Itchy and Scratchy

Not these guys.

ME.
I'm all itchy.

My blogger's itch kicks in at the random-est of times. Seriously.

I am at my workstation trying to brush up on Instructional Design Theory for a new project at work. The Global Delivery Director sits across the desk from me. I have a deadline on at least two sets of PPTs that I have to send out to the Graphics team before it is proofread (by who else but Yours truly) and declared "good-to-go".

Yet at such a critical time my fingers have decided to start twisting backwards and the voice in my head is telling me to sign in to my page and broadcast to the world the goings-on of my life.

I had the full weekend to myself. Not fighting with the hubby-bi *for once*. A super-stable internet connection was in place. The weather had been conducive and the only laptop at home was just lying there - as free as the second pizza from Domino's on a Wednesday night. Still, somehow, the thought of blogging was on holiday then...

And even though today, at work, it will take me upwards of 60 minutes to type, edit and publish a new post
I JUST CANNOT HELP MYSELF.
I slyly, compulsively open an incognito window and start to type.

The swiftly approaching deadline rears its ugly head at me in the form of a fugggly Post-it, fluttering gently while I am gazing at nothing-in-particular at mid-distance...
What will become of me today?

This out of the blue itch to update my blog is not just today, by the way:

1. While commuting to work on Bangalore's very bumpy roads - bumpy enough to rattle the thoughts around in my head
2. At the bar having a good time with friends...
3. Every single time I am without pen, paper or phone

4. Never mind where else

The coolest blog ideas come to me when I can't do a damned thing about it. I try hard to hold on to them, saying to myself all the while "do not let go of these words; hang on to these thoughts; they will make you rich and famous" but even before the flushing noise stops, they are just gone.
Fleeting thoughts... gone... words... puns... all gone.
Shreds and bits of comprehension that torture me for days to take shape... Never quite return to Momma.

Which is why today I am putting an end to all the missed opportunities and just doing the deed of blogging, yaaron.

But hang on, somewhere in the middle of all the cool YouTube videos I was going to tell you guys about... My brain latched onto thoughts about the time when I celebrated my blog's first birthday right here...and the times when I used to deck up this very webpage in Christmas-ey colours come December and go mad with it during Diwali... Oh and the constant bimbette bashing.... I remember how religiously I would update the Poll questions and my "Currently Lusting Over" section, over on the right hand side here (on the right a couple of scrolls up)... And the good amount of responses too... 

Sigh this blog was sooooo very special to me.
Still is... it kills me that I have no time for it anymore.

Maybe this is precisely why I start turking during office hours and around important exams etc. and suddenly there's a new blog post. I'm going to call this my Blog-stagnation Defense Mechanism. Voila!

"Just let it happen, my friend" said Charles Backes said so famously in his times.

OK this long-winded story is almost over - patience.
And no, I'm not exactly going anywhere with this.

#reflecting upon the #sillyteenagedme

I went back and read some of my old posts - my pride, joy etc.
I sound like a struggling-with-her-teens girl confused in life and on periods for approximately 6 months straight. Eeeep.
*squirms*

A whiny ranter.
That wasn't me.
Whoa.
Fuck no.

After feeling sufficiently awkward for a while, I realise that this blog is a fully custom growth chart! Of sorts.
For me to go back and see who I was at a given point in the space-time coordinate system thingy. (Digression Alert: I don't even know whether the usage is correct, but "space-time coordinates" sounds so nerdy and oh-so-sexy at the same time that I'm wetter than Craig Kieswetter's last name right now.) To see what I was like, what my world was about... and such... And the smile that accompanies the sudden recall of a nearly-forgotten memory....  is quite worth it.
Hmm. I need to post more often.
So a couple of years down the line (if not now) I can finally decide whether referring to the man I married as "Hubby-bi" sounds more wrong than The Cap'n or vice-versa.

Just wondering... what are other personalised  life-o-meters (if you will) available to show you how much you've sort of changed over the years?
If you unintelligently said "photographs, duh" I'm going to laugh out loud, you know it.
Yes Sherlock, something with more dimensions than 2.

If however you Googled Charles Backes (from a short while ago), I have just one thing to say to you.

"

"

Because "Hole-mates" is a creepy title

I have TB. No, not the chronic-cough-with-blood-tinged-sputum-clogging-my-lungs kind. God, no.
I'll go again.
I have a TB. Tiny Bladder.
And this condition led me to stumble across an earth-shattering discovery.

I think, by some permutation and combination in nature, there comes to exist, for each one of us, what I like to call a bladder-mate.

And I have found mine.

It's true.
I joined this new workplace - little over 3 months ago. The building is designed all funny.
There is *one*  restroom for ALL the women. Albeit its huge and pretty, it's just the one.
There's about three different offices here in our building - ours, one other and a Tommy Hilfiger design studio.

In the last three months, every time I have had to pee-pee, I have rushed out the office, into the restroom and come to a dead halt just at the sign reminding everyone that behind that door lies a place where "Women" could walk in and relieve themselves in order to be able to breathe again without wetting their trousers and DEFINITELY NOT for twisting over in agony and letting it all go right there. Of the latter happening, there was the more chance.

It was one balmy Thursday. Waiting outside the girls' room, I was pacifying my fully full bladder screaming inconsolably like a baby that hasn't been changed in hours. And then it happened. My mystery loo-occupier stepped out. I barely registered her face and dashed in. After a mighty deluge, my brain started working. She was cute. And taaaaaallllllll. Probably Delhi chick.

Three times over the next three days, she was in there before I. Three times over the next five days I stepped out of the loo and found myself staring straight at her. It's never, ever anyone else, damnit. *how the fuck?*

Then there's that mischievous 'it's-you-again look' she gives me with a smile.
Why does she give me that mischievous 'it's-you-again look' with a smile?
Oh my god, I think I have a girl crush on her. It's either that or the exotic fruity-floral perfume she floods the chamber with.

I was so weirded out about how this could keep happening. One day, as she stepped out the main door just as I was stepping in, I said to her with an incredible smirk "Our urinary bladders are in perfect sync!"

What I'd said to her actually sounded like "aahr urhyjry blahdeh byahin puffit sink!"
I know this because it rang in my head three and a half times after.
Dannng.
That perfume again.

After this, nearly every single time I have randomly wandered off to the loo - sometimes idly replying to a flood of texts, other times racking my brains for a presentation idea - I have always - surely and without a miss - had to get past her.
I didn't dare say anything smart-ass about our chance encounters EVER again though.

The days she isn't in though [and I know this because a pervy colleague knows exactly where her desk is in her office and keeps track of her attendance] I have never had to wait out. A free pass. The restroom door is ajar... waiting, for me to step right in and take care of business as usual.


If this was NOT the "toilet"and we weren't both women, it would've made a rather cute how-I-met-your-mum-kinda-story to tell the kids.

But the fact remains that even with the "toilet" and the homosexual equation, it is still better than the story of How I Met Your Mother.

***
All this wee-wee talk has made my bladder full. No worries though.
The pervy colleague struck again.
She isn't in today, it seems, so I can hold it in till it gets real bad.

Erm and while still on the topic, what the fuck is this ridiculousness?

I cannot get over the product title to even consider what the bleddy instruction booklet might look like. Bwaaaahahahahaha!

But seriously, #weird.


***

Have a nice day, someone should.

"When life chucks you lemons, make lemonade" is easier said than done.

Woke up with an annoying cold today and had to drive my mother to work.
Not a problem because I love driving and I love my brand new petrol powered pocket-rocket.

9:00 Mother starts hysterically screaming "It's late, it's late" while packing the lunch-dabba with her special for-diabetics-only food.

9:06 Mother starts hysterically screaming "It's late, it's late" while putting on lipstick and slipping into her work shoes.

9:09 Ten minutes behind schedule, I'm backing the car out of our basement assuring mum that it will be alright and that I'd get her to work on time. "It's late, it's late" See my mom is the punctual kind. A virtue that I missed out on during the whole inheritance deal. 

9:10 I opened the gates of the basement and bang across the opening, blocking it entirely was a silly turd of a car. No, it was literally turd-brown in colour. *Nothing* on the whereabouts of the person responsible for this brilliant display of human intelligence. Plus, the fact that there are 8 houses in our building wasn't helping either. A vein popped on my mother's forehead. Yeah, never a good sign.

9:11 My mother was now The Incredible Hulk and she can bellow alright. 

9:11 The owner of the car came scrambling down the stairs with an ominous wet spot around his crotch. He's moved to China, I hear.

We hit the tarmac and at ten, sharp, my mother was at her office. Smiling and no veins popping furiously about. 

After my little chauffeur routine, I usually stop by near my beau's office for a chai and dum pitstop - the working class hero's key to survival. Except today, thanks to Jet Airways' continued harassment, this quick catch-up session became a drive halfway across town. Never one to complain about postponing work to a much later segment of the day, I was driving when I decided to take a legitimate U-turn. Because Mc Donalds makes me happy.

Green light ✓
Rear view mirror ✓
Indicator ✓
*steer right*
Rear view mirrCRRAAASHHH.

Mr. Fat-guy-on-bike rushing to work wanted to rip straight past ahead of me but crashed into the car when I swerved right. After my body stopped shaking and the bike guy rode off claiming he was alright, my heart bled at the sight of the dents and scratches on my brand new shiny car. Fuck fuckedy fuck fuck.
And the McFlurry tasted like shit.

On my way back, this obnoxious paan chewing cunt who kept gleefully spewing red juices out of his mouth, every signal, got a mouthful from me. He was moving at 20 kmph for at least 10 minutes and refused to acknowledge he's holding up traffic because he was so busy talking on his phone through his dodgy little plastic bowl-like helmet. Cost me two consecutive green lights because he had to indulge in a fucking mating dance with his cell phone in the middle of traffic. I wrote down, somewhere, the reason for not having run him over. 

I reached home and noticed that one of our foolish apartment folk, who park their bikes at kissing distance from my car in the night sometimes had scratched my car. 

I saw this one coming but hoped people would be considerate while moving their ^%@#*!$%# vehicles about. I was soooooooooooo fucking pissed. Not so much because of the scratches but because there was no way of finding who did it and beat them to pulp, put that pulp into a 10 micron plastic bag and leave that plastic bag in the middle of the road so vehicles can drive all over it during peak hour. 

In a fit of frustration I pulled out the car tarpaulin from the boot and threw it over my car for some instant damage control... 

[cut to tragic story of how I begggggged my parents to buy me the Samsung fucking S3 and how they obliged.]

[cut back to today's kolaveri]

In a fit of frustration I pulled out the car tarpaulin from the boot and threw it over my car for some instant damage control. I heard a soft thud. My left hand felt lighter and with a sinking feeling in my gut, I walked over to the front of the car and froze.

What followed was a blur of light and sound. With steadily flowing tears staining my cheeks, I collapsed alongside the body of my baby, lying still and motionless on the ground. I picked it up and turned it around. 

Its Super AMOLED capacitative touch screen made from Gorrila Glass 2 - all 4.8 inches of it - had cracked and shattered all the way through.

I walked home slowly after having waved my white flag and took a nap hoping that this would all be a bad dream and that my car and phone were shiny and untouched once more.
I woke up. There was no power. No internet. No food in the kitchen. 

My phone beeped. Through the cracked glass I read.

Balance of your A/c xxx/SB/xx/xxxx has come to INR 96.50 below your desired balance

 Fuck.


P.S. Anger Management, the show, is soooooo not funny, no? Ueggh. I really had high hopes.
#charliesheen #disappointment #badsitcoms

I'm alive.

Just saying.

* * *

While I'm still here I just want to say something.

This is really personal but I'd like for you guys to hear about it too.

In any case, you can't keep such things a secret for too long, no?



True story.


* * *

You've gotta love the Internet.

* * *

I'll try and write something fun, soon, for 'tis the season to be jolly!

Note to self: SHIT. WRITE SOMETHING FUN, SOON, FOR 'TIS THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY!


Cheers
x

Summer Love

It had been a while since I'd gone to that part of town...
...since I'd seen the building where he and I spent that one summer together.



Somehow, it didn't feel the same. Nothing was magical about it anymore.

Walking down that road, I found it hard to believe that there was a time when I'd put everything on hold and dash halfway across town...
to this building...
to walk through that painted wooden door...
to see him...

He felt so cold against my body that would be sweaty from all the running, warm under all that make up and all those layers of black clothes.

We hardly ever talked.
I loved it.
What would I say to him anyway? Discuss school?
I only remember this...
Our lips.... the cold spreading through my body... and then goosebumps.
It became routine. Like a drill, almost.
I loved it.
I had had my first orgasm.
I kept going back there, everyday.

He still lives here, I've heard. I'm sure he's found so many giddy girls since me.
I will just be that delirious 17 year old to him who was obsessed with him once.Life goes on, no?
But it was not his fault anyway... None of it was. Looking back, I can only sigh.

At 17, I was sure I had found love and even more sure that he and I would last forever and for always (like in that Shania Twain song.)

Then one morning, I wasn't able to slip into my jeans quite as easily as I usually would.


The bump started showing.
My belly was getting bigger.
It didn't matter how much I cut back on Nutella.
I needed maternity pants. Soon.

I think she read the guilt in my eyes (or she figured there was something the size of a giant panda under my shirt) but at any rate, my mother was the first to talk to me about it.
I burst out. I confessed to her. My mum. I told her what I'd been doing all summer long.
She was calmer than I thought she would be when it all came out into the open.
She held my hand and walked me through the biggest screw up of my life...


My beer belly.

Courtesy: Beer @ Pecos.
Rs. 275 per pitcher.
Buy one, get one. FREE.

* * *

Now of course, I'm a lot wiser... older.
"That building" is just another building to me.
I'm blissfully married to Whiskey.
We've had a couple of babies ever since- Judgement Impaired and Puffy McCheeks.
They are my world.
We have a third one on the way... We want to name him Ugly Zit Jr.
Life is good.

* * *
Disclaimer:
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.
Any resemblance to any biological process, natural or in-vitro is purely coincidental.