Record breaking temperatures

We are not talking about April Temperatures in the city of Chennai anymore..

The little one topped at 104.1 F yesterday which is probably a family record. We are always amazed by her ability to pick up bugs with such efficiency and consistency year after year.

Foresaw a fight with San in the middle of the night where she will insist on sending the little one back to her bed and I will say "She cannot even breathe.. she is gasping for breath and is having difficulty standing on her own legs. How can you think of sending her to her bed?" etc. etc. We might as well videotape this and replay it every year instead of going through the motions and wasting new energy!

The fight did happen as predicted last night but no one else is sick. Now that is something to be thankful for!

Poor thing was brave through the whole thing. She was tired today and lay down on daddy's lap and watched a frustrated daddy learn Photoshop.

As a dad trying to be "responsible" (San will strongly contest this), my logic was "let me show this girl a few important things in life" like

- always read the manuals
- watch others show you how to do things (ask for help)
- listen to what the instructor is saying without moving on (which is what she does usually)
- Practice makes perfect

As usual, I was wrong. There is a generation gap and kids today have grown up with iPhones, iPads and Laptops.

She was looking at me much the same way Jane Goodall must have looked at the apes in Africa after handing them a small straw to see how they catch ants from anthills with the straw!

Simply could not understand why daddy would hit "Undo" so many times and repeat what he just did for the last five minutes. So the practice makes perfect concept is not going to sink in. Also she thinks daddy is incompetent!

She was happy when the photo improved 80% after the 20% effort and saw no point in going the extra 80% effort to get it close to 100% improvement. Don't know how we are going to teach her that the idea of not stopping with the 80/20 rule.

As irony would have it, what a sunny and beautiful day to be staying indoors with a tired kid and Photoshop!

The house was not without the occasional laughs.

Little one to Mom: Pause the TV. I have to go to the restroom..
Mom : you have watched this Super singer episode already and you can hear them sing from the bathroom
LO : Fine. But if you play it while I am in the bathroom you have to back forward it
Jr.: It is called REWIND! Not Back Forward!
LO : Really?!

She is doing much better today. We look forward to her being her bubbly self tomorrow..

.

Action replay

Was going through the blog archives to see what we did last year same time.

Last year almost same week the same sequence of events .. this is unbelievable!

Cold from Jr. -> Little one -> parents with Jr. showing mild symptoms and quickly recovering in less than a day, the little one suffering through it for weeks and then the parents getting hit hard. The little one meanwhile is not learning no matter how many times we tell her not to touch her nose and rub things on her blankie or cough directly into daddy's open mouth just when he is trying to say "cover your mouth when you cough"!

This year, even the abnormally healthy me showing no sign of hospital visits or tablets for more than two months, got hit for two days. Still no hospital visit or tablets. So far only lot of water and sleep to recover! There is some saving grace there.

Guess from now on we have to get the sweaters and jackets out for a week or two in mid May as this weather has repeated two years in a row!

.

When work becomes the "other" woman...

A grueling week at work, not a new thing for this household by any stretch. The adults are both trying to sync every minor detail on their respective calendars which border on the ridiculous.

Who is going to "wipee" kid #2 tomorrow morning? you? okay then, put it on your calendar. Make a commitment and stick to it.. etc. etc.. You know what we mean..

Then Friday afternoon comes and dad is getting nauseous. Four hours of sleep on Thursday night may have had something to do with it, but sleep deprivation doesn't send one to the restroom repeatedly. That must have been the work of picking up germs from doorknobs.

Here is a tip for workaholic husbands who try to do their best at sharing the workload at home in a family where both adults work and take their work a little too seriously.

Never fall sick on Friday afternoon! Never ever!

The perception at home will start monologues from wife and kids like "you gave all your blood sweat and tears to her and you come home and want to lie down on a Friday evening? How dare you? Go ask her to take care of your sick little behind!"

After some time you scratch and wonder who else you are sleeping with and figure out they are talking about your workplace in (fem.)!

Fortunately in this case by Saturday morning after a heavy dose of sleep the body felt as normal as possible and then the wife shows "symptoms".

Note to wives of workaholic husbands who fall sick on Friday evenings?

Lock the dumb dude in the bedroom or garage and make sure the rest of you stay clear of him. If you fall sick, then he just won't be able to handle it. Just thinking about it will make him sick again. Management studies have repeatedly shown that managing 60+ adults at work is easier than managing two children under the age of 9!

Now that the weekend has come and gone without anything out of the ordinary for cold winter weeks in the last few years, we go into yet another week of busy work, sparse blogging, fights that fizzle out even before they start because of other distractions, etc. etc.!

On the bright side we had a great potluck dinner this weekend with a bunch of friends we meet rarely and checked out an iMac at the local Apple store. The videos and photos from a 21 MP camera are not handled by a Lenovo T60 with hardly any memory left. If there are any recommendations for a computer that can be bought on the cheap to handle large image and video files, please do leave it in the comment box.

Having been confined indoors the last few days, have been trying to take videos of the fish in the aquarium with the 50mm f2.5 macro lens mounted on the 5DMK2. You feel like Jack Costeau when you zoom into the aquarium like that and bring out the fins of those little things and project it on a 52 inch monitor! Will try to post a video of the "fishies" shot with real shallow focus range.

One good thing about being a nerd is that you can find ways to amuse yourself within the house. One bad thing is that this kind of amusement will always get you yelled at for being selfish. Your best bet is to make this type of thing an activity to do with the kids.

So starting this week, daddy Narayanan will teach Jr. and the little one a mandatory class on Photography. They are not thrilled with the idea, but hey, who is the boss here?

.

Time lapse

A week went by and we are trying to figure out how it just slipped past.

we were there outside the public library playing on the lamp posts and taking photos one minute..

Then we had Jr. bring in a cold. She got out of it in a day but passed it on to the little one. The little one for her turn braved a cold for almost a week.

Even dressed up nicely and supported her sister and helped beautify daddy last weekend..

Did you see how she wiped her nose on her brand new Paavaadai seamlessly before putting that stuff all over my hair? Did you also see that neither Jr. nor myself even noticed it... till we replayed the video!

Then daddy took a turn for the worse. What he thought was allergies went into a full blown infection of sorts to the point of forming pus inside the nose and sinuses.

Now the family has folks waiting in hospital rooms with masks on.

We are almost all recovered with Mom still sniffling and the little one coughing with her mask on.

We are told that things will be back to NORMAL in a day or max two.

Today the parents made a trip outside to get some medicines and it definitely did not look like a summer evening outside at 7PM. It looks and feels like mid December out there!

We have been in the bay area for more than a decade and have never seen this kind of weather in May. Just does not make any sense.

No wonder then that the bodies are reacting the way they do!

Let's keep ignoring the environment and see where this takes the planet and its inhabitants..

I can almost hear my grandma say "Kaliyugam da Sundaram!"

ps. On the plus side, learnt that the hospitals have these masks for kids with Mickey mouse and Donald Duck on them and the kids actually like to wear them and protect their parents from the cough!

If the existence of such mask was known to daddy earlier, would have used it and never gotten into this situation in the first place.

Then again, nowing Jr. and the little one, they would have always found some other creative way to get me sick.

.

A doctor a day keeps the ....

Finally met a doctor who actually saw my condition for what it was! He did a thorough inspection and said "Yes. Your sinus is infected and you need antibiotics!"

I thought to myself "there we go again.. possibly going to give me the same old amoxycilling and shoo me away"

He did prescribe a stronger dose of Amoxycillin than the usual 500mg but surprised me by saying "you have been regularly sick this year according to your medical records! That is highly unusual"

My jaw dropped. He actually READ my medical records! A Doctor. In the US of A! He read "my" medical records!

Then he went on to order a CT scan!

By now I am already thinking, I have died and passed on to out-patient heaven and have visions of Chitraguptan counting the number of swear words on my blog before deciding my fate.

This doctor, was also nice enough to call me within a few hours after the scan and give me a thorough analysis of my situation. Why I am falling sick so often? why the standard Amoxycillin will not help? and What else is required from me as a personal committment to make sure I do not fall sick again? etc. etc.

Unlike the other stet. wearing dudes and dudettes, this guy did not tell me to embrace yoga, eat healthy, have less stress, etc. etc..Everytime I hear that lecture, feel like hitting the doc. with some blunt instrument.

If you work to make ends meet, share responsibilities in raising kids, fill up your minivan at the local costco once a week, and are a south Indian dude with strong tastebuds and a penchant for deep fried stuff, it is not possible to do yoga, eat healthy and have less stress!

Finally this doctor said something that cracked me up.

"I am going to prescribe a medication for you. This will definitely help your condition immediately. But it is a steroid and you need to take it early in the morning after breakfast. The reason I am cautioning you is that it might make you a little hyper!"

How can I get any more hyper-er?

My faith in the American medical system is a tad restored. I stand corrected after all these years. There are some real doctors here! No, you are not stealing him from me.. I am keeping this dude a secret! He is now my "primary" physician! he he he..

Now he is indirectly forcing me to:

1. get up early in the morning
2. eat breakfast

who knows, maybe he is just giving me "balli mittai" and this is a ploy to get me to sleep early, wake up early and eat breakfast?!

In any case, the pills start now!

.