Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Kids and Pregnancies and Men
I am trying to imagine all the men in my world as being pregnant. How might RK, for example, be?
He would get in his complaints, I think, but try to do so while pretending that he actually was not. He would talk about it like it was some kind of a scientific question, but pepper the statement with all his aches and pains.
"Oh, yeah, I think my deep throbbing knee pain is really due to the fact that my ..ahem.. lateral patellar retinaculum is being stretched. I wonder if there have been any studies done on how inflamed this muscle can get in pregnancies. I mean, I'm sure...ha ha... that I'm not the only pregnant man in the world to be in such great agony"
"You laugh, Varsha, but you don't know the stress! It's very stressful to not be in control of your own body! I don't know just how I manage it, but I must say, I have some incredibly good coping mechanisms. Hmm... you might do well to try some of them"
Or my dad:
"My motto in life is to grin and bear it.
Bloody hell! Where the h$##$$# is my $%##$$ towel? Who in bloody #$### moved the TV remote? Arrrggghhhh... if that truck doesn't move out of the street already, I'm going to PUNCH the damn ##$### wall!"
PG (thesis adviser, for those of you who don't know him):
"You know. It's interesting. They have all this technology, but they just cannot take a LITTLE vial of blood without clotting up your whole arm. I must tell Wishwa and ask him what kind of education these doctors get these days. Of course, these days, doctors don't do any kind of procedures. They only want to get more and more specialized"
LOL
This is fun. Now every time I meet a guy, I'm going to imagine him pregnant.
Not too many guys at MWRI, but quite a few at IDM- imagine the great Don Burke, or better yet, the skeletal Paolo. Snap! Just like that, they are all pregnant, at least 2 trimesters along, waddling down the corridors.
Friday, December 14, 2012
A hard week
I have wept a bit this week. I attribute part of the reason to hormones. Apparently, hormones rage during the 2nd trimester. I'd like to know, when do hormones not rage? Teenagers, menstruating women, menopausal women, pregnant women, lactating women- everyone appears to have hormones that rage. Why don't hormones just do their thing quietly and leave?
And really, why haven't more hormonal studies been done in men? I'll bet my bottom dollar that men in their 30's, men in their 40's, men with 2 kids, men with no kids, men who are bald, men with big bottoms and men with sweaty handshakes are also afflicted with indiscreetly fuming hormones.
Other possible reasons for my general state of weepiness:
a) Lack of support from that esteemed spouse of mine in the specific area of housework: really, my man, could you PLEASE, for crying out loud, move that ass away from that computer and help me a bit? Or at least, spend some time while I am doing housework so I don't feel alone?
b) Incredible support from my lovely little son: the more Ani spends time with me and tries to help with whatever I am doing, the more weepy I get, because really, what a big heart on such a small kid!
c) Lack of sleep: thanks to those indiscriminate hormones, I suppose. Am too big to sleep on my tummy, too nasally-obstructed to breathe easily, and too prone to vivid dreams in which I have to eat the frogs that come out of Ani's nose.
What I need is an escape from my real life. Romance novels don't cut it anymore. I'm like the druggie who needs coke, and not marijuana, for a real fix. What I really need is...
....a Hindi movie, luridly romantic, incredibly silly, laugh-out-aloud funny, with a heart-stoppingly handsome hero and a stunningly beautiful heroine.
There's a scene at the end of the song "Bol Na Halke" where Preity Zinta (who satisfies my criterion for a beautiful heroine) and Abhishek Bachchan (Yuck. Double yuck.) walk in front of the Taj Mahal with their grown-up kids. The sun is setting behind them, everyone is dressed simply but oh so elegantly, and you can't see Bachchan's face (thankfully), but his physique is perfectly hero-material. The music is splendid, the evening is indescribably beautiful and the scene is perfect. Zinta and Bachchan have done their jobs of bringing up their kids and now can spend time gazing at the Taj Mahal without a care in the world.
Wow.
They probably have a couple of maidservants to take care of the house and a cook for their meals.
That is where I want to be.
And really, why haven't more hormonal studies been done in men? I'll bet my bottom dollar that men in their 30's, men in their 40's, men with 2 kids, men with no kids, men who are bald, men with big bottoms and men with sweaty handshakes are also afflicted with indiscreetly fuming hormones.
Other possible reasons for my general state of weepiness:
a) Lack of support from that esteemed spouse of mine in the specific area of housework: really, my man, could you PLEASE, for crying out loud, move that ass away from that computer and help me a bit? Or at least, spend some time while I am doing housework so I don't feel alone?
b) Incredible support from my lovely little son: the more Ani spends time with me and tries to help with whatever I am doing, the more weepy I get, because really, what a big heart on such a small kid!
c) Lack of sleep: thanks to those indiscriminate hormones, I suppose. Am too big to sleep on my tummy, too nasally-obstructed to breathe easily, and too prone to vivid dreams in which I have to eat the frogs that come out of Ani's nose.
What I need is an escape from my real life. Romance novels don't cut it anymore. I'm like the druggie who needs coke, and not marijuana, for a real fix. What I really need is...
....a Hindi movie, luridly romantic, incredibly silly, laugh-out-aloud funny, with a heart-stoppingly handsome hero and a stunningly beautiful heroine.
There's a scene at the end of the song "Bol Na Halke" where Preity Zinta (who satisfies my criterion for a beautiful heroine) and Abhishek Bachchan (Yuck. Double yuck.) walk in front of the Taj Mahal with their grown-up kids. The sun is setting behind them, everyone is dressed simply but oh so elegantly, and you can't see Bachchan's face (thankfully), but his physique is perfectly hero-material. The music is splendid, the evening is indescribably beautiful and the scene is perfect. Zinta and Bachchan have done their jobs of bringing up their kids and now can spend time gazing at the Taj Mahal without a care in the world.
Wow.
They probably have a couple of maidservants to take care of the house and a cook for their meals.
That is where I want to be.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Books and Authors- My Latest Discovery
Deanna Raybourne has written a series of mystery novels in the Lady Julia Grey series.
The first three books of the series are pretty gripping: great language, imaginative plots- if slightly twisted, and great protagonists.
The suspense and plots fall a bit flat after the protagonists get married, but the books are still good for a lazy afternoon's read.
The series reminds me of Lindsey Davis' Marcus Falco series, with a few key changes:
The Falco series is written in the voice of Falco, a man and a detective who marries above his station and whose wife helps him with his work; the Grey series is written in the voice of Julia Grey, an aristocrat who falls in love with a detective and wants to help him with his work.
The Falco series is set in ancient Rome- a period that is not particularly well-known among most readers and as such, the author has a lot more freedom to play around with creating this world with regards to the place of women in that society, societal rules and constraints, descriptions of male-female interactions and so forth. So Davis endows the females of her books with relative freedom of speech and action, the right to inheritance and so forth.
The Grey series is set in England in the mid 1800s- a period that has been 'done to death' in hundreds of novels in multiple genres and is much better known to the average reader: females from this era are expected to conform to much more rigid rules and are not expected to question or challenge men; and ought to pay sufficient attention to clothing.
In that respect, the Grey series portrays an interesting evolution of Julia Grey, from a "Dresden shepherdess" (her description), meekly following, to one who struggles with and challenges the limits that society places on her and finally reaches for what she wants regardless of what is expected from a woman in her position. The man Julia loves and wants to marry, Nicholas Brisbane, is half-Gypsy, and poor and is "in trade" as a private investigator. Julia has to overcome the economic differences between herself and Brisbane, her family's horror of non-aristocrats and tradesmen, and the social consequences of being seen around a Gypsy.
As I mentioned before, once she does overcome all these struggles and gets married to Brisbane, the series goes downhill a bit. Frankly, one can't help feeling that they ought to get themselves to a marriage counselor pronto.
The first three books of the series are pretty gripping: great language, imaginative plots- if slightly twisted, and great protagonists.
The suspense and plots fall a bit flat after the protagonists get married, but the books are still good for a lazy afternoon's read.
The series reminds me of Lindsey Davis' Marcus Falco series, with a few key changes:
The Falco series is written in the voice of Falco, a man and a detective who marries above his station and whose wife helps him with his work; the Grey series is written in the voice of Julia Grey, an aristocrat who falls in love with a detective and wants to help him with his work.
The Falco series is set in ancient Rome- a period that is not particularly well-known among most readers and as such, the author has a lot more freedom to play around with creating this world with regards to the place of women in that society, societal rules and constraints, descriptions of male-female interactions and so forth. So Davis endows the females of her books with relative freedom of speech and action, the right to inheritance and so forth.
The Grey series is set in England in the mid 1800s- a period that has been 'done to death' in hundreds of novels in multiple genres and is much better known to the average reader: females from this era are expected to conform to much more rigid rules and are not expected to question or challenge men; and ought to pay sufficient attention to clothing.
In that respect, the Grey series portrays an interesting evolution of Julia Grey, from a "Dresden shepherdess" (her description), meekly following, to one who struggles with and challenges the limits that society places on her and finally reaches for what she wants regardless of what is expected from a woman in her position. The man Julia loves and wants to marry, Nicholas Brisbane, is half-Gypsy, and poor and is "in trade" as a private investigator. Julia has to overcome the economic differences between herself and Brisbane, her family's horror of non-aristocrats and tradesmen, and the social consequences of being seen around a Gypsy.
As I mentioned before, once she does overcome all these struggles and gets married to Brisbane, the series goes downhill a bit. Frankly, one can't help feeling that they ought to get themselves to a marriage counselor pronto.
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