Recently I read a very good article about how to inspire and guide your kids to be good conversationalist. Well one way is to converse with them properly... hmmm for them to learn it, I NEED to do to right myself. At the end of the day with a full time job, I am longing for some adult conversation. I just don't have to talk like ADULTS with KIDS.

But then, I am chosen to be a parent and it is my job to do the right things however hard it is. After reading the article, I realized what I am NOT doing right. And now I can FIX it.

I am praying to God to help me find more patience and understanding.

Some good quotes I have recently found:

- Do not let what you cannot interfere with what YOU CAN do. - John Wooden
- And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good. - John Steinback

Move on

Just now I was messaging a friend on facebook for some help I needed from her. We dont keep in touch on a daily basis but we are close in spirit friends... friends who understand each other but don't see a need to be with each other but whenever we touch base, its like looking into the mirror, only for me, my mirror reflection is much more literary than me. An author of a book and a very creative person. She finds beauty in every day things in odd ways and has an easy to express it through her writing and photos and sometimes both.

Got to know, she is getting divorced. I did not know how to react to this news and said the same to her. I think I have reached that stage where I feel being honest is much better than trying to do or say something that I am not good at.

I hope she finds her happiness or have already found. Will be talking to her this weekend and hope it will go well. But hers was a love marriage!!!! And I thought arrange marriages are the stale ones. I say that because with her being so interesting perhaps that is the reason for the divorce. I am thinking it was her decision. Perhaps it was the husband's. Well, I wont know unless she says it to me herself. Which I don't see will happen.

Anyways, I feel the way she is build, she will be fine. Thank God for that being. I am not worried at all. I feel divorce will not a problem for her, rather a solution to something that did not work. I hope for the best for her and her son. She lives in Atlanta where I was a few weeks ago. I was wondering why I forgot she was in Atlanta, I should have met her. But now it seems perhaps that would not be a good thing to do at that time. I hope Atlanta weather is a balm for her soul. I hope she has family with her.

Climate controlled moods

If you were raised in India, like myself, you know how many songs there are on rain. The songs make your wistful and longing to go out for a long drive. But migrate to California and you just don't understand what went wrong. The songs don't make any sense now, only make your nostalgic for something you don't have and don't understand anymore.

On our recent trip to the southern states of Georgia and Tennessee, I had that 'aha' feeling. One fine early morning, when we were browsing through the Atlanta streets in Buckhead, my happiness quotient rising, my children eyeing me from time to time, giving me that look that I have gone cuckoo. They had not seen me this kind of happy in a long time. I am happy most of the times but stable happy. Not the laughing, jumping happy, if you know what I mean. Well, I was also singing the Bollywood rain songs and that was not adding much sobriety to my behavior either.

As I munched on my sudden mood elevation on our way back to Hotel, I decided it must be the city atmosphere that I might be liking. I don't get it that much living in California suburbs.

Later, when we met our fellow friends from CA, I mentioned I just love this place and it feels like I am back home. DH's friend agreed and said yeah he also loves the humidity here. Its so much like India. Here in his one line, lies the gist of my happiness.

All the rain songs in India will not be written had it had the Mediterranean or arid climate of California. Funny!!! never knew this angle to why things happen the way it does.

Humidity, I love you. Perhaps when I retire!!!! :)

All my life, I have been friends with a variety of people and somehow I could never be one of them, partially relating to some part of them, that too, for sometime often branching into something else, later on, as witnessed when we met again after a spread of a couple of years.

Recently I turned 40. Recently on a southwest flight from Atlanta, GA to back home, I read an article about Taylor Swift, about her jump from country musician to pop star and how the writer mentioned she refuses a definition. That's when it smacked me right in face, the realization when I was looking at that phrase. "This is me". I too don't fit into a mold. I am also not very predictable as to what I am or what I will be in a few years. I am ever changing, but not really following any path, traversed by others. Even people close to me get surprised by me sometimes. Because when they think they have finally figured me out, I change. Perhaps, I resist being labelled, for the same reason. In my subconscious I seem to know I am not that label or will not be. I refuse definition!!!