Monday 14 May 2012

Bouncin' off walls

This is a typical, ground state situation for me. Excess energy. Talking non-stop. Walking too fast. Running in corridors (yes, even to date, and yes, even in my dotage I get scolded by various people for running in corridors of academic institutions). Sounding like I am high.

But then periodically, my body gives up. And I crash. Its not easy for me to sleep. I don't sleep well. I am not a good napper. I have never been. I recall summer afternoons in childhood, the entire household, parents, aunts, uncles, visiting cousins, surrounding monkeys, neighbour Karthik, all asleep. Me creeping out of the bedroom (afraid of my cousin who would shout if I disturbed her) and indulging in some origami.

Every once in a while though, I break down. My schedule has been tight. Various things have been going on. Work has been busy. We had that housewarming. Lots of guests at home. Various fights with husband about things. Suddenly remembering that I had to pay the child's school fees, & rushing pell-mell to school with lots of pink forms.

The weather is not the greatest. I don't have air-conditioning in my office (yet). And though we don't have load shedding, our appliances at home are dying an untimely death due to the voltage fluctuations, which are rampant. The sun is fierce. Humidity is magnificent.

Yesterday, I was supposed to meet up with a bunch of folks at 5 am on campus. We were going to mark the route out for our upcoming annual foot-race (Sep 30th! Mark your calendars folks!). I was happy thinking of how much cycling I would get to do, and of course, hanging with KP and the others.

The child's swimming and her situation with the tummy was to be considered though. Lone parent status was also to be considered. I swallowed the bitter pill and cancelled the plan, told them go ahead, hoped that my frantic calls to the security would be enough to prevent hassles at the gate.

I woke up fine enough (4:45am), and went back upstairs and woke up the child. She said her stomach was still bad. We ditched the swimsuit, but got into the car (5:45am) and went to the pool anyway. The idea being to tell her coach that she was not going to swim. I sat around and texted while she convinced him she was sick (he was most disbelieving, same as me with less motherly tugs I guess).

We returned home (7 am), the day was stretching ahead with plenty to do, plenty that could be done. House was (is) an unholy mess, would have benefitted from some early morning doggedness (did it later though). I could have run, legs felt just fine, no ill-effects from the week (anyway it was a pansy long run, not even a HM on Saturday). The car was nasty, needed washing.

The child was fine, deep inside a Malory towers. I was already dressed in my running outfit. But I picked up a Malory towers myself (book 3, if you must know). I lay down. I switched on the ac. I read languidly and was soon asleep dreaming of jamtarts, and fried rice with onion raita (go figure).

It was like 9:30 when I was shaken awake by the child who accused me of being a lazy bum. Lazy! Me! Seriously! I dragged myself down and my cook made some snide-ish remark about sleep. I assured her my body was hurting and I was feeling sick, sick.

I scorfed down some pongal and coffee, still a little bleary. I tried to guilt trip myself about the random nap. I never do stuff like this unless I am sick, I tried to rationalise it as well. After a bit I forgot all about it, and was soon running around the house, cleaning, dusting, wiping, folding, yelling. Back to ground state, in short. 

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