Days of Our Lives

Every few months we have a “cut-over” at work. This is when we move new models and code into production. You get the idea, I can see 90% of my readers sagely nodding their heads. This is life as we know it since school. This might be life as we know it forever...but no, no point depressing you first thing in the morning.

During every cut-over I think, after this one, I’m gonna chill for sometime. Just chill, take it easy, goof off at work. But soon enough along comes another. I should be fair and say that a long stretch without the familiar throb also makes me uneasy, makes me wonder, is this getting stale....what’s my life about, where am I going? Stuff that when I don’t have too much time in my hands seem like a jobless donkey’s thoughts.

So yesterday was one such day and the hubby found me logged on back to the servers at work even though he returned pretty late himself. I was typing furiously.

He: Dinner?
Me: *Blank look*
He: Okiee. *Heading towards take-out menu drawer* Thai?

Now, the man tries to disguise his joy when I haven’t whipped up something for dinner but every once in a while the glow speaks for itself. Take-out means chicken, catfish, shrimp, or other lovely, delectable, innocent creatures, followed by no dish washing. It’s a good day. An open-your-beer-and-swing-your-legs-onto-the-coffee-table day.

Ambling over, he says

After this cut-over, you want to take a small vacation?

Me: *Looking up greedily* YES!
He: Thanksgiving then. Small one.
Me: *Excited now* I’ll have more vacation time next year!
He: Me too!

Pause.

Me: Oh.
He: Yeah.
He: Thanksgiving then.
I nod.

Every once a while, when one is submerged in the usual grind, one may forget. That’s OK, the kid will have a lot of stuff to get even with us for. It can just add this to the list.

Me: We won’t be able to celebrate after every cut-over is over next year...
He: *Leans in at a very third-degree-style* Hon, next year’s cut-over is never going to be over.

I swing back to my monitor. This one’s a lark.

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Gut Speak?

The music was perfect. The flowers looked correct. Her bridesmaids were glowing, luminous even. She began her slow march down the aisle in step with her father. Smiles. Small waves. The rustle of silk and brocade as everyone rose. She could see him waiting patiently. Yes everything was looking precise. She looked at him and he looked at her. It was as she expected. Had been expecting, for a long time. No surprises, no shocks, no flutter, and no...zest. The idea of this day had entrenched itself in her mind and taken root so long ago, she couldn’t remember its derivation. Like a thriving sapling nourished by drain water. Like a habit, that at first she formed and which had then slowly, formed her. The images ran through her head and her mind raced. His life, but without her. And hers, without him, and both, beautiful. Was there someone else? No. But wasn’t almost-indifference almost-infidelity, in the least? It was later than she thought. She turned on her heel and stumbled out. “What am I going to do?” she thought frantically as the humdrum and panic around her closed in. She turned to meet her father’s eyes across the growing distance between them and she was shocked to register no shock in his. A small nod. “I’ll be okay” she thought, as she lifted her train and ran down the stairs, taking two at a time.
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Each day brings more strangers smiling at me - Is it because I'm fatter than they are?

*Eyes lowered and all*
Voice over - Gabby Ma banne wali hai!
*Gabby hurries away (To the restroom actually. Yet again.)*
Voice over –Sharma gayi!

LOL! I’m PREGNANT! And I have been dying to tell you all about it. Pregnant women really, truly believe that the world is centered round their pregnancy and so the sooner they enlighten people about that, the sooner they can all understand their roles – they are but satellites to this planet called MY PREGNANCY, and then we can all talk about it. All the time. How cool no? I held back for four months because I figured that once we start talking about this great, great phenomenon, nobody (you can read that as I) will want to talk about anything else...and maybe 5 months of non-stop pregnancy talk might just be easier of my hapless readers that the full 40 weeks of it. You can all thank me later.

Gross things have been happening to my body and horror of horrors I am no longer noticing it. When one gross thing is over, another one starts. See if you were lying in a spotless pristine spa table draped in spotless white towels and a mosquito bites you in the centre of your back you would be horrified and complain but do you think prisoners chained in rat-infested underground dungeons stir when a roach runs up their leg? Same difference. There’s no longer the oh-my-god factor, it’s just a mild stirring of the conscious. You nod and move on. And now that you are all so interested in MY PREGNANCY, I might just tell all you about every roach, either in passing, or in great detail. So you can either gag or grin, depending on your respective tolerance levels. Sit back, it will be great :)

I bid goodbye to predictability a long time ago. I don’t know what I will feel in the next 5 minutes, I don’t know what I will want to eat, I don’t know WHEN I will fall asleep. I don’t know when I will laugh and more importantly when I will cry. Granted “Notebook” was a bad choice for this hormone plagued body but Mr.Gabby lost it when he caught me crying while watching the Apollo mission on the History channel. My explanation between ribcage-shattering sobs of how “They had all worked so hard! Too hard!” didn’t quite cut it. But he played his comforting part to the T. After all, I am but a vessel for his procreation here, and we do not let him forget that. So I bid goodbye to self-control. I am also bidding good bye to all my ultra low waist fashions and the teeny little tees and those sexy bitches called high heels...comfort is paramount now. And no, I’m not giving all my clothes away, so stop forming that line ladies! I aim to get back into them. Laugh all you want people, I will do this. I can do this. I hope to do this. I will do this? God, please let me do this. Pulllleeeaze let me do this GOD!

When I first found out, I talked to friends who have recently acquired the Mommy tags, hoping that they would dish on all the crazy stuff. But horror of horrors that Mom-amnesia is not a fable! They REALLY forget all the scary parts. They gush and tell you it will all pass and it’s all so worth it and “Think of it, you’ll have a cute little Gabby at the end of this!” Pretty nice to hear and all...but these babies, they do not drop from the sky you know, and EVERYTHING is going to change. FOREVER. How can all that be cute and warm and sunny? Floral maternity frocks, glowing skin and hubbies tying your shoe laces on sunny park benches is for the ads...what happens in REAL life? Give me THAT!

Very, very luckily for me, I have 4 friends who are going though this with me.(Yes, 4. It's like we have taken it upon ourselves to boost the desi population of the New England area.) They are all about a month or two ahead or behind me in this and they all extremely vocal with their complaints. So we all get together and complain. It’s beautiful, all that free flow of knowledge, makes for many, many interesting discussions. Interesting how “horrifying” turns “interesting” when it happens in the collective. All that letting out feels so good. Well I can’t really discuss how my belly button is starting to look slightly distended with people at work now, can I?

As we head towards that much awaited 40th week, we rush though doing this and that. Preparing the nursery, and the guest rooms, for all the different relatives who will be visiting. Yes the in-laws will be here too. More on that later. Much more on that later! :) The delivery itself is a much discussed topic. Mr.Gabby doesn’t do so well in hospitals. He assures me he will be the best birthing partner ever (like I have any data points to compare him with!) but this image of Mr.Gabby fanning himself in a corner of the labor room with an IV drip on his arm is just not leaving my head! We can’t have him hogging all the attention, can we? After the baby arrives, it will anyway be about the baby. Let me make a scene while I can at least! My Mom worries “You, you, you! How will you make a hole in all that selfishness for the baby?” How will I, I wonder!!!! :)

So in case you did not get the drift yet there will be a lot of pregnancy talk on this blog. But people remind us that these are the last few months of Mr.Gabby-and-I kind of stories and we are trying to make the most of that. So there will be other stuff too. Don’t run away guys!! I haven’t even told you about my yoga classes and all the hot and verrry flexible chicks there yet!

Fall Thoughts....

Smiley’s rant on women and the stuff they keep in their handbags had me lashing back on the usefulness of the odds and ends I stash away in mine: moisturizers, Tylenol and all the other essentials that I’m sure my smarter readers are well aware of. It also had me smiling at a recollection. Mr.Gabby has extremely dry skin. Skin that had maybe imagined it would remain in humid old India has never done too well in Boston and these harsh winters. Also, hot showers followed by hurried shaves are supposed to be followed up with liberal moisturizing, something a man who takes 40 minutes to down a single cup of coffee and then 40 mins again to revisit the loo and think on the throne has, funnily enough, no time for.

So two winters ago, the dryness had reached some intense heights. His hands were so rough, I cringed at contact. He was my lint-remover. If my coat or sweater was covered in lint, I would ask him to run his palms all over me and LO-no lint! Convenient but weird, passer-bys admired how we had found some use for the predicament, but at the same time I’m sure, made a mental note never to shake hands with that tall and lanky Indian man.

I don’t know what or who I had to thank for (maybe the dwindling number of handshakes or an “Ouch” from some pretty female colleague) but the man did come to me for help, finally. You can only lead a horse to the river and my pleas had always gone unnoticed till then. Afterwards the nightly treatments began in earnest. We would soap those hands in the richest of lathers and then follow up with inches of cocoa butter cream enriched with hemp (from the rainforests, of course, no less) and follow that up with pulling on these breathable moisturizing gloves! Yes gloves. So he slept with these skin-tight, very Mime-like white gloves on throughout winter and believe you me, the way those hands healed and the resulting smoothness was well worth the creepiness of a white gloved hand reaching out in the middle of the night. It was startling at first especially considering the dark hairiness of the remainder of the arm but I quickly got used to it.

It’s fall here and already I felt a distinct roughness yesterday, so as we pull out the sweaters, jackets, scarves and boots this weekend, the white gloves will be retrieved and left on his nightstand – a gentle reminder of rougher times to come.