The ‘Love’ List!

Have just wrapped up a rather hectic week, and here we are at the start of what promises to be another! The more so for me, coz Hubby is out-of-town on work and so Ishaan will be more clingy…welcome to my World! It’s already begun…he was all weepy today when I dropped him off at school. Hubby always drops him off in the mornings and I pick up in the afternoons, so I guess he was missing Papa today! He’s asked me where Papa was a couple of times, but for the most part prefers not to discuss it & refuses to speak with Hubby on the phone. He’s got quite the temper for a soon-to-be 3-yr-old! That comes from me I’m afraid!

So, it’s Valentine Day’s today…a day where everyone goes overboard with all manner of Love declarations and the online universe is flooded with all manner of Valentine status updates and the like. Me, I’m not a huge V-day person, coz I keep wondering about the day after…you know when all the Love is spent, what then? I do believe in Love (of all sorts), of course! I just believe it exists in the little things people do for one another ever day & should be celebrated every day. In the times we live in…certainly, we should celebrating Love in all its forms, every single day and in any way we can think of! Heaven knows we need it now more than ever! What saddens me the most is how V-Day has now become almost exclusively about Romantic love and gift-giving. Don’t get me wrong…I like gifts as much as the next person (who wouldn’t?), and I’m a huge champion of romantic love…I just hate the pressure that people seem to feel to ‘Get it right!’ It seems to me, that these days, all it does, is make those without partners, more miserable than they should be & those with partners somehow obliged to celebrate the fact even when they may not feel the need! A conversation I just had with a single cousin of mine, has convinced me more than ever that this is true.

This year I thought I would make a list of 10 things that make my heart race faster, that I Love & that don’t necessarily have to do with romance. I’m not going to include family and friends, coz really, that’s a given ain’t it? I love my family and friends 365 days of the year, 24/7! There! Now that’s out-of-the-way, let’s get to the list, shall we.

1. I love the way walking through a spritz of my favorite perfume (Gucci Rush at the moment), makes me feel 🙂 Until I saw it on Oprah (that woman has educated me in ways I didn’t realize!), I wasn’t aware of the best way to apply perfume. On her show I learnt how to spray a perfume-mist’ into the air and walk through it, so you the fragrance lingers on your body like a second skin. Have done that ever since and though it does take up a lot of perfume, I love the sense of decadent luxury it offers 🙂

2. I love the sound of the ocean. This is surprising even to me, coz having grown up around beaches, I kind of took the sea for granted and never paid it much attention. The beach was a fun hang-out and not much else. Now it offers sanctuary from the hustle of daily chaos. Have you listened to the ocean? Really listened? To the majesty of the waves? To the infinite mysteries hidden in those deep waters? That’s Nirvana, right there 🙂

3. I love the ‘crrrrrruuuunch’ of the perfect potato chip and the lingering taste of salt on my lips after!! The same goes for the perfect Margerita 😛 You know what I mean! In my book, salt is a true aphrodisiac 😉

4. I love the pungent fragrance of the freshly drenched earth after the first Monsoons. If I could, I would bottle it and use it rather liberally while melting on hot, dusty May afternoons!

5. I love birdsong! I’m not very good at identifying birds or their songs, but that doesn’t stop me from dropping whatever I’m doing and listening enthralled to their magical tunes 🙂

6. I love the comfort I get from re-reading my favorite books! I read many of them annually, The Lord of the Rings being one of them and I can’t think of a better journey than one through Middle Earth with my beloved Fellowship 🙂 Another favorite when I’m down in the dumps is Ms. Agatha Christie…I adore HP, coz we share more than our little grey cells…we share initials 😉

7. I love watching horses at a gallop…even if it’s in a painting! Maybe it’s the Sagittarian in me, but there’s just something about watching their fluid, poetic motion that calms me down and sets me free 🙂

8. I love cuddling up in my quilt, while the AC and fan turn the room into a pole-like freezer! Oh and I’m not talking about cuddling with hubby or Ishaan here. Just me, myself and I 🙂 Nirvana!

9. I love solitude! I cannot stress this enough and a lot of people think I’ve lost my marbles when I say this, but there it is…the simple truth.

10. I love my own company! In fact there are many times I prefer it to anyone else’s 😉

I would love to hear what’s on your list, if you care to share 🙂

Let me leave you with a picture that is a testament of my son’s love for his Dad…you know there’s Love there when they’re sharing socks 😛

Sir Black Socks @ your service!

Have a Great Week ahead People 🙂

A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty by Ogden Nash

I’ve decided to do a revamp of sorts in honor of the Birthday! No resolutions anymore (A definite waste of time unless you happen to be iron-willed. I’m Not!), just revamps 😉 Nothing drastic…just an overhaul of the category list, so it’s more cohesive, relevant and makes more sense to me!

I’ve also decided to start including stuff that I haven’t written myself but that resonates within. I have no clue why I haven’t done this before…but better late than never! If you haven’t figured out already, this is just an excuse to spend more happy hours surfing the Virtual World for stuff I love (as if I needed one!). I have decided to include these in the main category on the site – Happiness Central 🙂

Picture from http://casiestewart.blogspot.com

You’ll probably see poetry I enjoy, images that speak to me, quotes that I love,  a bit of Edward Monkton for sure, a little bit of George Carlin most definitely, music that touches my heart, people I admire…you get the drift…rather like a “These are a few of my favorite things!” moment from The Sound of Music (one of my favorite feel-good movies :)) A great thing about this, is that it takes pressure off me on days when I can’t write (too many, too many :(), but more importantly opens up my sphere of thought, offers me inspiration and by its very nature is endless 🙂

I begin with a poem by Ogden Nash, an old favorite. I loved this one by Nash, because of its universal theme, Age and our normal human reaction to it, Despair. Now that the Birthday is round the corner, and another year added to my ‘Numerical Age’, it put things in perspective! I love the way he handles such a sensitive subject in such a clever way and could that last line be more meaningful…”How old is Spring, Miranda?” What could be more poignant, poetic and to the point?

Well done Mr. Nash and Thank-you for today’s much-needed, life-saving, Smiley Moment 🙂

A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty

Spring Maiden by Nadezhda Galitskaya (A Chernobyl Survivor)

Unwillingly Miranda wakes,
Feels the sun with terror,
One unwilling step she takes,
Shuddering to the mirror.

Miranda in Miranda’s sight
Is old and gray and dirty;
Twenty-nine she was last night;
This morning she is thirty.

Shining like the morning star,
Like the twilight shining,
Haunted by a calendar,
Miranda is a-pining.

Silly girl, silver girl,
Draw the mirror toward you;
Time who makes the years to whirl
Adorned as he adored you.

Time is timelessness for you;
Calendars for the human;
What’s a year, or thirty, to
Loveliness made woman?

Oh, Night will not see thirty again,
Yet soft her wing, Miranda;
Pick up your glass and tell me, then–
How old is Spring, Miranda?