Up and down and up and down

It’s the last week of the dreaded January. It seems never ending for many but somehow for me it seems to be flying by. Yes it’s been a while since last salary day in December 😂but January payment is round the corner. The bank account may not have seen much activity but there has been a whole torrent of activities in life. 

Last week was our anniversary week. K and I have this tradition of taking a long walk to the city centre , gorging on food and then taking a long walk back home( I might have mentioned this but forgive me for repeating. I never possessed a good memory anyways 😁) That was one day of leave from work and it could not have come at a better time. It was mad busy week for me with a bunch of fixes to be done for a previous project. In the midst of it , a day of leave did seem like a disturbance to the flow of work. It would have been better to get things done and dusted. But on the day I quite welcomed the relaxed feel. The days are very busy and one day of not sitting and working was more rejuvenating than I had anticipated. With a slow start to the day we set off to enjoy the walk followed by some amazing Japanese food.

After that quaint day it was break neck work. So much so that I quite forgot the advent of gorgeous Friday. My sis and I had booked tickets for the movie Border2. It was also the day when the final cut of our code would be handed over. After a demonstration in the morning where most stakeholders were quite pleased we looked forward to a relatively relaxed afternoon. But then some weird issues started popping during peer testing and it was again panic stricken coding 😣Alls well that ends well and I ended Friday with a high and one mighty code deployment. But it wasn’t time to rest on my laurels . I had to get stuff sorted at home- get the kids fed, give instructions for the next set of action for the evening and having bitten more than I could chew I had picked the day to change bedsheets across the rooms. This is a mega boring and Herculean task. And with added pressure of the movie in the evening there was extra zing to the activity. Somehow got it done and whizzed out of the door to enjoy 3.5 hours of patriotic fervour. It was an great experience for me stirring nostalgia and emotions. 

The weekend was a doozy with television and chilling and good food. 

And we kicked off a new week with lots more work. It was to be a super busy week again. But one never knows what around the corner. The kids were full of sniffles and cold. And today the heavens had opened up pouring cats, dogs and piglets. K and I took the executive decision that it would be better to give them a break and decided to keep them from school. Chiyaa is generally the one who wants to keep her attendance on point. But today she was willing to sacrifice it. The kids slept till 10. Parents worked. And around 11 am K was notified of an offer on a food delivery app. Well all that he needed was that nudge and we had noodles for lunch. It was therapeutic to forget the madness of work and just relax with kids for 30 mins during lunch break while the skies poured down. A busy afternoon for K and I while the girls rested and we called it a day.

Tomorrow routine.

Fielding set for January

 And just like that it's half of the first month of the new year done. In a matter of few days here we are in the full swing of things. A far cry from somewhere the same time in December when we were winding down. There were lots of card games, lots of TV shows, lots of food and lots of lazy mornings and days. We have still carried forward the card games, the TV shows, the food. The lazy mornings have of course been replaced by break neck school runs and the days have gathered their routine.

In all honesty it has not been as bad as we had anticipated. We did imagine things to be very murky but K, the girls and I have all felt that things have not been too bad. It was fairly ok to settle down. Personally I was dreading work since I had lots of dependencies in a new project.  I prefer working in an independent way without much hand holding from others. But somehow the timing of my joining a new project and the resource structure was such that there was a lot of inter dependent work. With that my progress with deliverables was slow which was a bit annoying for me. I spent a good week fretting and fuming. There was one small silver lining when I was needed for another task with a previous project. I felt valued and was looking forward to contributing in right earnest towards it. As they say when it rains it pours. Coincidentally on my current project at the same time there was some rejig of resources which led to much better synergies. So January was ironing itself out.

There was yet another curve ball in the shadows. I am making a trip to my home town Bhubaneswar. For the first time ever we could book a flight with Indigo which would taks us to our destination in quite a small duration. But then, the Indigo Gods acted up. Our flight has been rescheduled. This means our domestic leg from Delhi will be from a different terminal. Terminal change means more hassle and potentially delays. We went berserk. I literally bombarded everyone on my contacts list if they had any idea about changes in Delhi and if 2.5 hours would be enough to make it. There were some positive votes ( yeah you can do it!). Majority vote  were for its possible but with a lot of speed and stress. It was a lot of cognitive load looking through discussion forums, askind the all knowing (for now) AI platforms, going through different help desks and the lot. Finally we have given up to the best power in the universe. Dear God. He has brought us to it, he will take us through. With this another hurdle of January deferred to April 😂

So things have come out way and we have dodged some, deflected some and deferred some. Looks like an exciting year ahead!