A losing battle

The new year started with a death.. not something major but surely the elders in the family would have said "that is a bad omen".

Well, the Black Molly that lived for more than 3 years in our tank (kid you not) reached god on New Years day.

That meant a trip to the Pet store to get the last remaining fish some company. We bought a male and female Yellow mollies. The store also had a few baby black mollys which they threw in for free and the kids being kids were just thrilled to have more than one or two old slow moving fish in the tank.

As it so happened the bag with the fishes had a small snail! I never realized it.

Jr. who has very sharp eyes said "you know there is a sea snail that came with the bag. it is okay because they live in the water. our class aquarium had a sea snail". I questioned that saying "sea water is salty. this is a fresh water tank. I doubt it" and she said it was a freshwater sea snail at which point I realized that we need to fact check Jr. much like we need to fact check the Politicians in Washington. They will say whatever they have to, in order to get what they want!

Jr. pointed it out to me and this lazy thing on the bottom of the tank (smaller than a dime) did not seem to pose a threat to the fish. So I told Jr. and the little one that the snail stays till the next tank cleaning session at which point it will have to leave the tank.

Yesterday morning we went to feed the fish and found the entire walls of the tank full of black moving dots! There were hundreds of baby sea snails, if that is what they are called.

Within 24 hours some of these babies were no longer babies. they were practically the same size as the original snail and some of them started to climb the walls above the water level. Worried about a snail invasion in the house, we called the local Pet Store and the lady said "just change out the water, carefully clean everything in your tank and put it back and they will be gone"

Me : are you sure there are no microscopic eggs in the water? Am I going to be cleaning this out every alternate day?

Cust.Rep : No Sir. Just clean it out, scrub all your plants, gravel etc. and you should be fine.

So the evening was spent on cleaning, scrubbing, practically boiling the gravel in the bathroom under the hottest water available in our hot water faucet and guess what?

We put a handful of gravel back into the tank and out come two really tiny snails! Now the tank is practically empty with no decor and a few gravel stone and marbles.

The plan was to go to the store tomorrow and ask for free gravel and replacement decorations! After some internet reading it appears that there are tricks we can do with warm lettuce leaves and salt water soaking of gravel that can eliminate the problem.

Have never seen anything this scary. Saw the impact of unchecked breeding firsthand..

On the bright side, learning how to take close up videos of the fishes by using a macro lens and manually focusing on them by putting the lens practically against the glass.

It is a true test of lighting optimization!

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Wishing you all a Happy Pongal

Work has been so crazy that by Friday evening we just want to come and crash and recharge our batteries. Yet to figure out how 2010 suddenly started off in this mode.

Friday evening came and it was time to make Pongal. This year there was no prayer, no dressing up.. just daddy making Sweet Pongal in his office clothes!

Yes. It was an odd sight to see daddy in formal clothes in front of the stove. To compensate for all the stress, just threw in an extra cup of ghee into the mix and the results were more than satisfactory!

Wanted to videoblog the making of Pongal but that has to wait for another day. Today we went to the Livermore temple, saw Aandal Kalyanam and were served a wedding feast at the temple. There was standing room only in that temple and the little one thought she had been transported to Mylapore for a few minutes. She was even heard whispering that she wanted to be back in the USA..

One would think that with this kind of stuff at home, the kids would be happy to eat Pongal for a late snack? .. the answer is ...

NO!

They wanted Mac and Cheese from the local Target store for dinner.

Well we just think the family has celebrated Makara sankaraanthi and Macand cheesearaanthi in the same day!

Happy Pongal again to all of you.

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Gathering cow dung and tending to cows..

When we were growing up, the thing that our parents, close relatives (lived with an extended family all the time) was "If you don't study, you will be fit only for tending to cows and becoming a cowherd!"

"ஒழுங்கா படிக்கலேன்னா நீ மாடு மேய்க்க தான்டா போகணும்!" would come the thundering voices..

On one side Krishna, the most lovable of gods was a cowherd! Yet, there was something that was supposed to turn us off as kids from tending to cows on an open field. It was the thing that people unfit to do anything else could do. Spend all day in a field with a stick on their shoulder watching cows, collecting cow dung and having to make dried biofuel from cow dung by mixing it with straw and making cow pattys (aka வரட்டி தட்டரது) and that was somehow a bad thing.

So instinctively, have been transferring my own growing experience to Jr. and the little one. When either one refuses to do her homework, the first thing to come out of our mouth is "if you do not study, we will buy two cows and let them live in our backyard and you can spend all your time collecting their poop! Do you want to keep "aLLiying" (collecting) cow poop for the rest of your life? or do you want to get a nice job, have a house and be able to pay for your kids iPhone Apps?"

Today I took this one notch higher by saying "if you don't study now, your kids will be collecting cow poop because you cannot afford to send them to a nice school and live in a nice house!" and then BAM.. it stuck me!

The whole idea that our parents were trying to put in our head was that if you don't study, you will end up poor like a cowherd! The fact that all you get to wear is a loincloth and get burnt in the hot sun and don't have enough to eat.. well, looks like our parents were not that good at sending the message!

We are worse!

Now, if we can afford to buy two cows and let them roam in our backyard, then why would the kids need to study? they are well off, no? That hit the message in my head after 30 years!

Well, as long as our kids look confused just like we were on what the big deal was with the cow dung, but look worried that "bad things will happen if they don't study" and if things work out the same for them somehow and they come home with grades, they should be fine!

We were sent this article multiple times on email forwards the last few days. Partly that article was what triggered this post.

It is funny that we are trying to be tough parents but we are not tough enough. Not even close. We push our kids but give in. We (especially me) have to do some more muddled messaging like "if you don't study then I will have to go pick up cow dung in my late old years. Is that what you want?"

Guilt works to a point. Then there are threats. Somehow our threats don't hold water right now because we threaten with cow dung!

"No TV!" .. now that might be a threat that will strike the point home.

Question is, do we have it in us to carry that through?

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