In Denial

So the new year has rolled in, as it were. The year has a nice round tone to it, summing to ten, being a leap year (my favourite kind), and having so many numbers requiring circles (which are the shape the child can most easily make with crayons). But somehow, I am not ready for it. I do wish I had the option of postponing it by a month or something. Everyone is going around making resolutions and cake shops are making ads about fat people breaking resolutions and of course the news magazines are compiling their lists of best of last years junk and somehow everyone around seems to have the absolutely right bang on attitude and me, well, I just feel like being in some asocial funk for another month and ignoring this Round New Year.

Snap out of it Kenny the husband offers. Why amma Why the child whines. Happy New Year madam people stretch their hands out for the once a year shake. Oh Yeah I forgot. Happy New Year to you too. And no, no resolutions. Well, perhaps just that one about junk food. If you don't mind much can I do this next month? What? That sounds weird? Whatever...

Urged by the husband's admonitions, I decided to make a list of things that were making me resist this New Year. As always, writing this stuff down makes (a) them feel trivial and (b) me feel organised. So here goes:

1. No December Vacation: I took a few days off early Dec & chilled out in Chennai, its true, but I screwed that one up with a tiring visit to Hyd at the end so that does not count much. Since then, I have been working working working nose to the grindstone. Talking to too many people. Have had people lying in wait outside the office informing people lying in wait outside the gate informing god knows who else, the minute I had a minute of breathing time. All of the above have gushed in and flooded me with their most trivial problems and threatened me with deadlines that made me not even think about my December Vacation till it was all gone...

2. That Aging of Bones: Osteoporosis, Osteoarthritis, call it what you want Baby, I still call it aging. I can feel it. Its creeping up on me. I will not laugh when I say Gout. The colder days feel worse. Its catching up. My knees wobble. My varicose veins are reproducing under my watchful eye. I have an intimate network of wrinkles on my face. So yes, not just bones, everything else too. I process alcohol MUCH slower than previously. Its irritating. One cannot get properly drunk when one can feel the morrow's pain already. Aging sucks. (Except for the white hair of course, I like that). A new year means a year added to the already large number.

3. Mona aur Tony: This is a problem. See, I like life to be sort of organised. Wake up at the same time every day and perform the same prescribed list of tasks through it and go to bed the same time every night. But then a month of boiling 1.75 liters of milk in the morning and putting in 4.1 scoops of coffee in the filter and eating 0.25 inch cut Papdi Subji, I need to mix things up. Which is difficult. The nature of my work is such. Cyclic. Same with household duties. Cyclic. Anyway mostly I hate the domestic part. Mostly I hate the maid. She spends 45 mins lolling around the place and last week I found six spiders the size of a wallaby around the house. I don't like having to TELL her to clean up. Goddammit its her job. And I kid you not, I see her growing fat in front of my eyes. Why? Because she is not cleaning properly. I digress. Mona aur Tony in my life. At home and at work.

There. I feel sort of better already. Maybe around mid-January I will actually admit that the new year is here. I might even welcome it. But no, no resolutions, no champagne. I hate champagne. Ta-Ta.