The flowers above

Do you know why I like those flowers above, those yellow ones standing in the mulch on the top of the page?

Sometime in 2010- I think it might have been Feb- there was a gigantic blizzard in Pittsburgh. It was supposedly among the worst. Snow many feet high, roads closed, no food in the stores- that kind of blizzard. I was pregnant with Ani at that time, maybe 7/8 months along, and desperate to finish up some work for the doctorate before maternity leave.
So the first day of the storm (snow storms are very quiet and mostly peaceful, none of the sound and light effects of a regular Indian thunderstorm), RK took skis and walked 3 miles from our apartment to his residency (he might have been on call). And the second day onwards, so did I. I trudged to lab, bundled up in a few dozen layers, grabbed on to roadside shrubs and hedges on the downhill parts where the road might be slippery, but made it up and down okay. One of the best things about snow is that when it is snowing, the temperature is actually not very cold. It's much better than once the snow has stopped and everything freezes over.

I have no clue what work I did in lab, but I recall amazingly clearly how beautiful it all was: there was snow of so many types on the road and on the trees and leaves: Soft, crunchy, icy, flaky- they were all there! It was completely white, the trees were bending down from the weight of the snow,  there were kids sledding on the sideroads, no traffic whatsoever, and bright red cardinal birds on trees. It was like straight out of a postcard from the 1800s.

Even almost a decade later, I love remembering that pregnancy and those walks in the snow. I might have been waddling like a penguin, perhaps there was some danger of me slipping and falling and breaking something in the snow, but for the most part, what I remember is the calm white peace and the general happiness all around.

So anyway, those flowers up there were the first flowers of spring that I saw that year. They had popped out on the driveway of my favorite Indian restaurant and I took that pic sometime in May, after Ani was born.
 
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Post script:
So, I had a vague recollection of writing a blog around this time and went hunting through the archives for it and found it. Clearly, my recollection now is rather drastically different from what I'd written then. I'm a bit startled by it, to be honest. How odd that what was seemingly so frustrating at that time should be so beautiful now!

Pleased with myself and the world

The kids and I braved Spar Hypermarket on a Sunday evening (the very definition of hell on earth) and bought a white board, chess board and scrabble board.
Today, when playing scrabble with Ani, I won because of "YOD"(a Hebrew alphabet)... not just YOD by itself, but YOD on the Triple Word square.

*Feeling very smug*

Remembrance and Relief

Last time I was at NCBS, a few months ago, I felt so anxious about some things that I had to get myself under control by staring into the koi pond and imagining I was a fish whose only concern in life was to flit gracefully through the water, munching on whatever koi munch on.

Once I'd finished with koi, I also wished with all my heart that I had a job like one of those M &B heroines: have you noticed that a majority of romance novel heroines have jobs like secretaries, hair dressers, cupcake bakers and food photographers? Very few M&B novels have:

- businesswomen (ok, some do, but they usually run family-owned businesses)

- physicians (always, ALWAYS, doctors are male; brilliant (naturally); wealthy (because all heroes in romance novels have to be... when I was younger, they had to be millionaires. Nowadays, who cares about a million here or there? We only care about billionaires); grumpy, because they are oh so tired and impatient with the antics of the vast brainless populace they have to tolerate (invariably they mistakenly categorize the heroine as brainless initially, but when their equally brilliant/ good looking/ wealthy colleague hits on the heroine, suddenly realize that hey, she's The One!); stupendously compassionate (there always HAS to be a sick kid/ baby/ old lady in these books- it is a rule); and exceedingly good-looking... show me one doctor who has acne spots, bad teeth and hair on his back....(oh, if he has hair on his back, you're in the wrong genre... you need to be in the fantasy section where the hero is actually a werewolf. You're welcome). Women are ALWAYS nurses in M &B.

- scientists (unless you count one book where there was a scientist who had the brains to invent a magical solution that could do something powerful... either suppress high emotions in mobs, or infertilize people for population control or some such thing, but didn't somehow realize that it could be abused in the wrong hands until gently pointed out by the hero- because, get this, she only saw the best in people. *Sigh*)

- policy analysts... well, to be honest, I don't know too many women in real life who are policy analysts, so... plus, imagine the poor author trying to figure out what kind of policy her creation should be analyzing. 

- any field where she has to take decisions or disagree with a man's decision... maybe I'm being pessimistic here, but I have to be honest... can't recall a single M&B where a woman takes a decision that would affect anyone other than herself... unless you count the books where she has a baby (usually illegitimate and belonging to the hero, who somehow doesn't know that he has fathered a child), or a kid (if she's a widow).

Not all romances are M&Bs, of course. and there are thankfully many many romance novels that shatter these norms: G. A Aiken's books (usually have very bloodthirsty female warriors), most books by Susan Elizabeth Philips, all of Penny Reid's books, my forever go-to-authors Ilona Andrews (yes, it is authorS, not author, since it's a husband-wife duo), Sherry Thomas (who has many books with fantastic female protagonists: physician in the 1880s! Chinese warrior! Detective!) One of my current favorite series is the Wrexford-Sloane series by Andrea Penrose, although her series with chocolates is kind of awful.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah,  so today when I was at NCBS and I happened to find myself back at the koi pond, I couldn't resist taking a picture to remind me that hey, I ought to celebrate the feeling of non-anxiousness!

Staring down the koi pond from the 1st floor. Today, I'm glad I'm not a fish.

Thank you, my beautiful Wednesday! I enjoyed you immensely!