School reopened today – A new academic year! Of course, I hung around to enjoy the morning assembly and found it exciting, as always, to sing Jana Gana Mana loudly with the kids, much to the amusement of the parents standing around me. Well – what can I say? Proud to be an Indian. First day in Class VIII for Vidur. In full pants, no less. Here he is.
The saga of the full pants is a long story. Of course, we didn’t waste the 12 o’clock veyyil! As usual we went to TD Shah, who did not have them and we got redirected to the smaller TD Shah next to Asha Sweets. We got the goli kesar pedas from Asha Sweets – only they were not colored yellow as usual; instead they were a pleasant shade of khoa. We picked up one pair of pants and then moved on to buy the notebooks. This year, with the goal of making the school bags lighter, the children are asked to carry 100-page books for all subjects. Which probably means we must stock up, because they’ll barely last a month. Still! We printed out one chapter from all the subjects and put them in a file for Vidur. 🙂 NCERT zindabad! for making them all available online as pdf files!
After we got back home, we ordered pizza. And were eager for Vidur to try the full pants on. God knows what measurements the girl at TD Shah took, but we found that the pants wouldn’t even go past the knees. So we had to return those and exchange them for something useful. Sigh.We set out again in the afternoon after calling Shubashri and ensuring they had a trial room :-D. Well – success awaited us there – and Vidur looked suddenly like a grown up!. So after impatiently waiting for an auto, which we didn’t get, we decided to leg it back home. On the way, we intended solving my table problem for the laptop. At Central, we stopped at the furniture shop and saw a cute little table. A kid’s desk actually, with adjustable height. See:
I can also finally learn the alphabet! We got the table delivered only the next day though, as it began to rain just after we got home. It was a boxed item – and had to be assembled. The guy was supposed to deliver at 9.30 pm, probably after he closed shop. At 9.25 pm, I got a phone call.
“Good evening madam. I am calling from the furniture store. I was supposed to deliver your table at 9.30 pm. But because it is raining, I wonder if I can deliver it tomorrow morning instead?”
That’s verbatim what he said. I was so impressed – I said okay of course. You know how I hate to have things delivered when it is raining. I immediately thought of all the people who could benefit from a telephone training session from this guy!! The next day, he actually called to say he’d be an hour late – and was here at the time promised!
By the way, since yesterday, I’ve developed a catch under my left shoulder blade and it hurts quite badly whenever I breathe. I tried a hot water bag and a painkiller. When I awoke this morning, I prayed it should have gone…but doesn’t look like it wants to leave me so soon. I will ask Dr Prasad what to do when I see him today. Ridiculous to live with it.
I remember how I once got this long ago – and you made me lie down and made kashayam, and kept the hot water bag. I also remember dozing off and it had gone by the time I woke up. 🙁 this time it did not go. Of course, I didn’t have you to cuddle me. Sury insisted on applying some balm…but I managed to escape that. Am pretty sure it is a muscle catch though.
By the way, I cleaned out the U dal yesterday and ground idly batter. Remember my pledge to use up all store room thingies by May? The weather is also too hot. So I thought it is better to consume fresh than throw – at the going prices, I’d be mad to waste them. I also have to use the dosa rice. The u.d. is ready. As usual, I didn’t remember to soak it today. Will do it tomorrow morning. It is Good Friday tomorrow and Vidur has the day off.
Ok. hoping this aggravating pain exits soon, I am signing off for now.