More naan, please.

I'm back from India. It was a crazy, crazy place - completely different from anything that I have experienced before. All I can tell people when they ask is that the movie Slumdog Millionaire, with its images of complete poverty and complete wealth, is not really too far off the mark. Not really far off at all. India is a country that is so alive with growth. Bursting at the seems with economic growth, and its people are being dragged along with it, but in anyone's estimation without appropriate infrastructure or social services. I won't get into much social commentary here, but you just look at the roadsides lined with mounds of trash, packs of dogs, random pigs and a few cows thrown in, and then see, among all of that, families living right in the thick of it, and you start to think, "How can this be helped? What can we be doing to help?" Hundreds of motorbikes, some with four passengers loaded on (three without helmets), zoom down the road, and when someone needs to use the restroom they pull over to the side of the roadway, hop off, zip down their pants and just go. Right there. Into the mounds of trash that the family cows and pigs and stray dogs rifle through looking for food, and onto someone's front "yard." And then they get back on and zoom away. We spent a lot of time driving in my seventy-four hours in and around Delhi, and I saw this a lot. A lot more than I would have liked. And yet, I would go back there. I'd go back because it's a fascinating place. Eye-opening. An experience like none other you might have. Truly another world for me, and it's something that you'd have to see in order to really believe.

You see things like this:

And like this:

Motorbikes (and cars and trucks, too!) driving in all directions down the street, weaving in and out of cars and people and bikes, and animals. Cows hanging out on the side of the street. Vendors selling their wares or food from a cart that they'll then hook up to a tractor, or bike, or motorbike, and drive down the highway yes) to another location. Three-wheeled vehicles, either as trucks or taxis or whatever, with sides open, weaving around the bikes. And everywhere - people. So many people. India has a billion people, with over 12 million in Delhi alone (and over 22 million in the larger National Capital Region), and so you are just struck by how many people there are. And they get so close to you. Personal space? That's a very Western concept. There isn't any in Delhi.

But you'll get luxury in India, too, like at my hotel, which when compared to other luxury resorts is probably low on the totem pole. I stayed at the Aman New Delhi, and I've already told you about some of its amenities, like the private pool that each suite gets, and the settee in the sitting area of the suite, and the warm and cozy bed that gets nightly turn-down service by your assigned butler. And then you get meals like this delivered to you by your butler. That was paneer makhani, which I ate twice in India, and which I'll have to seek out now that I'm back here. Little cheese squares in a rich, buttery, tomato-based sauce, with Indian spices mixed in. Oh wow, was that a good meal. And the naan, even in the hotel, was delicious. Wonderful. I wish I had had naan with every meal. I didn't mind having a limited diet while there (no raw vegetables or fruits, no water from the tap, no ice-cubes, no fish, and be wary of the meats...) because the food like this was just delicious.

And I didn't mind seeing sights like this, either: The Taj Mahal was a must-see, and we saw it. Didn't matter that it took about three hours to get there and about five hours to get back, or that we rode a cart being pulled by a camel wearing a diaper in order to get from where our car dropped us off to where we were frisked and pretty much interrogated in order to get into the Taj entrance. It was a site to see. Maybe one day I'll see it again, or maybe I'll get to Rajasthan or to Kerala, two other states in India definitely worthy of a visit. I'd go again to India, only this time not with work. There's so much more to see than the inside of an office building, or the highway on the way to the office building from the hotel. It's that other part of India that I want to see again, the crazy you've-got-to-see-it-to-believe-it part. And next time I hope to ride in one of those three-wheeled taxis, only I hope to not be the passenger who has to hang on to the back.

I could get used to turndown service.

I write this as my room is getting its turndown service. Meaning two butlers have come in to prep the room for the night. Meaning the comforter is turned back on the bed, the towels you may have used during the day are replaced with fresh ones (same with your slippers and bathrobe), and the mood lighting on your balcony, at your personal swimming pool, and near your bed are turned on for the night. Yes, I said butlers, and yes, I said personal swimming pool. I'm at the Aman New Delhi, and that's how they do things here.

Here's a (really bad) photo of my personal swimming pool, as taken from the giant window looking out to it from my room:

And here's a photo of the flower petals sitting on the table, next to my settee, in my room:
I cannot wait until I can upload better photos (photos from Blackberries are not that great, apparently!). I should be showing you photos of the Taj Mahal, which I got to see on Tuesday, and of the journey to the Taj (meaning the swarms of people and the cows and monkeys and pigs just hanging around by the roadside, and the shanty-towns, and the mounds of trash, and the packs of dogs with curly tails running around, and the tractors driving down the highways, and the motorbikes with four people packed behind the driver (none with helmets), and the three-wheeled taxis running on natural gas, and...), but I can't upload those to the blog yet. I haven't been able to enjoy the swimming pool yet, but that's the plan for tonight after dinner. I have many plans for tonight after dinner. Work, pool, bath, packing, reading my magazine on the settee and then watching Indian television. It will be a long night, but a good one, and I figure that since it's my last night in this kind of hotel, probably forever, I should make it as long as possible.

Three more things.

Today I woke up very early. Very early for a Saturday, anyway. It's nerves, and an over-active mind. I'm trying to process the fact that I leave for India in hours, and it's not really working out so well.

Anyway, in keeping with the three-things theme, I'll give you three more tidbits before a week of silence. The first tidbit is this article/video that I read/saw with Irene Rosenfeld, the CEO of Kraft. She's saying that you can't do it all. You have to make choices. Decide what's important for you and then do that, but realize that you are going to miss certain things, and be okay with that. This is in the context of having a "work-life balance," which maybe doesn't exist, because maybe the scales aren't always evenly weighted. And you know something? I agree with her. I do, actually, and I think that there are many people I know who don't agree with her, who feel that you can have a balance with everything and who think that you can do it all. Work, parent, volunteer, have hobbies and you-time, have a successful marriage. What I believe is that yes, you can do all of those things, but you won't be doing any of them very well, and some of them, if not all of them, will suffer for it. Probably a controversial statement with all the women I know, but I stand by it. For me, this is true. If I tried to do all of those things, and all of those things at once, I would not be performing any of those functions at the level of success that I would want. And I would be stretched too thin. I can't do everything. I have to make choices. I will always have to make choices. And I have to be okay with those choices.

Okay, moving on from that. Doug and I got new glasses. Kind-of on a whim, but it's a good thing because our prescriptions had changed from last year. We must be getting old, because each time we see the eye doctor our vision gets worse and worse. Pretty soon we'll be in bifocals and we'll be having discussions about the benefit of progressive lenses. So far, though, we still only really need the glasses for distance vision. Doug stuck to his old-faithful computer-geek style and I decided to go with a variation on the Harry Potter theme. What would be really different is if Doug and I both decided to nix the glasses and get contacts. Can you imagine a world in which Doug and I do not wear glasses? I can't. Too scary.

There was a third thing that I was going to write about, a real third thing, but I forget. So I'll just make something up. I'll write about how cold it is in my house right now. 54 degrees. It's about 38 degrees outside, so 54 is comparatively warm, but still. It's cold. I am wearing two fleeces, a hat, and if I owned fingerless gloves that would allow me to type I'd be wearing those, too. I could just turn on the heat, I guess, but I have a fear of turning on the heat here before our furnace has been serviced for the season. What if it breaks? What if the furnace explodes? These are the things I worry about. So until the furnace guy comes, which won't be until sometime in November, we're layering up.

I won't need these layers when I'm in India, though. It's warm there. It's also time to finally pack and get this party started. I have a small list of things to go and buy (like a neck pillow for the plane and Imodium for, well, other issues), and then I have to gather all the gadgets that are charging (like the laptop, Blackberry, nook, and camera...), but then I should be pretty set. It's a bit unreal. I'm not really prepared in my mind to go. In body I am, in mind I am not. It's going to be quite the trip.

Three things.

Oh, blog. Blog, blog, blog, I say with a sigh in my voice. How I loved you once, and how I still do, but how I now neglect you. It's not that I don't have things to say, and to a certain extent it's not that I don't have time to write them. It's just that I fill my time with other things, and the things that I want to say just don't get said. I started out so enthusiastically writing, sometimes twice a day. And now I barely make once a week. It's a shame when life speeds up and interests get tossed aside. A shame.

However, I have a time management principle that I try to live by, and it's getting three things done a day. Three things. Only three things. If I can get three things done then I have had a good day. Let's apply that principle to the blog, and let's blog about three things today. The first will be Sarah and Andy and their wedding.

Our friends Sarah and Andy got married on 10/10/10. I have never met nicer people, and I felt honored to be at their wedding. And eat their mini wedding cakes. (I know my cake, and these were really, really good.) We got to see Chris and Chris at the wedding. They stayed with us that night, too. How good it was to see our Portland friends again. We miss those faces; we don't see them nearly enough.

Second up: Doug's parents. My in-laws came to visit. Yes, Doug's parents came to visit us in our house. They drove here. They finally made it. And if that weren't a miracle enough, they even stayed overnight. This has been eight years in the making. Eight years of good intentions and missed opportunities. But this time it finally all came together, and I think it was a success. We did a lot of talking. Doug's father did a lot of looking at the house. We went out to dinner, we drove around town, we went out to breakfast, we watched half of Paul Blart: Mall Cop and all of The 'burbs. We did all that we normally do at a visit with Joe and Linda, but this time it was not in Connecticut. It felt good to host for a change, and my fingers are crossed that it won't take eight more years for us to host again.

And my third thing for today is India. As in the country. India. I'm going there. Soon. Days. In days I am going to India. Can you believe it? I barely can. For only a few days I'm going to India, but I'm still going. I'm going for work. I'm excited. I'm a bit nervous (and no, not about terrorists or monsoons or raging water buffalo and whatever else, but about accidentally drinking or eating something tainted and getting sick. I have a fear of being sick, a real phobia, and this is my one fear about India.), but more than that I'm excited. It's finally starting to sink in that I'm going. I have my visa. I have my hotel reservation, and I now have my plane ticket. I'm going. For less than 96 hours I'll be in India, but think of all the otherness that I will experience in that short time. India fascinates me in a way that China or other "exotic" places never have. The colors, the sounds, the energy. The elephants. The tea! The sitar. So different. I will want more time there, I know, but there will be other opportunities. I will take this one while I have it.

Sew productive!

I follow the blog The Purl Bee to see what great ideas they come up with for fun sewing and knitting projects (and I would love to go to Purl Soho if I ever get myself to NYC). On a recent visit to the blog I saw a post that really hit home, and the photos gave me a bit of déjà-vu: Now how familiar are those? These are my bibs! And my bibs are these bibs! Can't you see the resemblance? I feel like I was on the cutting edge when I made these bibs over a year ago. The Purl Bee is only now posting about them. Maybe someone from The Purl Bee saw my handsome nephew in his bib, or cute-as-a-button baby Ruby wearing hers and was inspired by my vision. Or, maybe they just happen to have the same book of sewing projects that I do. Regardless, I'm pleased to see that The Purl Bee and I are on the same crafting page.

The fabrics on the bibs from The Purl Bee are great, and definitely one of the reasons I want to get myself down to that store. I have a vision of a store where the walls are lined with shelves and on those shelves are reams and reams of fabric with bold colors and unique prints. And my mind will swim in an ocean of ideas - what to do with that fabric? Aprons, bibs, curtains, quilts, bags, napkins, table cloths, pillow-covers... the list is endless. Imagine what kind of quilt I can make with those fabrics! It would be even more wild than the one I'm making now.

On Saturday my aunt and mother came up to help me assemble and start to actually quilt my quilt, so it's only a matter of time before I'll be done with this one and need to move on to something else. We got the quilt assembly done (at least to this stage, which is simply connecting all three pieces of the quilt - front, batting, and back), and I actually hand-quilted two squares. Hand quilted! It was truly a miracle. Tell me that this doesn't look like fun and you don't want to do it, too:

First, we taped the back of the quilt to the floor to keep it in place for when we put on top of it the batting (the off-white material) and then the front of the quilt (the layer with all the t-shirts). Then, we pinned all three layers together. See all these pins? We had to make a trip to the craft store to get more of them. It's a big quilt, and we went a little pin happy (but at least we know that the quilt won't shift during the sewing process!). Next we traced a small square into each of the fabric squares. This was truly a family affair, because look who we roped in to help us with the tracing! The small squares are what we are actually going to be hand-quilting, because this is what will keep all three layers of the quilt connected when we unpin the whole thing. My mother, aunt and I are trying to get Doug to help with the hand-quilting process. After all, he wants this thing on the bed as much as I do, and if he wants it on the bed before we're both too old and blind to see it then I think it's only right that he put a thimble on and help. Thimbles are cheap; I'll get another.

But, even if Doug doesn't help, I do have many helpers for the actual quilting process, some more helpful than others. You see me in the background, pulling my needle through the quilt, while Meg lays contentedly and takes a nap. There's something about this quilt that the cats love. Sewing the second square later that night was enough to charm both of the kitties right to sleep. It's going to be a long winter of cats and quilts, that's for sure, but I am looking forward to it. Because I really do plan to make another one (which is just want my mother and aunt want to hear... but at least they'll get a free meal out of any day that they come to help me!). This one can be the summer one, and then I can make another with more subdued, wintery colors. (Ask me how I feel about this thirty squares from now, when I still have forty more to go...) For now, it sounds like a plan.

Nothing like leaving you hanging.

(Last time I wrote anything here it was September. Now it's October. The world just keeps turning, now doesn't it. I know for a fact that it does, because next to me right now is my stack of monthly bills. Do I really have to pay them again so soon?)

What is it about fall that makes everything seem so much more... fresh and clean? This past summer was rough, and I'm not just talking about the weather. Sure, it was hot and dry but also so humid at times (the rain would just never come, though), and every time you walked outside you wished that you lived in a nudist colony because no matter how few clothes you were wearing you were still just a little too hot. But the summer was rough in other ways, too. Emotionally very difficult. We lost Wyatt, I lost my great-aunt Madeline, and my father brought out into the open some ghosts that I thought (and maybe we all thought) were hidden away from sight forever. And there was the same-old same-old about pursuing passions (or even having passions), the meaning of life, lamenting over the fact that there is not enough time in the day, and that even though you spend a huge amount of your time with your husband you still don't feel like you're really connecting with him because there is a large part of you that just does not have the energy to put into all the things that you're supposed to have the energy for, and something inevitably suffers, and sometimes that's your relationship with your significant other (does that happen to you, too?). In true Rosanne fashion, I didn't feel the real impact of all of this until well into August, and basically broke down halfway through. I became my friend the Zoloft egg. Classic depression. Sad, weighed down, lack of interest, fatigue, loneliness. All of it. Somehow, though, I got myself back on track, slowly but surely. Doug helped. Meg and Sasha helped. Homeopathy helped. Our therapist helped. Right now I'm doing much better. Much, much better, but am weary of another visit from the Zoloft egg. I bet I won't get a visit until late January, when I'm tired of winter and am ready to see some green grass and some daffodils. So I'll enjoy each of these bright days while I have them.

I guess it's appropriate, then, that, as I leave the sadness behind for a while, Doug and I take a little trip to regroup and refresh. We headed out to Cooperstown this past weekend for a nice weekend away. There's nothing to do there in Cooperstown, unless you count going to the one small art museum, the small-scale Sturbridge Village, and the Baseball Hall of Fame as things to do. Which I do, wholeheartedly, and these were the reasons why we went there (those and Ommegang), but so many people said to us, "You're going to Cooperstown? Why?", that we allowed ourselves to think that maybe we would be bored. But who can be bored when you have this around you? We drove through hills and valleys that rivaled those we saw in Ireland, they were that beautiful. The land is just so green there, so alive and so vibrant. (I sound like Tom Cruise in Far and Away when he's yelling at Nicole Kidman about land - land!) Naturally, Doug was thinking to himself, "Wouldn't Cooperstown be a great place to live!", and decided to search the local paper (while sitting inside the only coffee shop for, oh, I don't know, 25 miles) for employment opportunities. Unfortunately, we found none. But, we did find Brewery Ommegang (and were on their first tour and tasting of the day at noon on Monday. Nothing says breakfast like strong Belgian beer.) and also the Fenimore Art Museum and The Farmer's Museum. We were so happy to have made it to The Farmer's Museum, where Doug's family have their old homestead on display, that we had to do a little dance. Because it was a beautiful day in a wonderfully historic working museum in dairy country New York. What more could we have asked for? A milkshake, a cheeseburger about four-inches thick, and seeing the house where Doug's grandmother grew up? Check, check, and check. This trip was just what the doctor ordered. And when we go back, maybe we'll actually check out the Baseball Hall of Fame.