The Visitor

I made a new friend. Or that is how I say it now that he made himself feel at home at my place without bothering to ask for my permission. When we shifted to Charlottesville, we got along loads of cardboard boxes which we decided to keep for future use. When our small closet spaces simply refused to accommodate the rusty and disfigured junk we thought it best to let the boxes reside, one with nature in the peaceful quiet of our balcony. Just to make it more aesthetic, we placed a couple of brass vases to the balcony which were an impulse buy and were struggling for a place inside our house for long. At that time we did not know we were soon going to have a visitor who had a different perspective on the junk.

One summer night when I was alone in the house, I heard constant rustling and rumbling noises from the back of our house. With my fingers fixated on the “9” and “1” keys of my cell-phone, I spent the night with much unease, hoping it would only be the breeze. With the first sign of light however, my character underwent a total transformation. From Timidy Timidson in the night, I became the Sherlock Holmes by the day. Its generally otherwise for the superheroes. Isn’t it funny how light can change our character? Donning my sleuth hat when I walked up to the balcony, here is what I saw.

Instead of the boxes there were only shredded and tattered remnants of the cardboard. The poor vases were lying flat on the floor rolling slowly with the wind. Before my now-detective mind began to tie the loose ends of the story, I found myself being examined by the dark shiny eyes of a small furry creature from behind one of the shredded pieces. Its bushy tail was rolled up into a question mark; the face- alert and expectant. There was a small speck of paper stuck over one of its eyes making it look like a pirate who had just robbed a ship. While I stared at it, it stared back, still like a corpse. It was a squirrel alright but a bold one.

There was only one give-away to this bold mischievous avatar who was looking at me eye to eye- its pulsating heartbeat while one of its arms folded across its chest. I really dint know what that meant. Was it feeling so scared that it thought its heart would come out? Or was it conveying its heartfelt gratitude to me in advance so that I forgive and forget its misdemeanor and allow it to continue to stay in its newly found home. It was a long moment but its innocent and earnest appeal was enough to sway my heart. I gave into its desire to stay.

From then on we’ve become friends. Every time I come back from school, first thing I rush to my balcony to take a peek if it’s there. More often than not it is. And believe me it’s not out of love. It’s normally sitting there with eager eyes wondering if it’s that time of the day it will get a peanut or two to crush and swallow. It’s funny how it knows how to grab attention. One day I found it lying flat on its belly, all fours and tail on the ground as well, While it was soothing itself in the staggering heat of the afternoon, I was worrying if it had fainted or even died. The other day it advertised its presence by jumping onto the screen door of my living room and hanging down flat from its hind legs just like a bat. My personal favorite is when it has its tail swapped around itself over the head to the other side resembling a person with a Mohawk hairstyle.

I call it Squeaky. Not that it responds to the name. Let’s remember, it only responds to peanuts. But over time it has become a beautiful and inseparable part of my life- a joy that I loved sharing with you today.

(ps: This was the content of my 4th Toastmasters speech- "How to say it")

For the night owls like me

Read an article recently about the likes of me. I wanted to know how abnormal I was. Here is the totally-relieving excerpt -

"Morning Lark: Morning person, naturally wakes up 2 hours earlier than the majority of the population, is ready for sleep between 8pm - 10pm. Cope more easily with early shifts.

Night Owl: Night person naturally wakes up 2 hours later than the majority of the population, doesn’t feel sleepy until 12am - 2am. Cope more easily with late shifts.
Many creative types, such as writers, actors, and computer programmers, tend to be Night Owls. If they don’t have to get up early for work, many Night Owls choose to go along with their inherent sleep schedule and work until very late at night.

How to Become a Late Riser?
Note: If you are a Morning Lark, and easily awaken at an early hour, you will generally not be able to become a late riser. This advice is for Night Owls who do not wake up easily for work-
1) Talk to your employer about flextime
2) Talk to your employer about working from home
3) No flextime and can’t work from home? Quit your job
4) No flextime, can’t work from home, and don’t want to quit your job? Sleep in and face the consequences."

If you looked at the time of my blog post and guessed I am a morning lark, you are wrong! I am the "creative" sorts... ;-)

Travel bugs

I often travel around the weekends to meet my hubby(unless he is coming over). Like always, there is this never ending conflict between what I want to do and what I should do and I always end up making reservations for the early morning flight on Mondays for return. And I expect the readers understand here that "early" is as defined by the "protagonist". For the likes of my parents and other such folks- whose eyes open "automatically" at the stroke of dawn (and I still have to understand that phenomenon) "early" could be a different concept altogether. And oh I am not telling you the flight time anyways, so you can roll your eyes and judge me.

So Monday morning seems perfect only until Sunday evening. As the moon begins to rise, the thought of getting up "really" early, (this one is really early, believe me) starts giving me shivers and my mind starts cooking up options (and my conscience starts rationalizing them). This weekend the same thing happened. I ended up canceling that flight and booked a train later in the day. And went to sleep a blissful sleep. After getting up I realized that there was no point really in traveling during the day and ending up not doing anything "productive" so I shifted that train reservation to evening (Good thing, train cancellations are charge-free). I also felt happy that I could leave after seeing my hubby again in the evening. That is when destiny started to shaping up.

I called him up and told him I had shifted the reservation and he said he would drop me to the train station in the evening. In the evening the worst happened and I missed the train, since there was too much traffic on the road. It's only a ten minutes drive otherwise. No problems I thought, I would catch the next one an hour and a half later. Thankfully the trains frequency is good and there is a train almost every hour(sometimes even more). But hey, I thought why not take a flight now since that reaches directly to my city's airport, instead of the train in which case I have to drive a couple of hours to home. So I landed up at the airport to take the last flight in the evening.

And guess what, the flight got canceled! But only "eventually". They did not put "Delayed" on the monitors until it was time to board the flight! My hubby at this time was back home preparing to go off to sleep when I called him and gave the great news. Of course he came back to the airport and picked me and then finally I got to my "home" home the next evening (I diligently dint book the morning flight for the next day :-)). But what's wrong with this travel stuff. Why cant we fly like birds? Life could be so simple. Of course we'd had to work out our wing-muscles off and on.

Idle

View of inside of the apartment.
Through the patio at the backside,
Sounds of traffic, birds chirping, motors running.
In the front through the kitchen window,
Some leafy branches on a tree swaying with the wind,
A side wall of an apartment.
Dull color of leaves, gray light streaming through the window.
Suggestions of a cloudy sky, windy day.
Sounds of typing on a keypad.
Intermittent human voices, music from a car stereo.
An emergency siren.
A plane landing.
The wet feel of a steam-cleaned carpet.
A sneeze.
Some warm breeze.
An ordinary day?

Pause.
Cursor blinking.
A confused stream of thoughts.
Undefined purpose.
Resolved as Tea time.

Did you check out the google page today?