A Disappear/Re Appearing Act

Hello Masala lovers.

My sincerest apologies for disappearing into the internet ethers for a while. You can read all of my excuses here if you’d like.  My apologies also for dropping the ball with the What the Hell India project. Rest assured that I am still fully intending to continue that. Hopefully by tomorrow.

So. Bangalore has continued to treat me with the utmost respect and kindness. I still love it here.

I do not, however, really love fall here. It’s a bit too reminiscent of February in the northern half of the U.S. Minus the snow and freezing temperatures. Every day brings an overcast, grey sky that gets rather depressing after a while. I’m ready to be done with the clouds and the rain. It shouldn’t be much longer here. Winter is always beautiful.

Daddy G is again headed to the US in a few days. Hopefully for the last time this year. I’ve kind of had it with his job taking over every waking thought. Alright, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration (jeez, I still hate spelling that word), but not by much. Please dear, enjoy your nice long hot showers and not so expensive booze.  At least it’s only 10 days this time.

In other news, I have totally taken over most of the vegetables in India. My vegetarian repertoire in the US was sadly lacking, it isn’t anymore. I’m pretty excited about this. The only food related woe I have is finding a good ground meat shop. I have a serious yen for keema, which is ground meat mixed with spices and a few veggies. Serious yen. I’m good at cooking it and haven’t really had it in India. I have found a shop, I just need an excuse to haul Daddy G all the way across the neighborhood to check it out and make sure we won’t catch mad goat or mutton disease or something equally dreadful. He’s much better at knowing these things than I am.

One thing that I’m not too pleased with myself over is the health initiative that has gone nowhere. My vitamin habit have remained spotty at best (yet my hair has for the most part stopped falling out!!!) and my exercise habit, if you can even call it that, is spotty at best. Like once every 2 months spotty. I haven’t gained any of that weight back, and I suspect I’m still losing. I haven’t actually stepped on a scale since I left the US and I’m kind of afraid to lest that number didn’t actually move and I imagined the whole thing. I’m sure this isn’t true, but I’m still not checking. I now only have 1 pair of jeans that isn’t falling off my disappearing behind, and it’s pretty loose too, along with way too loose pajamas and even yoga pants.

 I did actually take out my blow up… exercise ball (And here you thought I was going to bust out an inappropriate comment about a blow up doll. You were right.) and my kettle ball. I bought these two wonderful things almost 2 years ago and now they’re finally out of the packages. I still am looking for a good routine to really challenge some muscles with them. The inserts that came in the package were sadly not all that effective. I do have a community gym at my disposal too, but between my penchant for catching up on sleep in the morning, my housekeeper showing up at random times, and my 5(!!) piano students, that is kind of hard to swing. Excuses excuses.

I’ve been on a two day binge of deep cleaning and writing these past two days, and it has been glorious. My housekeeper cleans some things for me and completely ignores others. Those cobwebs that pique my irritation every time I walk by them are conveniently ignored, as well as the dirty ceiling fans. It is indeed time to bust out the cleaning chair and slop wet, soapy, dirty water all over the floor in an attempt to clean them. It has been slow going, but oh so satisfying. I find that leaving the cleaning to someone else here has not been good for getting things done how and how often I want them too. I know that I cleaned the entire house way more in the US than it ever gets done here. Tradeoffs I guess. I work a lot more here than I did in the US too. Daddy G has been trying to campaign to get more household help so that I stop bothering him to help me do stuff. Nothing doing Mr. The last thing I need is more responsibility by having more people to manage. I’d rather just spend a day cleaning myself and have you pitch in a little bit more than normal. He’s charming that way. J

I think I’ll stop here so I can go research a topic for some What the Hell. See you soon!

Becky