Morning Meow

My work commute has been strange the last few months (cf entries Greener Grass or Squeaky Wheel). On the days when I head to one office, I need to transfer from the subway to a commuter train. I usually walk through an underground path to get from one mode of transport to the other. For the first few weeks of doing this I could swear that I heard a cat meowing within the general area where I walked. I’d look around to see if I could find where the noise was coming from but usually I had no luck.


As I continued this commute, the meowing noise got louder and louder and I still couldn’t place from where the noise was emanating. Despite how much it bothered me, I had to get to my train or wait another 15 minutes for the next train. This would bring me into work past my usual start time.

One day the meowing became clearer. It was coming from the street level just above the commute path. I stopped a moment to listen and realized it was someone handing out “The Metro” paper to people on their way to work. What I heard for so long as “Meow” was actually someone saying “Metro”.

Despite my feeling completely silly upon this revelation, I’m happy that I figured out this mystery. It would have been sad if it were some homeless cat mewling with its master.

Cuddles

I am very lucky for a number of reasons. I have always enjoyed cuddling since I can remember. I had a number of stuffed animals growing up and into my adulthood that I used for sleep security. When I got my first dog, even the first night she spent with me, we snuggled. She has since been a constant companion – sitting with me on the couch when I read, providing a paw when I was not feeling well, squishing beside me when I am having trouble sleeping.

My second dog was not a cuddling companion for a while. She was abused before we rescued her so she was quite skittish when trying to pet her. After a few months though, she too gained an extreme cuddliness quotient. She often woke and wakes me up to get a good cuddle in for the long day ahead. She loves getting petted and is often on my other side (opposite dog #1) when reading. 

It seems that I now have another addition to the cuddlefest – my daughter. The last few weekends, when she’s woken up earlier than I’d like, after having her bottle, she sneaks into the crook of my neck and begins to talk. She then gives me a hug. It was really the sweetest thing I could think of - until the sweetest thing in the whole world happened this weekend. 

Again she woke up earlier than necessary. She had grogginess all over her face. I fed her a bottle and then we had breakfast. I returned to the bedroom to change her and in doing so she snuck away from me on the bed. I ended up crawling over to get her. She rubbed her eyes and cuddled up to me. She tried to grab my eyelashes and then she giggled. From there, she proceeded to fall asleep on my arm with her face against my chest. 

I didn’t want to move her because I was afraid of waking her up. Instead I watched her fall deeper into sleep. I then fell asleep too. I woke up about 30 minutes later to the sound of the telephone ringing but she at least continued to sleep. She moved positions but still remained on my hand. My arm did go numb a couple of times but I tried to squeeze my hand to bring circulation back. 

After that my hip began to hurt from the position I was in. I couldn’t really move without waking her so I didn’t. I took a look around to see what time it was and who do I see around me but both my dogs napping around us as well. I guess they climbed onto the bed when I was asleep. 

When my daughter finally woke up, she looked right into my face and giggled again. She gave a big stretch releasing my arm and then proceeded to start crawling around as if the nap didn’t happen at all. It was probably the best hour and a half or so I’ve ever napped in my life. I was surrounded by my favorite warm cuddly parade. Everyone should be blessed with cuddle-loving critters and humans in their lives.

Egypt

Egypt has been in the news a lot in recent weeks. There is just so much happening there. When Morsi was ousted, I remember watching one news report where the journalist was speaking from Tahrir Square. I stared at the tv remembering how when we first arrived in Egypt a number of years ago for a tour, we stayed in a hotel minutes from the famous location. 

The first night we spent in Egypt was in Cairo. We had a room up at the top of a hotel and our view looked out onto the square. I could see the British Museum across the way, even though I didn’t know that was it at the time. I looked out the window and saw so much activity - cars not obeying the traffic signals and people trying to get across the street like in the video game ‘Frogger’. There were scents of grilled lamb intermingled with oil or gasoline smells wafting up into our hotel window. It was the most incredible sight of a populated square I’d ever seen. And having lived in New York all my life, that really was saying something.

I couldn’t sleep that night because of all the noise in the square below. It was more the excitement of being in a country I had wanted to visit since I was a child. I also didn’t want to miss our wake up call to go to the Pyramids the next morning. And boy, am I happy I didn’t oversleep or miss that part of the tour?

The Pyramids were astounding. The sun reflected on my sunglasses making it difficult to see them completely. It was sunlight bouncing up from the sand and from the rocks onto my sunglasses. Regardless, my jaw dropped at the immensity of these structures and the unbelievable strength and intelligence of the people who created them. I loved seeing the Sphinx, just this crazy cat like animal in the desert with a big headdress. Some people took camel rides but I opted out of it because no matter how far we were from them, I could still smell their odor. I didn’t want that smell staying in my clothes through the whole trip (which it did for all the people who did that tour extra). 

We went to an archeological museum on site and had to put weird socks on our feet. My husband and I kept taking pictures of each other making sure to get the cool socks in every shot. We then made our way back on the tour bus and off we went to other parts of the tour. 

We returned to Cairo at the end of the tour. We had a day to explore the city without our tour guide if we wanted. We opted for this and walked through the city in the heat. It wasn’t so humid in Cairo but it was very hot. We went in October and it was hitting the high 90s easily. We ran across the street through Tahrir Square. We came close to losing our lives on 3 occasions. 

At the end of our walk we ended up meeting our tour without even realizing it. On our way back, we took a cab ride through Cairo (because we didn’t go with the rest of the team, we had to go on our own) and our driver was showing us where his aunt lived, where he went to school, etc. Honestly I forgot momentarily that we were in Egypt. Driving with that guy seemed more like a roller coaster than a cab ride. My husband took a video of the whole ride and I remember feeling very nauseous (I wasn’t even that nauseated during pregnancy!). 

It’s amazing to me now how things happen. When the Arab Spring happened and I watched the protests in Tahrir Square, I was equally transported to our visit. I hope that they figure everything they need to and get the country back on its feet with more democratic means. It is such a beautiful country and I hope people can go and visit it soon. It’s a shame that due to everything that is happening, people aren’t able to go and see what a wonderful place - full of amazing history - it is. 

Breakfast Pastry

Yesterday morning when I got off the commuter subway at work, I decided to pay a visit to a mom and pop coffee shop to get my breakfast. I had walked by the business the day before and said "Tomorrow I will check it out." I kept thinking about what I would get there as I walked to the spot. Obviously I'd get a cup of coffee and see what they had in terms of breakfast pastries since that's what they advertised on the chalkboard outside.

I opened the door and walked into the shop at a little before 8 am. I asked for a cup of coffee and I looked around for the pastries. "There aren't any pastries yet?", I asked. "No, we usually get them at around 9."

Needless to say I was disappointed. I was really looking forward to trying one of their items. But I was also upset because I kept thinking:

"Hey, this is my breakfast time. I want my breakfast pastry. Am I being penalized for being an early bird??"

I understand that they were ordering in pastries for the morning rush but the last I checked rush hour usually started before 8 am, not 9. Or maybe I'm mistaken since I only see a handful elbows in my face during my morning commute. Perhaps the true morning rush was before 9 am. This felt like false advertising to me. When was breakfast anyway? I usually had it in the morning but is there a specific time of the morning when breakfast is acceptable and I'd been missing out?

Needless to say, the coffee was very good. It would have been superb if I had a yummy cinnamon roll, muffin or danish to go with it. I'm not sure if I will go back and check on their pastries in the afternoon some day (since I don't understand the breakfast window!). They are lucky the coffee was that good that I'd give them another try.

Business Continuity

Recently my team has been preparing some business continuity measures. We are running processes with the assumption that should something happen to our team in India, we, in the United States, could run their reports for them. There would not be any gaps and all would work out seamlessly – as if no one would be able to tell the difference.


This whole thing cracks me up for a number of reasons. I especially love running these processes when I think about how almost all of my American co-workers are displaced because of Sandy. We are working between two offices because our original building was and is still out of commission. The likelihood of something happening in India doesn’t seem relevant. In the past few years all the natural disasters have been happening in the U.S, but oh well.

The second assumption we are working with is that the procedures can be picked up by anyone who is not familiar with the process. Anyone should be able to run with it. The amusing aspect of this is that the procedures that I’ve read through are the most confusing things I’ve ever read in my life (and I’ve read lots of philosophy, James Joyce and Faulkner). Random screenshots are placed into the procedures without any description of what they are for or how they pertain to what you need to do. The pictures are like a conversational digression…it is somehow there yet you don’t know how it relates to the rest of the discussion until possibly far after the point.

The third part is that we are supposed to get training on the reports we are supposed to run for this practice phase. This is oxymoronic to me because it suggests that the procedures are not clear enough for people to pick up and ‘run with it’. Why else would you need training? Shouldn’t the documents be up-to-date? The few training sessions I had only made clear more discrepancies in the procedures than I first saw. Not to mention that most of the training sessions I had were not planned out. The trainers, who usually run the reports on a monthly basis, couldn’t answer my questions and we not prepared. They didn’t have the documents available to make updates to the procedures as we went through them. They left very much to be desired.

I could go on and on about the other aspects of this whole task that were silly but I’ll leave it for another entry.

Non-Fiction

I enjoy reading a variety of genres. I tend to read fiction because I enjoy the way authors turn phrases or how they use their imagination. Every so often I will turn to non-fiction either because a book interests me or because one of my book clubs decides to read some non-fiction. I have read some pretty fascinating non-fiction titles. However, sometimes, I remember why I don’t like to read non-fiction so much.
Non-fiction often reminds me that truth is much stranger than fiction. Non-fiction comes in a couple of varieties for me:

1) In-depth analysis and investigation into some event or person’s life (i.e. investigative journalism)

2) Factual information or anecdotes about phenomena (Malcolm Gladwell’s books fall into this category)

3) Memoirs or essays (David Sedaris is one of my favorites in this vein)

Last year I read a number of political non-fiction books (Team of Rivals and Game Change) that thoroughly intrigued me and opened my eyes a little more to the genre. In the past I mostly read fiction and an occasional non-fiction book when it was a book club choice. This year, I thought I’d give non-fiction more of a chance. Let my open mind see what else could be learned from this type of literature.

One of the recent books I read is about how a British girl went to Japan to work and disappeared. There were times while reading that I shook my head and felt so sad for the girl, for her family, for the fate of the human population. Why are there so many crazy people out there? The story disturbed me thoroughly. The writing, although wonderful and mesmerizing in the beginning, fell flat towards the end. Regardless, I was still so upset by this book. Then I started reading another piece of non-fiction. I got maybe a fourth of the way in and decided to stop it. Again, another haunting story about a person and it occurred to me that I needed to read something a little more uplifting.

These two books made me recall why I don’t usually pick non-fiction. I don’t like to be reminded of the deterioration of the human race. I don’t have to imagine it like I do in fiction; it exists and this book just proves it. Also, I could just watch the news if I wanted to be reminded of the fall of humanity.

Although these particular books have temporarily put me off to non-fiction, I am constantly reminded of the wonderful works I’ve read in the past. Thanks Michael Pollan and Malcolm Gladwell for your interesting works that make human nature and nature in general more appealing. Let’s not forget that without Doris Kearns Goodwin, I’d never have learned so much about Honest Abe! It definitely made me appreciate him more as both a person and a president. For the time being however, I think I’ll stick with fiction, especially in the summer.

Greener Grass

I think I’ve mentioned that due to Hurricane Sandy, my work location has been up in the air. My team can work between 2 locations or stay at home. One location leaves much to be desired because it’s dark and there is a lot of noise around the area. The group next to ours completely lacks work etiquette. Aside from having to hear the ipod shuffle of a person 2 row from me, I’ve also had the honor of listening into a girl’s SKYPE conversation with her mom and niece. I got to a point where nothing amazed me anymore. 

Then I ended up going to visit my old team when they were all in town for a group meeting. They were having their meeting in a conference center. Because I wasn’t part of the meeting (just visiting), I had to sit in the room next to theirs. And the room I sat in was just baffling.

There were 4 rows along this particular space and on both sides of those rows were monitors. Imagine a bunch of long banquet tables were people face each other, only to be blocked off by computer monitors for each guest. They call this the trading floor. I call it hell in an office building. The whole time I was there, I could see and hear every person in front of me, to an angle from me and to the side of me. I even got the residual noise from the people in the row behind me - not to mention the sniffing, snorting, coughing and nose blowing of the people in my arm's length. It was an extremely joyous and productive occasion (and if you can’t sense the sarcasm, I need to work on my writing)!

I don’t think I got a single thing done in the time I was there. Just after 12, I stopped in to say hi to my old team and decided to leave. I had so much to do and there was just not much of a chance of my getting it done in the environment. 

It was horrible and I can’t understand the thought process behind that configuration (except cost saving but even then, how much of a saving is it when no one is productive!). It made me really thankful for the situation I am in. Despite having to split my time between two locations, both of them now looked like a Caribbean work beach compared to that set up. It’s important to see something else from time to time because we often do think the grass is greener on the other side. Until the other side is filled with people taping away at computers, listening to conference calls on speaker phone right in front of you and a plethora of other annoying work activities! Then you realize maybe you didn’t have it too bad. 

Little Things

People have often said it's difficult to buy me gifts. While they may think that's true, I disagree. I am pretty vocal about the things I like and don't like. If people pay attention to that alone, I think they are off to a good start.

I enjoy paper and pens immensely. I do have a lot of them but they do give me an inordinate amount of pleasure. I am a big believer of correspondence. I have a few good friends with whom I still correspond with either exclusively or occasionally. It gives me great joy to get letters from these people even if it's a short note or a card. These papers and pens and cards come in handy when I write to these people! So that's why I also like them.

On the subject of cards, a really thoughtful and sentimental card goes a long way with me. If there is a personal note to go along with it, that's an even bigger plus. I love books and I will never turn down chocolate, even white chocolate! (which is admittedly my least favorite of the types of chocolate.) I thoroughly enjoy tea and coffee too.

Gift cards are also a very personal thing for me. A lot of people find that they are impersonal. But I think that if you get someone a gift card to a place you know they love, what's better than letting them choose something for themselves? I'm weird that way, I guess.

It really is at times the little things that make a big deal. Case in point, more than a month ago it was my birthday. I admit it was crushing when some people I thought very highly of, who meant a lot to me,  completely forgot about it. Life is hectic and people are busy; I understand these facts.  However one friend got me a bunch of very cute little gifts - one of which filled me with a lot of glee. It was a miniature stationery kit. In it there were small pieces of paper, small envelopes, a small pencil and a pencil sharpener. For added cuteness, there were even little stickers. The moment I received this gift, I used it to send a letter to the person who sent me the gift. Then I used another 3 pieces of papers and envelopes to send 3 other letters within the next few days. I just thought it was the most adorable and sweet gift! And it was a little gift, literally.

I know I am a complicated person. I love to discuss difficult subjects at large, especially in French. I read all types of weird books, although mostly I read fiction. I'm intrigued by ideas and what makes people tick. When it comes down to it though, I'm not that hard to please. Say what you mean, mean what you say, actions speak louder than words, dogs and babied make my day and chocolate makes the world go round.

Daily Puppy

I’ve been visiting the website ‘The Daily Puppy’ for years. I first heard about it from a co-worker who is equally smitten with dogs as I am. Every day we would check the site and then meet at each other’s cubicle and discuss how cute the dog of the day was.

Even though I no longer work with this person, I have kept up the semi-daily viewing of the website. I mostly discuss the cuteness, squishiness or adorableness of the quotidian canine with my sister or a few of my friends. What I have found in doing this is that it brings a smile to my face.

When work gets boring, annoying or stressful, I like to check into this site to put a smile on my face. (I also do this with pictures of my daughter now.) Now as scientific studies have proven, seeing or being around dogs help bring blood pressure down. I can say that I sincerely have noticed this over the years. I am always calmer (even if momentarily) after I look at the puppies on the site, or if I see pictures of my own pooches.

I think that if you like dogs (or even cats because there is a daily kitty site), it would do the whole world a brief bit of good to check out the website when you aren’t feeling at your best. Enjoy!!

Little Meatball

Every language I know has its affectionate terms for people. In French, your loved one could be ‘a little cabbage’ or ‘my little louse’.  In English someone could be your ‘cookie’, ‘cupcake’ or even ‘sweetheart’. Spanish has too many to even name here but I don’t think that they are food related.

In Italian you’ll often hear someone being called a meatball. It makes sense to some degree. Meatballs are very important to Italian cuisine and it’s meant to refer to a little something that comforting and special. (Although I’ve also heard it refer to someone who is fat and dumb but that’s neither here nor there.) My daughter actually will be christened ‘little meatball’ not so much because she tastes good or is yummy with pasta but because of a couple of events around meatballs themselves.

In introducing her to adult food, she wasn’t very fond of chicken,meat or ham. She just thought they were weird. She had no real issues with veggies and some fruits she ended up enjoying after the second try. However, the proteins have been hard. So one day I said, maybe she just needs a little something extra with the meats to make them interesting. So I thought meatballs might just be the trick.

We started first with chicken meatballs in broth. Before even giving them to her, she decided to make a little pool in one of her high chair compartments with her water. This happened mostly because she turned her sippy cup upside down. Then I cut up some chicken meatballs to give to her. She took one and put it in her mouth. She was a little skeptical of the taste. But she eventually ate the small piece. She then swept the other pieces into the water with her hand. She moved the meatball morsels around in the water and then one by one ate the bits. I guess she thought they needed to be sanitized before she could chew on them. Regardless, it was cute and she ate them and it was the validation I needed that perhaps now she would eat some protein.

A few days later I decided to make beef meatballs with some pasta. This would be the first time she would eat pasta too so it was another big milestone. I decided to make fusilli/corkscrew pasta because I could cut it small enough for her to get little bites. I gave her some of the meatballs first which she enjoyed. Then I gave her pieces of the pasta which she took in her fingers and inspected. She looked at the first piece in front of her eyes and made a face like ‘I’ve never seen you’ and she then quickly put it in her mouth. However her mouth was still full of some meatballs. So she couldn’t quite make out the taste of the pasta so she spit everything out. The gnawed piece of pasta and little bits of the meatballs fell on her bib. She then reached down with her mouth and tongue to the bib and ate the pasta piece only. She chewed it and seemed happy with its flavor. Now that she had the essence of it without it being tarnished by the meatball, she was content. She mixed together some meatballs and pasta as she completed her meal.  Finally we were eating a real meal together as a family.

Her playfulness and then acceptance of meatballs made me very happy. Up until that point, I was cooking food for the adults and mashing up food for her or giving her purees of food. We weren’t eating the exact same things. Now she was having adult food in baby sizes. And because she’s small and special and cute when she eats, she will now be christened my little meatball (although I will still call her a munchkin and a pumpkin and a number of other names).