried surviving with those damn nails for the weekend, too. But come Monday morning at the gym, when I could no longer lift my precious weights and get a decent workout, I decided enough was enough. Time for that money to go down the drain and for me to finally get some peace of mind. Clipped it away, as hastily as I could. It now looks like a rat chewed on it while I was asleep. Oh! How the mighty has fallen!! My family has teased me about it for days. But I would rather survive that than another minute with those god-awful long nails. 

I have newfound respect for all you wonderful girls out there with such pretty and well-manicured long nails. I hope to be one of you one day. I just don't see that day coming around any time soon. I just cannot allow myself to be pinned down by my nails! Au revoir, my dear nails. Until next time. If ever.

One in, one out and a landing I would rather forget.....

I owe you an apology. If you came here and found the blog inaccessible, that was me. I locked it on purpose, and I am sorry. But I want to explain why.

Remember how I mentioned in a previous post that for me, writing here is like praying? There was a prayer, or rather, a question I needed to release into the universe. One just for me and the universe. Not quite for the world. I needed it to exist here for a day or two. Just long enough to trust that something out there was listening. So I pulled down the curtain. And then I put it back up. That's all it was. 

Honestly, it's not the question that terrifies me. It's the answer that I am not ready to hear. You know the kind of questions I mean. The ones that have been quietly living in the back of your chest for weeks, maybe months, curled up there like something small and warm that you are afraid to disturb. I want to know. And yet some part of me is absolutely certain that the asking will ruin everything. Or worse, the answer arrives, and it's completely devastating. It's nothing. Just me, once again, having built an entire world out of a silence that I filled with everything I wanted to be true. My brain, my gloriously, exhaustingly imaginative brain (Ughh!!!), has done this before. Taken something threadbare and ordinary and spun it into something luminous. Something that was never really there. So then there is only one outcome to it, which is the quiet embarrassment of discovering I have been the only author of the story all along!

What I know about myself, clearly and without apology, is this. I cannot live in the grey. I was built for the certain, the defined, the known. Black and white. Yes or no. Here or gone. Found or lost. Near or far. Real or imagined. The grey doesn't just frustrate me, it unsettles something foundational in me. I become someone who checks for signs in things that are not signs. Guess all I have to do now is to wait for the fog to resolve into something I can name. 

Well, so now that's out of the way, I have more fun things to share.

Ah. Remember when I said I have two of my offspring trying out for the school team? Well, in all my worldly knowledge, I contemplated only two scenarios for the outcome. One, they both get selected. Two, they both don't get selected. So, guess the third option the universe had been quietly saving just for me? One did, and one did not! Now, as a parent, I struggled. Because how in the world could I celebrate the success of one without making the other feel like a failure? I suck at it. I am still trying my best, but I really, truly suck at it. I love them terribly, and I hate that I wasn't farsighted enough to let the younger one try out after a year, when the odds were friendlier. 

Sigh! Every day is a new learning. Humbling and new!

Moving on to my much-anticipated away-from-home-for-work-solo-week. Honestly - drab! 

Work was from 6AM to 7PM. I still had to be up at 4, not to hit the gym but to be ready to hit the road for work. I am in awe of people who work out when away from home base. That is a whole different level of savage. One, clearly, I wasn't. The closest I got to the gym last week was when I stepped out to grab an early morning cuppa starbucks, right beside the gym in the hotel lobby. Could have surely saved myself plenty of space in my carry-on if I hadn't packed all those extra workout clothes! 

And then there was the flight home, which, if anything, only deepened my conviction that I am not meant to be airborne. The landing was nothing short of catastrophic. I remember gripping the armrest, eyes shut, absolutely certain I was moments away from a very unplanned, very personal introduction to the divine. 

But while there, I did still manage to get a stroll by the riverwalk in Chicago. It has always been my favorite thing to do, and like all the other times, I loved it much this time too! Chicago always makes me feel loved. Some places hold you the same way every time, as if they have been keeping a version of you safe there, waiting for you to come back and collect it. I dream of the day I move there and call it home.

For now, I reached home, tired and exhausted, ready to hit the ground running. Only pausing long enough to ask a question and say a prayer.

The messy middle of motherhood!

 Gosh! Being a mom has to be the most challenging role in life ever!

Why aren't there any Nobel Prizes for moms? 

My day starts with 'I love you, Amma, so much. You are the best'. Then around evening it goes to being 'Ughhh..Can you stop it, please?' and by nighttime it is 'Mummmaaa.. you are the worst. I hate you!'

 Every single day. All in a span of 8-9 hours alone! That too, not just from one, but from the two mini humans that I willingly created. Thankfully, the third is still way too young to get on board, but I am sure that's not too far either. 

I am 42 years old. But to date, not once have I had the courage to raise my voice at my mom or dad. 

Yes, I have been frustrated & exasperated plenty and often, but like every other '90s teen, I bury my feelings and move on with my life like nothing matters. Therapy classified these as childhood trauma that remains hidden in my personality. So, like any other confused new generation mom, I decided to break the stereotype and years of generational trauma by promising my kids that their childhood would be very different from mine. Look where it has landed me! I was not prepared for how different my motherhood would be from my mother's and everyone before her!

Don't get me wrong. I love my minis. To bits. Every bit of them. But I just dread knowing that this is what is in store for me for the next 10-15 years! If I am only barely surviving the tweens and pre-teens era, how in the world will I get through teens and adolescence?

Well, in all honesty, I probably could. If all I was doing was just being a mom. But with everything else that I have got going on, I cannot even spend time to take an extra breath, let alone equip myself to be the calm and nurturing growth counsellor my kids need. 

I am living in a space where I have to constantly remind myself that this too will pass. And that I need to cherish and relish every bit of what I have today. Because eventually, their needs and my role in their life will slowly evolve until I become non-existent or irrelevant. I will merely be a guest with a visiting pass in the life they have built. That will probably be when I ache that they want me as much as they do today. 

Wonder where all this is coming from? It is merely the guilt taking over. Plain, stubborn, all-consuming mom guilt. My excitement for the week away is now getting overtaken by this guilt. I hate relinquishing my control. It is like a bone-deep discomfort that comes from years of being the one who knows. Who knows which snack they'll actually eat. Who knows what the bedtime routine needs to look like to avoid a meltdown. Who knows which one needs a little extra reassurance on hard days. That knowledge lives in me, and handing it off, even temporarily, even to someone capable and loving, feels like a kind of loss. I believe that my kids are best taken care of when I am the one in control. Even when that control costs me everything.

I just need to work on convincing myself that letting go for a week isn't abandonment. It's trust. That I'll come back more whole than when I left.

I know for sure that the guilt isn't going anywhere. But I'm going anyway. And if I am such a wreck already, I know that come Monday morning, I am going to be in even worse condition. Because if there is one thing that gets to me more than this, it is my fear of flying! Especially in those teeny tiny tin cans for a short flight. It is a short 90-minute flight to the windy city (my favourite city in this country!). But I am going to be a complete disaster even before I leave home in the morning. Where's the tequila when you need it?? I don't have to be at work until the afternoon! Thank goodness I was sensible enough to not book the first flight out!

A week away!

There is something quietly thrilling about five whole days to myself. No negotiations, no mental checklists running in the background, no one needing anything from me at 11 PM. And the best part? This time, I am not leaving behind a sinking ship. With the most capable extra hands holding things together at home, hands I trust completely, because honestly, I learned everything I know from her, I can actually, truly, exhale.

But let me be clear. This is not a leisure trip. Not a girls' trip. Not even a family vacation. It is a business trip. And those, my friends, are my absolute favorite kind!

I know that sounds strange, so I should probably elaborate a bit more. 

Girls' trips? Hate the idea of that! I feel like a fish very far out of water.

Family vacations? I go in as the world's most enthusiastic planner and unravel spectacularly by day two. I am talking full spiral, obsessing over whether the kids ate enough, slept enough, are being too loud in the hotel rooms, spending money on things that will be forgotten by the next morning, running dangerously low on clean clothes, getting themselves high on every sugary junk they can get their hands on... the list has no end, and neither does my anxiety.

My husband is the opposite. He drags his feet getting to the trip, then transforms into the most relaxed, fun version of himself once we are there. Meanwhile, I have already peaked at the beginning of it, and it is all downhill from the hotel check-in. I say this with love and just a little self-awareness, I have never, not once, been a pleasant travel companion after day one of a family vacation. 

Business trips, though? Business trips are my league!

Back in my pre-kids, fully career-oriented era, I lived for the weekly onsite travel. Clean hotel rooms that are waiting for me every evening. No decisions about what to cook. Meals expensed. My whole life packed neatly into a suitcase, and I loved every single thing about that. I loved heading home on weekends just long enough to do laundry, repack with fresh clothes and a new rotation of books, and do it all over again. It was my rhythm. My happy place.

So when I stepped back into the same role, after years away, every onsite travel request I had to decline felt like a small, quiet ache.

Because it's not that I didn't want to go. I always wanted to go. But wanting something and being able to do it in good conscience are two very different things. The reality is simple and non-negotiable. One person simply cannot manage three young kids, their packed schedules, a full-time job, a dog, and a household. It is not a criticism. It is just common sense. So the rare travel I did manage in recent times was bare minimum. Show up, be present just enough, and get home as fast as possible.

Then this one landed in my lap.

A full week of onsite. Not the high-stakes, pressure-cooker kind, but the kind where expert eyes are just needed to review what's already in place. Lower stress, clear purpose, and a defined end date.

And the timing? Nothing short of perfect. For the first time in a long time, I have not one but two extra pairs of capable, reliable, wonderful hands at home. People who don't just help out but genuinely hold things together. Some days, even better than I could. 

So for the first time in years, I said yes. Without guilt. Without hesitation. And with more anticipation than I have felt in a very long time.

It is still a week away. But I am all pumped up. The books are already shortlisted. The food plan is in motion too, because yes, I am absolutely the kind of person who plans meals in advance for a business trip, and I refuse to apologize for it. We are talking proper sit-down meals, eaten at a pace that allows me to actually taste the food, without one eye on the clock and the other on a child who has suddenly decided they don't like anything on the menu.

My Bluetooth speaker is already charged and waiting. The playlist? Sorted, sequenced, and ready to fill whatever room I am in with exactly the kind of music I want to hear, at exactly the volume I choose, without a single negotiation.

And then there are the quieter luxuries. The ones that are so simple they are almost embarrassing to admit out loud.

A bed. Entirely mine. Starfished across the whole thing if I want. No one stealing the blanket, no small feet mysteriously appearing in my ribs at 3 AM.

A shower, a long, uninterrupted, gloriously peaceful shower, without my name being called through the door ten times before I've even reached for the shampoo.

And the TV remote. No negotiations, no compromises. Just me, the remote, and complete, sovereign control of the screen.

People talk about self-care like it is spa days and scented candles. But sometimes, self-care looks like a hotel room at the end of a workday, a book you've been meaning to finish for months, a playlist that's entirely yours, and the radical luxury of a shower in complete silence.

A week away. But who's counting, right?!