Bunches of Keys, Cars, Ants, & so on

I woke up and did morning things slowly. Since classes are dispensed with for now, my morning schedule has gone completely awry. The monster has also taken to waking up very late and getting ready even more slowly than ever before. I mean she has three things to do (okay four) in the mornings:
1. Brush teeth
2. Drink milk
3. Bathe
4. Eat breakfast
& there is no need on earth to take two hours to do these things, making it an average of half an hour per task, and believe me, her teeth are NOT that clean.

Finally, in a desperate bid to get out of the house somehow, I leaned toward the door, passing to pick up keys. The bunch felt different. Heavy. It turned out that the husband has loped off with my bunch. Dammit. My office keys. Rest are okay. Despite the nomadic existence (thats the only way to describe our lives just now), we have our car & current house keys in duplicate each so that was fine. But my office keys? Nightmare it was, trying to tell people what had happened and why I was not a criminal. I was led, at one point, in front of two ferocious looking security guards wearing belts and carrying some kind of implements aimed at breaking doors. Stares I got, for sure.

Though it has not been said overtly by him, I have sort of taken up the task of driving the Skoda occasionally. Now generally the way it has worked is this. I have my Zen. I drive it when the husband is not around. When he is, he will drive both cars, with some schema such as, smelly-gym-trip = zen; pune-trip = skoda, and so on. I DON'T drive when he is around. And no, its not because he is a better driver, but because it increases my blood temperature. Even on long trips when I should be contributing instead of sitting on ass and so on. Foh-get-it. So now, once we moved, we did strange things like this -
1. Load piles of things in skoda
2. Leave it behind in the old apartment
3. Go every once in a while and stare at it
This caused the battery to die, and a white-elephant episode involving the skoda dealers and much heartache and bills and so on. So now the husband one day drove the skoda (and all its itinerant piles of things) to our current shelter and left it there in the wild bush in front. It gleamed there like a silver mammoth, in the sun. I ignored it for a few days then the petrol in my zen ran out (and yes, I work hard to engineer it such that I am not the one filling petrol in the cars, its a pain, I never remember which side the tank is on though I dimly recognise that one eats petrol and the other eats diesel). I started making statements like 'Oh I need to drive the skoda to prevent it from dying' and doing just that. On my 0.45 km commute (each way) each day. I was walking to work a lot when mum was here but now with the innumerable and inevitable bags, not to mention the child, and the heat, I have taken to driving around a bit, once a day or so.
The first day I drove it, I was a bit apprehensive. It has been years since I sat behind the Skoda wheel. Blast it, its like a truck. It was fun though, something different than my Zen, and despite its size, it turns very well. But to press the clutch in fully, my toes have to be in fully extended position, which is frankly annoying. There is not much traffic around and anyway everything is quite near so it was okay.
Then I bravely ventured out and filled petrol in the Zen. And went back to driving it. Again, the first day was a relief, so much lighter! I felt much more in control and yes, my toes stopped cribbing too. Music loud in our ears we would cruise around, the monster and I.
A week later, I have taken to alternating. Definitely, the conditioning of air in the Skoda is much superior to that in the Zen, so afternoons are a good time to unleash it. I am in a hurry in the mornings, after all the dawdling we do at home (see above) so then the Zen is a good, no-brainer type option. For a person who dislikes driving, and really only drives about 1.8 km per days, thats an awful lot of cars and talk about driving. I know.

My vegetable patch is running wild with ants. "The last one will be eaten by ants" prophesy in Sanskrit; courtesy Marquez. Inspired, I told the gardener "Let them eat it; they are god's creatures too." He was rather taken aback and took it as a call to stop weeding (and even, for that matter, watering) the garden. Weeds are god's creatures too. Water? Water is god's creation too, the plants can get it when s/he makes rain. I leave dying plants right there, in the hope that
1. The ants can have their fill
2. The soil, which is full of cement now, will become nice
and I can deal with it all later. Next year.

I am reasonably gruntled now. At least, less disgruntled. Gypsy style I wait for the day when I can pick up bags and move again.