2014 has breezed past with stunning rapidity. It seems only yesterday that we were recovering from our Bali holiday of December 2013, but so much that is personally significant has happened since then. What an action-packed year it has been!
I have completed a year of working in my current organization. It has been an exhilarating ride with a lot of learning and great interactions and I have received a lot of appreciation for my work. Sometimes I feel this is my sweet spot but ever so occasionally the exhaustion and unending responsibility of managing 2 jobs feels impossibly hard. Normally this coincides with Y's emotional blackmail - "Amma, quit your job! Work from home! Pick me up from school!" and I have to run to S to shove me back on the right track again :)
My parents are well-settled in Bangalore now and enjoy the community we live in. In the beginning, there were reservations on how they would cope and whether uprooting them from all that was familiar was a sensible idea. Fortunately, our anxiety was misplaced even though they had a very rough time in the second half coping with the illnesses and demise of both my grandmas. Their passing has left a vaccum in all of us but especially so for my parents for whom their care and comfort had been the top priority for the last decade. The silver lining is that we hope they will be able to finally enjoy life like most of their empty-nester peers have been doing for years. Simple things like going away for a short trip, stepping out for an impromptu movie or meal, which had been so hard to schedule in the past, are now possible.
My fil had a pneumonia scare earlier in the year and S rushed to Chennai to help. Our parents' mortality, and our own, is increasingly looming large in the horizon and not a distant concept any more. One of the productive and long-pending things we did this year is to get all of us insured, including parents and kids- health, accident, death, disability, the whole works. It is a whopping sum to be set aside every year but it has bought us some peace of mind for the future.
The kids have done well. Ads cricket mania continues to amuse and enthrall us. He recently finished reading Sachin Tendulkar's autobiography and spent as much time poring over career stats as he did on the book itself :) He goes for chess and tennis lessons and has been pestering us to let him sign up for cricket coaching, which we will probably do in the summer break. Y has made huge strides in her reading, writing, and social skills. She was recently diagnosed with a lazy eye and has been patching her eye for a few hours every day. She has been a tremendous sport over it, like she always is even though it has interfered in her classes and play-time, and we hope we don't have to do it for much longer.
S has been insanely busy at work, and largely satisfied though there were some tense months in between and a lot of travel too. He got involved in a lot of other stuff too, like being on the advisory board of a b-school and helping set up a non-profit, apart from his ongoing involvement with IIMB.
The year ended on a high note with 3 weeks of entertaining family and friends. My brother visited briefly. His wife and daughter followed and we had the pleasure of cuddling and spoiling a very cute 2-year old :) S's brother and family visited for a few days, followed by friends on both sides of our IIMB reunion on campus. It was extremely hectic and we all ate far too much and slept too little, but it was the best sort of fun, the kind only close friends and family can provide :) Our year-end holiday was a short vacation in Masinagudi, which was very very beautiful and serene. Hopefully I will post on that soon.
We are ringing in the New Year quietly at home, though I might pop in to our community NY bash for some time.
Here's wishing you all a truly wonderful and healthy 2015. Happy blogging and reading in the new year!!
