We're Moving to Mali

The title about sums it up.

Our plans have changed from what we thought would be happening last year at this time. But we're happy with the change. I've been tired of the United States for a few months now. I'm certainly done with winter. Muffin asks every day if we're moving back to India. If we're going to Pakistan. If we're going to Chad. If we're going to Mali. She hasn't been in one place for so long without getting on a plane and traveling somewhere (although that changed las week when we went on vacation); she assumes every morning we are waking up early and going to the airport. My aunt told Muffin she has itchy feet and Muffin agreed, although in the sense that her feet are literally itchy because of her winter dry skin.

We haven't even unpacked all the boxes from India yet and my project for the next few months is to decide what goes to Mali and what doesn't. I've already got lists for consumables, for our suitcases, for the air shipment, and for the boat shipment, based on two overseas moves already and on the basic nonavailability of so much stuff in Africa (Mali may have slightly more to offer than Burundi, but I'm not taking any chances).

I've started speaking French to Muffin. We're hoping to enroll her in a preschool program that will prepare her for full-immersion French kindergarden. She doesn't seem to remember any Telegu or Hindi but she is taking to the French very well.

She is so certain that we still live in Hyderabad. I think there's a lot about Mali that will be familiar to her and make her feel at home.

Mike has been working in various African places the last few weeks. He said landing in Africa felt like being home again.

We all have itchy feet that are ready to be back in Africa.

Nairobi

What makes me feel strange as an expat, especially one who has lived in Africa and visited Nairobi, is that there was a higher chance someone I knew was going to be at that mall then at any of the locations of any of the shootings that have happened in the United States recently. To my knowledge no one I knew was there; but I haven't heard much from Nairobi on Facebook. Has the government locked down on Internet usage?

I'm glad it didn't happen at the mall I've been to in Nairobi because I didn't want to have too clear of a picture in my mind of people running through the food court and Nakumatt store; images of those places have jumped to the forefront of my mind in the last twenty-four hours.

When you go into malls in Nairobi, Hyderabad, Bangkok, Singapore, there are security guards and metal detectors. But there's also sort of a vacant stare in the eyes of the security guards. The metal detectors offer a false sense of security. And they can't stop a hand grenade that gets thrown before the bad guys even enter the mall.

Sunny at Fabling said some of the things I've been trying to articulate today. Malls are the safe havens for expats overseas. It's where you may find the most Starbucks-like cup of coffee and Western fashions. It's where you'll see an English-language movie. It's where you'll bump into just about everyone you know on a Sunday afternoon. In the summer it's where you go to escape the heat. In Hyderabad, since the parks were closed during the day, the mall was where I took a Muffin who was just learning to walk so she could wander around; I took her as soon as it opened in the morning before there were too many people and she ran up and down the halls freely. As much as I avoid malls when I'm in the United States, overseas they are the place to be when you feel a little homesick.


I mentioned to Mike yesterday that I'm ready to head back overseas. Life is almost too easy in the United States, not counting the tragedies that have happened here recently and in other parts of the world. I'm trying to relax and enjoy the conveniences of American life. But there's a void. A void that exploding malls isn't going to cure me of. I've been working on this post on and off for several hours, watching the news from Nairobi worsen by the hour. Nairobi was never a place I wanted to live but I enjoyed visiting there; even the terrible airport started to feel homey after so many layovers there. After several months of nonstop living in Burundi, landing in a country where English is spoken is always refreshing. I still want to get back overseas somewhere.

Even Funnier than Having an Auto-Rickshaw in Your House...

...is having an auto-rickshaw-shaped box:

We are halfway through the second, and final, day of our pack-out from Hyderabad. 

The Auto-Rickshaw Bed in the News

Through a friend of a friend who works at a local newspaper in Hyderabad, the auto-rickshaw bed became big news. This week the article was published, including interviews with us and with Eimor Customs, the guys who built the bed for us: All for the smile... It was priceless!

If you ignore how they changed my quotes to be Indian English, the only thing they got wrong was noting Mike as a writer and editor, not me. Otherwise it's a fun and funny article about the project.

For more information and photos on how we turned an auto-rickshaw into a bed, see my posts with the auto-rickshaw tag.

Indian Cooking Lessons: Chai

Yes, I need lessons in making tea. I've watched my housekeeper make it hundreds of time and I've been practicing making it myself but I can never get it exactly the way she does.

The chai you get at Starbucks is known as masala chai here. Throughout India, "chai" mostly means "tea with milk and sugar," not with all the spices that Americans have come to know it as.

This is the basic recipe my housekeeper uses for two servings of the ginger chai that I like best:

1 1/2 cups water, the "cup" being the cup you'll be drinking from
1 1/2  spoonfuls of tea leaves ("chai powder," it's called here)
2 spoonfuls of sugar
1-inch of fresh ginger, washed and crushed (for plain chai, omit the ginger)
milk

Add everything except the milk to a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil it for a few minutes until it turns black then add milk until it is "the color of chai." If the milk is pasteurized and from the refrigerator, keep boiling for just a minute, long enough for the milk to heat up.

Strain directly into two tea cups and drink while it's still hot.

I usually blog with a cup of chai.

For some reason when I make it myself, my chai is weak so I think I'm using too much water or not enough tea, ginger, and/or sugar, or I'm not boiling it long enough. I've been working on my own recipe with ginger, mint, and honey (instead of sugar) and I'm getting closer to the taste I want but I'm not there yet.

When I have a cold, my housekeeper uses a special blend of ingredients. They make me feel wonderful; the chai feels great on a sore throat and clears up my head congestion. It's so delicious but she refuses to make it for me unless I'm sick. She recently shared the ingredients with me, though, so I can make it when I'm feeling sniffly during the cold New England winter:

ginger
honey instead of sugar
1/2 to 1 teaspoon of the following: cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, and cumin powders
a few leaves of mint
a dash of black pepper

Follow the same steps as above with the tea powder and the milk.

Making chai was one of Muffin's first tasks in the kitchen. She uses the mortar and pestle to crush the ginger, she fills the water cup from the distiller, and she spoons the tea and sugar into the saucepan, taking "just a little taste" of each. If I can't get it right, she'll probably be able to.

Long Runs and Sugar-Free Consideration

Image from Pinterest.

It's Motivation Monday and it's an off day. We stayed up late on Friday night eating steak and drinking wine and I did not wake up early on Saturday morning for my long run. I did it on Sunday instead and was so tired all day long that I decided on a rest day today. Tuesday is a running and yoga day so I'll more than make up for it.

My "long run" for the next couple of weeks is only six miles and yesterday I eased into long run running with 5.3 miles. I've been doing three-milers a couple times a week but rarely any longer; I really feel like I need to start from scratch with the long runs so that I don't injure myself or get sick. I was talking to a friend about goals for the half marathon (she signed up to do it too, yay!) and I said that since last year I got sick and missed both the half marathons I trained for, if I show up at the starting line healthy, that's a PR for me. So that's the goal for this year: Stay healthy and complete 13.1 miles in any amount of time.

I have to be very particular about my running, eating, and sleeping on the days when I have control over those things because there are going to be a few days when I don't have control. Like the thirty hours we'll spend on flights between Hyderabad and Newark.

On the menu for this week: There's a big pot of chili simmering away on the stove right now and cornbread muffins will be going into the oven as soon as Muffin wakes up from her nap and helps me make them. Mango season is ending so I'm desperately getting as much as I can into the freezer to get us through the next couple of weeks until we leave. I also have a case of gluten-free oatmeal and a case of Corn Chex cereal for Muffin and I to eat through in the next month.

Since I'll be starting fresh with an empty pantry in a few weeks, I'm considering this How To Go No-Sugar plan, at least the first step or two. It seems more realistic and do-able than plans that tell you to throw everything away and go cold-turkey. Has anyone tried this plan or other no-sugar plans? I love sugar. I don't know that I want to give it up completely but I feel like I should definitely cut down on it considerably. If I can satisfy the cravings with other foods then that would certainly be healthy for me.

Alcohol is a sugar, so what happens to wine in a sugar-free life?

Indian Cooking Lessons: Chicken Biryani with Gravy and Raita

With our few weekends left we've decided to have our housekeeper come in for some over-time on Saturdays to teach us how to cook some of our favorite dishes. Yes, at any time over the last two-plus years I could have learned these things but it's difficult for me to concentrate with Muffin underfoot, I'm often busy with other things so our housekeeper can cook quickly while I work, and Mike wants to learn too. So on Saturday mornings Muffin goes to two hours of music and art class and Mike and I have cooking lessons.

Hyderabad is known for its biryani. It's a layered rice dish. It's the reason we moved here when given the option of several Indian cities. Chicken biryani is the first dish our housekeeper made for us and it's remained our favorite. Muffin has grown up on it. One of the reasons its imperative that I learn how to make it is so that I don't deprive Muffin of one of her favorite foods. Moving to the United States is going to be a shock to her and I want to continue making some of her favorite Indian foods to ease her transition.

So, to the best of my ability, I have transcribed my notes from watching my housekeeper make chicken biryani and making it myself under her supervision.

If anything in the recipe is too confusing please let me know. I've been living with it for a while now and it makes sense to me but it's not helpful to others if it doesn't make sense to them!

Chicken Biryani 
½ kg chicken – boneless chicken breast cut into one-inch pieces or quartered chicken with bones
½ kg yogurt
bunch of cilantro, leaves and stems chopped
bunch of mint, leaves and stems chopped
2 chilis (mirchi or serrano), chopped
1 big spoon garlic-ginger paste
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp cardamom powder
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp turmeric powder
juice of 2 small limes
2 tsp salt

Put all of the above into a big pot to marinate for 30 minutes. 

Chicken marinating with yogurt, spices, and herbs

In another pot...
2 medium red onions, sliced
pinch of salt

Heat up enough oil to completely cover the onions for deep frying. Once the oil is hot, add the onions and fry until deep brown. Remove onions from oil and drain on paper towels, allow to cool. Save the pot and the oil!

Cover onions with oil...

Fry until golden brown; drain and cool until crispy

Back to the chicken pot
Add about half of the onion oil to the chicken pot (save the frying pot and the rest of the oil). Start cooking on high heat, bring to boil. Boil for 5 to 10 minutes, then reduce to low heat.

In a medium pot
½ kg rice
sprinkle shazeera seed (taste similar to caraway seed)
2 Indian bay leaves (English bay leaves can be used)
3 black cardamom pods (green okay if black is not available)
pinch salt 

Add to a medium pot and cover with water plus about one inch. Cook over high heat until boiling. The rice should not get fully cooked; it needs to be a little hard.

Aromatics in water, waiting for rice

Back to the chicken pot
Crumble about two-thirds of the fried onions and add to chicken pot.

In a small cup
Prepare food color: About 1/3 cup milk with orange color powder. Set aside.

In the rice pot
Stir rice occasionally. When it boils, take it off the heat and drain. Remove bay leaves. Spread the rice over chicken mixture and smooth off. Spoon food coloring over the rice in swirls; crumble the rest of fried onions evenly over the top. Spoon 1 to 2 Tbs of onion oil over top of rice. Cook on low heat for 15 to 20 minutes. To test for doneness, press a spoon into the rice. When it’s firm, it’s done.

Finished with fried onions and food coloring

Gravy
Toast 1 Tbs white poppy seeds; grind to a fine powder then add 1 – 2 Tbs water and grind into a paste. Set aside.

1 medium red onion – chop into large chunks
2 chilies – chop
2 medium tomatoes – chop into large chunks
1 large handful mint
1 large handful cilantro
½ tsp each cinnamon, cloves, turmeric, and chili powders
½ cup yogurt
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
2-3 large pinches of salt

Grind in the blender until smooth. Add to the frying pot that still has oil in it from frying the onions. Cook on low or medium flame for five minutes until the oil separates. Add a big spoonful of ginger-garlic paste and the poppy seed paste. Simmer for a few more minutes.

Raita 
Grate one large cucumber and mix with a cup of yogurt. Add a pinch of salt and a pinch of mustard or cumin powder to taste. Carrot, tomato and/or onion can also be used along with the cucumber.

To serve, spoon through all the layers of rice, yogurt, and chicken and place on a large plate or broad, shallow bowl. Add some of the gravy and some of the raita. Dig in!

My taste-tester

The key is to use the same proportion of chicken, rice, and yogurt. Using a half kilogram, or about one pound, makes enough for four to six people. All the other spices and seasonings can be adjusted to taste.

When I made it myself, with our housekeeper watching, it tasted great but not quite the same. I think I went a little light on the spices and I know I didn't use enough salt. The recipe includes approximations of what my housekeeper uses; I used about half the amount of salt and my teaspoons were a little scant. You can make the biryani less spicy by not putting in fresh chilies and by using less chili powder. Then, you can make the gravy spicier for diners who want their biryani with more kick. Muffin also prefers plain yogurt to the raita, so that's another option for those who don't want quite so many flavors.

Half-Marathon Training Starts Today

Posted to Badass Writing. The caption is "The person 

who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb 

gray hairs." - Hunter Thompson. At first I thought it 

meant that you need to wake up early and do something. 

Then I thought it meant you need to sleep in. Either 

way, I like this photo of one of my favorite authors.

I'm starting my half-marathon training today. According to the plan I'm using, I actually don't need to start for a couple more weeks but in mid-July things will get very hectic when we pack up and move to the United States. I'll do the first two weeks of the plan and then repeat them, hopefully giving me a solid base so I won't be totally derailed later. Plus I need the focus right now. Too many things are up in the air and I feel paralyzed with not knowing what to do with it all; I'll end up staring at the computer screen instead of running (or writing) if I don't have mileage goals on my calendar.

Yesterday I did a lot of cooking and meal planning so that my eating will be on track this week. To celebrate the first day of training I made fresh gnocchi and tomato sauce for dinner last night. I also made banana-peanut-butter muffins to snack on and I soaked beans for making chili this afternoon. We stopped at a veggie market yesterday and brought home quite a haul. I have my own and my housekeeper's cooking assignments planned out for the week. Muffin is on summer holiday for one more week so she'll accompany me to the grocery store tomorrow morning to stock up on the chocolate soy milk we both love. I love training eating.

Three easy miles at sunrise this morning, whether that's what Hunter Thompson meant or not.

The Auto-Rickshaw Bed Grand Reveal!

It's all finished! About six months ago we first had the idea to turn an auto-rickshaw into a bed. And last night Muffin slept in her auto-rickshaw bed for the first time.

It arrived in two pieces on two autos:

The pieces were unloaded and carried up the stairs:

Some parts that were supposed to be bolted were in actuality still welded, so we were stuck here for about half an hour:

But eventually it was all in Muffin's room and ready to reassemble:

She moved in her blankets and stuffed animals:

And then she was ready for bed:

The guys did a great job on the restoration and painting. You can see all our photos of the process here (auto shopping and restoration) and here (moving it inside).

"I want a second auto," were the words that greeted me after nap time this afternoon. Sorry kiddo, we love it and it was a fun project, but only one auto per lifetime.

No One Tells You About the Smell: And Other Adventures of Eye Surgery in India

I'm typing this with limited vision. But I'm bored and my painkillers are now in full effect so I'm taking my chances with the bright screen for a few minutes. (Thanks to a high school typing class I can do a pretty good job with my eyes closed.)

On Friday I had my PRK eye surgery. It was about as terrifying as I imagined it would be for about twenty minutes. One relief was that they only force one eye open at a time; for some reason I thought they would both be forced open at the same time. The doctor was soothing and conversational, talking me through each step. I relied on my yoga breathing to help me relax. And then there was a horrible burning smell. I never made the connection between lasers and eyeballs burning together. I panicked a bit but there was nothing I could do except try to keep breathing. My fear of moving my eye and messing up the surgery overcame my revulsion of the smell. (Mike later told me that he intentionally didn't tell me about the smell because he knew I'd never go through with it.) They did my right eye first. My left eye didn't take as long and since I was prepared for the smell it wasn't so bad.

The surgery part when precisely and perfectly and surprisingly on time. But as usual for India, the follow-up bedside manner left something to be desired. They gave me some sunglasses that were hardly dark enough and set me down in a sunny, well-lit waiting room. They gave me a juice box, which was nice. They handed me a sheet of instructions that I couldn't read. They explained that I needed to take three different eye drops four times a day for the next week. One person told me to take them five minutes apart, someone else told me ten minutes apart. They told me to take one tablet for pain after lunch and another one after dinner and they told me to use a skin patch before going to bed. Then someone dropped me off at the door and I fumbled with my phone to call my driver. When he pulled up I gave him my instruction sheet from the doctor and told him to go to the pharmacy and pick up all the drugs listed. He parked me in the shade and went in. He came back a few minutes later and handed me a little bag and asked me to look at the sheet and check the contents of the bag to make sure they matched. I pretended to read and said "Sure, it's fine," because I couldn't see and I had no reason to assume that the pharmacy at the eye hospital wouldn't give me what I needed to recover from eye surgery.

Ah, but you know what they say about assuming things.

I got home that day before Muffin, so while I was still on the anesthetic from the surgery I fixed myself some lunch and made the final preparations to hunker down in my bedroom for the afternoon while Muffin stayed with the baby-sitter. I took a pill, put on my patch, and felt pretty groovy for the afternoon.

I took my dinner-time pill and did my eye drops and had a reasonably good night's sleep. I had a follow-up appointment first thing Saturday morning so I woke up early, took my eye drops and my last pill, and got on the road.

I'm a little hazy on the details from then. I remember sitting for a long time in a sunny waiting room again. I saw one doctor who said that despite some irritation in my right eye, both eyes were healing as they should be. Then they wanted me to wait and see another doctor, but he was in surgery. I watched patients go in and out of the office. I don't know how long I was there but my pill was starting to wear off and I was still in that sunny room. I got up and made a scene. My appointment was at 8:00 and it was nearly 10:00. I just had surgery, I needed to be at home resting, not sitting in a sunny room indefinitely. The first doctor I saw happened to walk through and witness my scene. He grabbed my arm and led me to another room. Within a few minutes I had my appointment slip for my Thursday appointment to have my contact lens band-aids taken off. I went home, took my eye drops, and laid down.

By Saturday night I was in agony. I couldn't understand why the pharmacy hadn't given me more pills, but I was too delirious to think about asking for more. I assumed my last pill that morning was meant to get me through the worst of the pain and I began to fear that my worsening pain now was due to an infection or botched surgery. I was loading up on extra-strength Tylenol, but it wasn't making a dent in the pain. I'm sure I was near passing out at one point on Saturday night. By Sunday afternoon my eyes were even more red and irritated than they'd been the day before and my pain was getting worse. Mike remembered from his own surgery that I was supposed to be feeling better by this point in the recovery.

He called the emergency contact number. And there was no answer. He called the main receptionist and from his side of the conversation it sounded like she kept asking why he'd called her instead of the emergency line. Eventually she told him to bring me in.

Considering how badly a visit to the emergency room could have been on a Sunday afternoon when Mike, Muffin, and I were already pretty cranky (the baby-sitter and driver were already gone for the day so it was a family adventure), it went better than expected. I saw two doctors who both agreed that my eyes were healing just fine and they couldn't understand why I was in so much pain. Finally one of them asked me if I was taking my pills and using the patch. I said I used the ones that were given to me on the first day but I was all out. I told them exactly how many pills and patches. They said that was only a one-day supply and I was supposed to get enough to last for a week.

I had essentially gone through the worst of the pain with no painkillers.

I told the doctors I gave my paper to the pharmacy and accepted the number of pills and patches they gave me. I said if I was supposed to take more, how come no one told me that and how come it wasn't written down for the pharmacist to know that? They apologized and wrote me a new prescription. It still didn't say how many days' worth to get.

And this is a problem I've had with doctors here in India. It's up to the patient to tell the pharmacist how much medicine to give out and that is totally ridiculous. Never mind all the abuse that's happening as people get way more pills than they need to drug themselves or sell them, but what about people like me who are delirious after surgery and have no idea how much medicine I'm supposed to be taking? It needs to be written down somewhere! This seems so obvious to me.

The pharmacy at the eye hospital was closed and another nearby pharmacy was closed so Mike drove to a hospital near our house and we decided on three days' worth of medication. (And if I need more I can send my driver out for it, since there's no concept of dates or number of refills.) By the time he got back to the car and gave me a pill, I was nauseous with pain and saw strobe lights when I closed my eyes.

Even with the meds, Sunday night was pretty hellish. But I was doing much better by Monday morning.

This post was written over the course of several hours, in between eye drops and pain pills. I'm feeling much better and even went out of the house for a little bit today, with sunglasses and a hat. My vision is getting better and my irritation is decreasing (the irritation in my eyes, at is, not with the health care system here).

How Do You Paint an Auto-Rickshaw?

"I want yellow paint and pink paint and blue paint and brown paint," is what Muffin says when asked how she wants her auto-rickshaw to be painted. We have to be a little more specific than that when we talk to the painters so this morning we took photos of some designs we like.

We're going with a classic yellow auto with a black roof. I like pink flowers under the windscreen:

We like the stripes on the back and sides:

I like the flowers on this "4-in-all" logo:

We like the "For Hire" font but we're thinking of having it say "Private" instead:

I like the bajaj logo and the stripes that came on our auto:

And we like this little light panel. We'll have toggle switches installed, some of which will control the headlamp and turn signals and some that will simply light up the buttons on the panel.

We have a lot to discuss with the painters. Most of the work is decals but we'd like to have the designs hand-painted on instead, for more permanence.

And of course, the obligatory shot of Muffin driving an auto. The drivers were so curious as to why we were taking so many photos. As thanks, we had to take some of them with Muffin.

Previous posts: Auto-rickshaws.

Happy Spring Holidays!

It's a holiday week here in Hyderabad. I'm more of a spring equinox person than an Easter person, but, you know, if someone invites us to a good party, we'll show up.

Last weekend, Muffin went to an Easter Egg Hunt party.

She's so sweet, she still thinks the fun is simply in finding the eggs. She never realized they were full of candy. After the hunt was finished, the kids got a bag of jelly beans and some chocolate ice cream, and she was satisfied with that. It never occurred to her to open the eggs. I emptied all the chocolate out later when she was sleeping. Since the party her favorite game around the house has been Easter Egg Hunt. I can't count how many times we've played now.

I made her dress from a 1960s-era vintage pattern.

From the clean and angelic to the devilishly cute and messy...

Yesterday was Holi. Muffin's first little friend ever is moving away from Hyderabad this week. Her mom invited Muffin over for the neighborhood Holi party so the girls could have a memorable last play date.

Happy Holidays, whatever you're celebrating this week!

Log Off and Go Do Something

Image from Pinterest.

I've been on a somewhat forced exile from Facebook and other things online due to the summertime power cuts in Hyderabad. The internet company doesn't have as good a generator for their servers as we have at our house so once the scheduled power cuts kick in for the day, the internet goes out even though we still have electricity.

I've been doing a lot of offline writing. (It's been frustrating because I'm the administrator at Hardship Homemaking this month. I'm frantically uploading and scheduling posts when connected internet coincides with a sleeping Muffin.)

I've been doing a lot of sewing, working on Muffin's summer wardrobe. I've given up on making her take off the long pants for school but I absolutely must hide away the flannel pajamas. After I've made her some summer pajamas.

I've been running and doing yoga. Not quite as much as I'd like to, but enough so that I feel reasonably happy and healthy without feeling guilty about leaving Muffin at home. She loves playing Legos and Play-Doh and all sorts of other things with her baby-sitter; she doesn't miss me. Muffin's school starts summer holiday in a couple weeks and I have to find activities for her to keep both of us sane. We can only go to the park so many times.

Base mileage, base mileage, base mileage. Every step counts for something. But this morning my steps took me to the coffee maker instead of out the door in my running shoes.

Progress on the Auto-Rickshaw Bed

The last time I wrote about our auto, it looked like this: We Bought an Auto-Rickshaw Today. A day or two after we bought it we brought Muffin over to see it. They'd moved it to the metal shop and taken the canopy off but hadn't done any other work to it. Muffin was in love:

Today we went back to the metal shop to check on the progress. They've taken out the seats and the engine and they've lengthened the body by about six inches to accommodate an American twin-size mattress. They've started patching and welding the rust spots.

We're impressed with the progress so far. Mike and the other guys discussed exactly where it needs to come apart into pieces so we can get it into the house. I started to have a sinking feeling that after all this work we won't get it up a flight of stairs and through the door. But Mike is confident it will be done. Having it come apart will also be extremely useful for packing it up and moving.

Now there is a lot of cleaning and rust repair to do before they paint it.

I'm Losing the Battle Against Long Pants

Muffin and I are in a battle of who could care less (to quote Ben Folds).

 Her school has a dress code policy of girls wearing leggings or shorts under dresses and skirts. I’m fine with this; Muffin spends a lot of time in the sandbox and leggings provide extra protection from sand getting into places it shouldn’t. With the Hyderabadi style of khurtas worn over pants or leggings, Muffin has embraced the the local fashion and wears dresses with leggings and sometimes even wears jeans under her dresses. I’m okay with all that. I want her to have confidence in choosing her clothes and expressing herself.

Here’s my problem. Summer is upon us. It’s near 90 degrees (32 C) when I drop her off at school in the mornings and pushing 95 degrees (35 C) by the time I pick her up. Each day seems warmer than the previous day. Muffin is insisting on wearing ankle-length leggings or pants every day and she is a little sweatball by the time school is over. She won’t wear shorts. She won’t even consider knee-length or calf-length capri pants. Long pants, Mommy, long pants.

Last week I told her that it was the last week for wearing long pants. Starting on Monday, she would need to wear short pants to school. I have lost that battle every single morning this week. On Monday, once she was at school, I reduced her collection of leggings from about ten pairs to three. I showed her! Then I felt a bad about feeling vengeful toward a preschooler, so I took out a bunch of fabric and patterns to plan a new summer wardrobe for her; this week I've cut out a few items for her already. At Mike’s suggestion, I’m also going to trim several inches off the leggings and sneak them back onto her shelves to see if she notices they are shorter.

She’s rotated through those three pairs of leggings every day this week and today I’d had it again. We hadn’t even left the house yet and we were sweating already. I told her if she wanted to wear long pants she had to put them on herself. If she wanted my help, I was going to put shorts on her. And what do you know? She battled with a pair of leggings for a few minutes, threw them aside, picked up a pair of jeans, and put them on. I lost again. (And damn, is she smart!)

Today I’m going to hold off work on her Easter dress in order to chop and hem all of her pants into shorter lengths. It’s not as if they’re going to fit her next winter and we’re moving from Hyderabad summer to U.S. summer so other than a couple pairs of jeans and sweatpants (for chilly beach evenings in Rhode Island), she doesn’t need anything but summer clothes.

Should I be more flexible and just let her wear the damn leggings and be sweaty? Is she wearing them because she knows it annoys me so much?

Coconut Water and Anti-Dreadmill

Muffin enjoys fresh coconut water after a hard workout.

I’ve heard that coconut water is all the rage for runners in the United States. It’s popular on the streets of India because it’s cheap and refreshing, what with all the electrolytes to help prevent dehydration. I buy small bottles of it at the grocery store (convenient to throw in my gym bag) and go to the roadside wallas with a 24-ounce CamelBak bottle to have them fill it up. It takes about three coconuts to fill the bottle and prices have gone up recently to 20 rupees per coconut so it now costs about 60 rupees, which is $1.10, or less than 5 cents per ounce. I checked on Amazon.com and coconut water prices were 13 to 14 cents per ounce. I checked Peapod.com for the Washington, D.C., area and the prices ranged from 15 to 20 cents per ounce. Yikes! How can I afford this habit once I'm back? I guess I should take advantage of it while I can. Fortunately, Muffin will only drink coconut water when it actually comes from a coconut with a straw stuck in it, more because she likes the novelty than she likes coconut water. She always asks for a sip from my bottle, but then says she doesn't like it.

I hate the term "dreadmill" even though I dislike running on a treadmill. It's so negative I feel like I've sabotaged the workout with a negative attitude before even starting. It's necessary sometimes but I'm cutting back on treadmill runs because I'm not having fun. After a rough few weeks, my alarm is set for 5 a.m. tomorrow morning. I would have done it for today but I spent Sunday night at a friend's birthday party and I wanted to enjoy myself, not set myself up for failure the next morning (not necessarily by drinking a lot and eating too much, but by staying up later than I normally would on a Sunday night). I don't really like using the treadmill in the afternoon so my only other option is to wake up early to run on the road before the heat of the day sets in. If I'm going to the gym anyway for my yoga class, then I'll run on the treadmill but using it otherwise has become tedious. And I'd rather use Muffin's nap time for eating and napping myself instead of running during that time, squeezing in time for a good meal later, and being so exhausted that I fall asleep before she does in the evening.

Image from Pinterest.

I need to get back on track and work on my base mileage for half-marathon training.

We Bought an Auto Rickshaw Today

The latest addition to our family.

I know it doesn't look like much, but Mike compares it Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. All it needs is a little love.

For the last few weeks we've been networking with various elements of Hyderabad's auto rickshaw and motorcycle world. (See my previous post about this.) We looked at quite a few; we made offers that were too low and rejected prices that were too high. When Mike mentioned the project to some friends of his who do custom motorcycle detailing, though, they got excited and jumped on the chance to do the work for us. They found us an auto for sale right around the corner from their shop and the seller accepted our offer -- a price that was the lowest of all those that had been on the table with other sellers. The bike detailers have a metal fabrication guy who happens to be an auto driver so they are confident they can get the project done. 

We'll be removing the canvas top and ripping out the seats and engine. The rust spots will be replaced and we'll buy new wheels. It will get a whole new paint job. The front steering is still in great condition and we envision Muffin sitting on the mattress to "drive." We're going to wire the instrument panel with switches, lights, and a horn. 

We can totally see it as a bed.

Lose Weight Fast, the Cold and Flu Way

I feel like I don't run this body lately.
Image from the mile-posts blog and pinterest.

Take a cold that's so bad that all food tastes awful and my throat hurts so much I can't swallow anyway, a molar without a crown, and add a little bit of E. coli and you have the perfect way to drop those last few pounds before summer! Never mind all the running, yoga, and ab workouts I'd planned. A pair of shorts that was too tight two weeks ago fits perfectly now. And summer comes early in the year in Hyderabad. In just a couple weeks we'll be approaching 100-degree days and Muffin's play group will start meeting at the swimming pool at one of the hotels where Western bathing suits are not frowned upon. All of this could not have come at a better time to get me into bathing suit shape.

I still have the same nasty cold as last weekend although it's less nasty now. On Sunday I ran a little bit on the treadmill, finally feeling more bored than sick. On Friday night, though, my sore throat had gotten so bad that I couldn't eat, talk, or even move my head from side to side.

And yes, I said E. coli. It was found in our water distiller last week. Not all strains cause the violent food poisoning symptoms so we were lucky to avoid that. However, when I reached out to other distiller owners I learned that it can be the source of a "general malaise," which we have definitely had in this household for a few weeks. Not quite sick, but feeling yucky all the time. I'm feeling less yucky since I stopped drinking from that distiller on Thursday.

Since the root canal, my tooth still doesn't have a crown. I'm not sure of the exact reason but I suspect they wanted my cold to clear up before I went around breathing all over the office and people stuck their fingers in my mouth. That makes sense. I've had the permanent filling in for over a week now and the tooth feels fine. Frankly, I've been too stuffed up and had too sore of a throat to contemplate sitting in the dentist's chair any time soon.

Every time I try to do yoga, my sinuses start pounding when I put my head down, so I'm taking the rest of the month off from my classes. I'll start up again in March. Our housekeeper should be back to work this week so I can get out to the treadmill a couple times while she baby-sits Muffin.

I hope that we can only get better from here. We need a few weeks of good health and activity before the summer heat saps us of all our energy.

Resiliant

I don't know if I'm cynical or realistic or if I've been living in high-security areas so long that I'm tired or desensitized, but I'm not that phased by the bomb blasts in Hyderabad last night. I'm sad for the victims and their families. I'm angry that cowards can do this to happy young people and get away with it. But it's life as usual in so many parts of the world.

New York Times: Two Explosions Kill at Least Eleven in Hyderabad
Washington Post: Explosions Rip Through Southern Indian City
Local news, NDTV: Hyderabad Blasts: At Least Fourteen Killed

People were just getting off from work, waiting at the bus stop, shopping at the market, getting snacks at cafes, and waiting in line for movies -- the same things people do every evening in cities all over the world -- when apparently bombs attached to bicycles went off, two of them within a couple hundred meters of each other, a few minutes apart. Numbers of the dead and injured vary from newspaper to newspaper, but there are certainly more than ten people dead and the number of injured has topped out at more than seventy. People frantically tried getting the injured to hospitals, but as one friend noted, even with the well-trained doctors here what chances do the injured have in poorly maintained hospitals? I wouldn't be surprised if secondary infections raise the death toll.

There were rumors of a third blast; there were rumors of unexploded IEDs being found around the city. As of yet those are just rumors as far as I know. No terrorist group claimed responsibility but people have their suspicions about who did it. The government shut down cell phone networks, claiming it's best people don't use their phones to spread rumors. Spectators rushed to the scene of the blasts, rather than staying safely at home, and now police have the convenient excuse of the crime scene being contaminated, in case they can't, or don't, find the culprits. One political party has called for a strike today, in protest of something or other regarding the government and the suspected terrorist group. It feels like there's a lot of frenzy but not a lot of real work.

This happened on the other side of town and in our neighborhood it's nearly business as usual today. Muffin's school and Mike's office are closed, although Mike has a lot of work to do from home. There are no busses due to the strike, so traffic is light and I took Muffin to the park this morning to run off some steam. She has no idea what's going on, other than that she and Daddy are home on a school day and Daddy's on the phone a lot. She has no idea that last night, just in case, I moved bottled water, boxes of milk, and cases of granola bars into our bedroom and had a plan in mind in case I had to grab her and hunker down. My laptop and cell phone were fully charged and I made sure there were chargers in the room, as well as flashlights and batteries. It's not the most prepared I could be for an emergency, but it was something. Having a plan helps me stay calm.

Hyderabad has endured for hundreds of years. When we first told people we were moving here, people told me they'd never heard of it and asked what its name was during colonialism. It was always Hyderabad. It will recover from this too.

No Smelly Lake 5K on Sunday

We didn't make it to the second 5K on Sunday. I'm sick -- again. My root canal is still not finished. I have the permanent filling but no crown. A friend of Mike's was visiting this weekend and on Saturday afternoon when I realized I wasn't in the mood for being congested, having an achy jaw, and running around the smelly lake at 8 o'clock in the morning, I released Mike of his obligation to race, too, so he and his friend could stay up late on Saturday night. We all went out for a nice breakfast on Sunday morning and met up with some of the racers (who shared their specially ordered Shamrock Shakes with us! Thanks guys!).

Our housekeeper has a twisted nerve from her fall on Friday. She's on bed rest for several more days and is wearing a support belt. She sent a friend over to our house today to do a little cleaning in her absence. I really appreciate having someone here to wash dishes and fold laundry. Our house in the U.S. must have an automatic dishwashing machine. It is non-negotiable. Doing dishes is the worst. I'm without a baby-sitter for a few days, though, so no yoga classes and no treadmill. I've got the jogging stroller and I've got my Jillian  Michaels DVD. I'm also expecting some yoga DVDs in the mail any day now (birthday present to myself) so I am not entirely without a workout strategy. And there's always Just Dance on the Wii, which Muffin loves.

From AnotherMotherRunner.

My new shirt arrived on Friday (above). It made me feel like taking charge of my life. Until I got so sick I could barely stand. I'll have to take charge in a few days.