31 January, 2011

What's up Doc?

It's become evident that few people can go to the doctor for a simple, even non-clinical requirement and come back without feeling like they were modern-day Frankenstein's monsters or something to that extent.

I'd gone to the dentist over the weekend for a simple scaling. A scaling I tell ya, and I met with the most lachrymose-type doc I'd ever met. I was wondering if she'd starting weeping at the sight of my plaqued teeth or not. But Ye Funereal Teeth Cleaner Lady just told me with the right amount of doom in her voice, that I had an overbite and that my teeth were grinding against each other. 

When I asked her how my teeth could grind themselves without any help from me or my jaw, she looked even more melancholy and said my teeth would get shorter, but conversely with my gums receding my teeth would become more exposed (imagine me as all gleaming calcium caps on display peeps!) and in time they (the non-pearlies) would become lose, move (teeth migrated too huh?) and I might have to get them extracted- UNLESSS...
I wore braces!!

So she very glibly told me about her orthodontist friend who again, very conveniently also attends the clinic where I'd gone to. She then mistook my gobsmacked look to mean that I didn't know what an orthodontist was and proceeded to explain.

When I recovered from the experience of being told my mouth and teeth were on the highway to hell (dentally of course) I asked her if wearing braces would curb the problem for sure. Mrs. Dirgeful Mourning 2011 told me that nothing was for certain and that after atleast 1.5 to 2 years of wearing the braces we'd know then. 
I was feeling quite bummed out (mainly by her tone and demeanor and about braces which I've hated since I was a kid) and told her, "I never thought I'd have to wear braces at my age!" She promptly asked for my age and when I told her (you thought I'd mention it here, didn't you? Suckers!!) she told me with a lot of gloomy relish that it could happen to anyone but mine was in the initial stages so I should be happy.

After all that nonsense we finally got the damn teeth clean! Thankfully another doc did it. I wouldn't have opened my mouth for the sad freak ever!!

I kept thinking that I had no disease per se and the Angel of Doom was making such long pronouncements about it in her most sepulchral manner; what if she'd been another kind of doctor and had to tell the patient that something WAS seriously wrong with them? She'd probably have Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique playing in the background to give it the proper doomsday tone!! 

Am I going back to see the orthodontist? No way Jose! If they have a problem with that I got something to tell them- Bite ME!

27 January, 2011

Meme# I've Lost Count :D


  • I love my time alone at home. Well am technically not alone. But in a way I am. Booga Booga Booga!
  • I love making up silly songs for my kid. Most of them are recycled tunes but the words are FRESHAA!
  • My ideal job would be where someone paid me to read the books that I want.
  • I love bean bags.
  • There's no food like Chinese food. Even the kind the street vendor sells.
  • I always apologize to my kid (when he's asleep) for having yelled at him or spanked his bumbum.
  • I am inherently lazy. I act busy to confuse others :)
  • If I could, I would travel and read all my life long. 
  • I am getting addicted to online shopping. Or for now, online cart-filling.
  • I buy bubble wands et al saying it's for my kid, but I'm the one blowing bubbles all day long :)
  • I am a bit of a snob for brands but it's under control now. I think. I hope. Erm...not really.
  • AND...I am narcissistic enough to go back and re-read this meme even after I post it here and cross-post it on FB and Twitter :)

24 January, 2011

aww jeez...

I was worried that I'll be fanning my ignorance quite a bit by forgoing the newspapers altogether but a quick glance at them has assured me am not really missing much.

It's not quite so much as news as an announcement of the end being near. Take a look all around- honor killings up, scams are in they heyday, political parties are the jokers with the Indian Government providing the 3 ring circus. What does get the space in the papers are announcements of the Fresh Faces in the city colleges where self-proclaimed celebs go and shake a leg and lecture impressionable young'uns on personality and grooming. While their grooming and personality (or lack thereof) is highly suspect or airbrushed for the print media :)

I sometimes read my papers a day late since my son loves to paper our house and Red always takes off with the Sport pages first thing in the morning. While gathering the papers from last night's yay-ness I came across a news feature of a German porn star who died after her 6th boob job went bust! Literally and please don't excuse the pun. Hmm...that did grab my attention because the girl in question really was just a girl and 23 years old.

Hell at 23 if a person can generate that kind of income, why not live it up? What good would 800 gms boobs (each 800 gms mind you) do to a person except make them more susceptible to gravity a WHOLE lot more? And now she's dead. Fatal beauty anyone?

This isn't a homily on the evils of x,y,z. It's been so long since I read the papers and found something genuinely informative. And felt up to date on the happenings around me.

It's either the verbal skirmishes between the politicos in A.P that make the front page or the Naxals or the scams...and honestly all they make me think of is that people are inept. They do just enough to show that they have Johnsons and then they back off.
I get it, the machinery moves slowly. But for everything? The people who have the most influence and the potential to actually act seem to be mainly posturing and and everything is just for show.

Want to get something done, throw down and the gauntlet and see where that takes you and stand your ground! Things aren't that stable anyhow whether it's in the state or the central government. Or for that matter for most things.

The last few 'newsworthy' things I remember reading about my city and state either involve political fluctuations, political gripes, suicides, dogs mauling infants, slums, citizens grievances against the local governing bodies. And the list bloody keeps going on and on.

And it's the same thing the next day. It's a template of sorts if you will.

Small wonder then that I play escapist and read the comics, smirk at page 3 and get right back to my books.

Cynical but it works. 

08 January, 2011

Curveballs...

There are times (unfortunately they come around waaay too often) that curveballs get chucked your way.
Whether you've stepped up to plate or intend to play or not, a curveball comes whizzing along.
Now you can either duck or play it but I guess you can only duck so often. It's your best bet to try your hand at it at least once. Strangely enough these curveballs are vested with the genetic make-up of heat seeking missiles and tend to follow you around till they go KABLOOOEY! on your or another target. But a KABOOM's a given!

I know it seems tres cryptic but there are times when vagaries keep rattling in your head and it would take too much effort, history and detail to explain it to another individual. So a mysterious blog post kind of takes the edge of the whirly-gig that's been sent after you.

Or the oddity of the prose here could arise from zip, zero, zilch sleep and not nearly enough of stimulants in my blood on this fine and chilly Saturday morning.

Naah...vagaries are better. Vagaries of madcaps are even better sounding.
But I'll be damned if it doesn't feel good to get this stuff out of my head.

PS: On an entirely unrelated note and in my usual digressing fashion-books will take the cake over their movie counterparts any day. A person's prose and thoughts sometimes ought not to be portrayed over the visual medium...the grizzliness gets diluted. It's better in the recesses of the mind where things fester more under the mortar and pestle of our thoughts...

Here endeth the lesson

04 January, 2011

The Genesis of Coffee in my life...

Just got to sit down with a cuppa. The FIL and the offspring are watching something Hindi on t.v. I know the t.v.'s on because my son's occasionally clapping during the ads and because he doesn't need me right now :)

Of course with other people around he seldom does need me within sight. Also, the tummy's fed with creamy, apple mush so he's a happy camper.

Oh yes, coffee...I first tasted coffee when my piano teacher made me drink a sip of her burning hot black coffee during a particularly cold winter day. It was after school and it had snowed and my brain and fingers were both numbed. I kept skipping the beat on a piece of music and she got annoyed with me big time! When I told her I couldn't keep my eyes open she handed me her Styrofoam cup and told me to have a sip.
After that I not only kept the beat but picked up the tempo a bit alarmingly :)

I stayed up all night too...! My mother was livid! I was bouncing around too much for her good.

And it was coffee all the way after that. Everyday before going to school. It was the only way I'd have milk. And occasionally when Ma would have her stronger coffee, she'd give me a sip and augmented the taste even further.

During high school I used to need a sip of coffee before my eyes would open during the Rajasthan winters. And the fact that 12th was just around the corner didn't help my sleep cycle either. The more I slept, the farther it seemed.

During college days it was numerous cups of a bad-tempered Chechi's weak-ass coffee that I drank. My best friend would take a look at my face on certain days and straight away march me to the canteen before saying a word to me. At the paying guest accommodation I used to stay in, it was an understood thing between the Aunty and myself that whoever got up first would put the coffee in the filter. Usually we'd reach there at the same time.

Coffee has been a part of the most intense times in my life. Either I or the person/people I was with was chugging it with gusto.
It has been part of lovely mornings where there was no one around except me and the milkwala :)
It has been part of rainy days, evenings, it was one of the 1st things I begged my obstetrician to let me have when I was pregnant!
It was one of the 1st things I craved for once I began to have my usual diets post partum.
I even used to take coffee beans from the CCDs and Baristas I'd go to and keep them in my purse/wallets for the tang to hit me when I next opened it.
I've gone tipsy and barfed my guts out on coffee flavored liqueur as well. So I guess coffee and I have gone the distance :)

Sometimes the blacker and sharper the taste it got, the more it reflected my mood. Other times, the sweeter tasting Viennese, cinnamon lattes also found a place depending on the whimsies I was feeling.

I now find that when I have a break for myself I make a cuppa and just curl up somewhere and first take in the aroma of the coffee before taking a sip.

I guess it's become a part of my everyday...and now for the perfect closing to this blog...

*sips the coffee*