You’ve Ruined My Entire Day

Clearly, the knack for hyperbole is well-picked up from me. The past two weeks have been rocking fun. We met friends. I took the child to the pool. Not to swim but to ‘walk’ in the water. So far so good. Not making an Olympic swimming champion or anything. We went to the sports stadium, I played some basketball, she missed looking at all the shots I sunk and cribbed about all the ones I missed. I hit her on the nose once with the basketball and then pretended it was no big deal. No pain no gain. I made her do German drills. Which are when you run from one end to the other, bend down and touch with one hand, run back, bend down and touch the ground with the other hand. Its excellent exercise for basketball. I bought her a swimming cap (we are using the sunny yellow suit that my niece outgrew; now with a bright new purple cap). Her friends visited us at home. I took them to the park, fed them some biscuits. We ate mangoes, made a special papaya-mango juice that really tasted bad (but we finished it anyway, sitting on the bed drinking from the same cup, like two girls in college sharing a cigarette. By we I mean the monster and myself; the friends would not have been caught dead eating anything healthy).

Yesterday was not a spectacular day, I admit. I dragged her to the play school by ten in the morning, after a ridiculous amount of breakfast (of something, can’t remember what). She did not complain much about the dress I picked out for her for the day. I might have forgotten to comb her hair. We went back around six and she found these seeds she has been collecting and played with them for a bit. I forced her to eat a banana. Yes, I forced her for sure, but I ate one too and it was REALLY yummy, and would have gone bad by today. My head was hurting immensely but I nevertheless took her to the park, a bit late in the evening. She played around and collected more seeds and I read my book. Dinner was typical dhal and rice and cabbage and curd. The rotis were the especially pink beetroot rotis which she grabbed from me and demolished saying they taste good. I read her some Busy Bearcub and Rasha stories. She wrote several messages to us on her white board. ‘WLL YOU CM TO C DLFINS?’ and stuff like that while I tried to ignore her and read my book (P.G. Wodehouse. Aunts aren’t gentlemen. Mine are quite nice though, not scary or anything).

And then, like at 10:30 when my eyes were sort of closing and I had gone in and out of the room a zillion times having forgotten, in turn, water, medicine (calcium supplements I feed her when I remember to), my mobile, yadayada, she started making a fortress from pillows. Our pillows have long given up the fight. They are like limp lumpy masses. Her aim was to create a small room by making the pillows stand. I was desperately clutching my one pillow with my fat head and reading with one eye open. We got into one argument regarding her need for a fourth pillow (viz. mine) and my suggestion that she can kindly go outside and get one from the other bedroom and her claim that she was afraid of something outside and my assurance that there was nothing there and the light was anyway on in the kitchen, etc. Then when neither of us would budge I suggested a triangular room with three walls. That was interesting for about three seconds, but still problems persisted since (a) the pillows would not stand and (b) her butt did not fit within the triangular room and (c) she was quite sleepy (at least in my estimation).

So I told myself, Kenny, you are the mother, the adult, do it now. Finish this thing off before it gets worse. So, all adult-like and all (though sort of disappointed that my fantastic triangle idea was so poorly received), I gently (yeah right!) took away the pillows, put them back in their places (one on her crib; two for the one-who-was-still-stuck-at-Chunna-Batti-and-talking-on-his-blackberry-to-Singapore) and said, lets go to sleep now. That’s when she said this ‘Look what you have done, you have ruined my entire day now.’

I was trying to be calm but I was quite irritated (and daaaamn sleepy) by then. But I could not help laugh, and vow to be more careful, not about saying stupid or fucker or shit or shit on fucking toast (which are things I routinely say under my breath, Ha!), but about untrue things about the ruination of days and such other exaggerations.