I just got back home ( it's 10:30 P.M.) from an enchanting ride at the vesona park! PARK! You may wonder! In this cold and at this hour? Relax guys, I was out with my family for what is known as the "fantasy of lights" event at vesona park. Now, any gussess at what it might be? Yup, X'mas lights, all bright and colorful just like one would expect during the yuletide. We were in our car driving around the whole park for about 20 minutes or so seeing all the fantastic show of lights. What was cool was that you could tune into 104.1 FM and listen to some X'mas music and also get some information about this particular event in vesona park. Some jingle bells music in the background and lights right in front of you, almost as if those sparkling lights were dancing to the music. Very well planned indeed!

I have been in bay area for almost 8 years but never had I been to this park up until this evening. The kids loved it but like all kids who do not show interest for too long, my kids asked my husband and I " is it over? are we done? " I thought they wanted more so I said " yes, too bad we are almost done" and my older one said " thankgod" !! Just then I saw the lights of santa claus' hand waving goodbye with a twinkle in his eye!

This morning my 3 year old and I were watching a TV food show. The chef was making a pasta dish called gnocchi ( pronounced as ˈnȯ-kē )( they are dumplings usually made with potato or semolina and served with sauce) . My son looked at me and asked "mom, can you please make this for me?". I said " you want mamma to make gnocchi pasta?" His reply had me in splits, it was "gnocchi pasta yucky pasta?" He obviously could not pronounce the word gnocchi the way it is supposed to be and so the next word that came close in line for him was "yucky". Both the words have a similar sound to them. He did not mean to say that it is yucky pasta but all his little mind could think of at that time was some word which rhymes with the word gnocchi...

There have been many instances when my kids have come with some really funny retorts and I simply cannot remember most of them. Maybe I should blog them so that I can commit them to my memory forever.

The mumbai attacks on 26/11 have really shed a lot of light on how corrupt, inefficient and unscrupulous our so called politians are, not that we needed an incident of such a magnitude to drive home this fact mind you. My husband and I have been pretty frustrated, just like many other people, at the complete state of political mess our country is in. What do we hope for? I wonder!

The next thing we hear is that the home minister Shivraj Patil is being replaced by P.Chidambaram. I was talking to very good friend of mine yesterday and she said that she knows P. Chidambara personally. I lit up when she said that he is very honest, scrupulous and is a man of mettle. It is not often we befriend someone who knows a minister from such close quarters, do we? Can we a expect a clean governance from him? Only time can tell. For now, in the total darkness caused by the nightmare of 26/11 he is a beacon of hope, for me atleast!

This article of mine is a tribute to all the working mothers who somehow manage to juggle the myriad demands of their work and home very efficiently indeed. Gone are the days when as unmarried working girls (some of us) we would just come home from work famished and tired and have our dinner laid out on the table by our moms! Gosh, now thats what I call having your cake and eating it too! All gains without any pains! Please, I do not mean we never slogged at out work place but atleast we did not have a kitchen waiting for dinner to be served- by us! or the never ending pile of those oil and spices stained utensils.Responsibilities of work and home are exacting and I am not saying it is not my cup of tea but I chose to make this choice. Frankly, there are times I feel I may not be able to do it with my temper tantrums ( who said that is a only a child's prerogative!!) and the demands of my family.

With not much of domestic help available in this country, it is no wonder I decided to stay at home. I absolutely respect and admire working moms. Oh! stay-at-home moms ( myself included), I respect you too, simply because we are 24/7 employed with no salaries forget pay hikes! Yikes! That hurts! All I get at the end of the day is a couple of hours to catch up on some reading, surfing the internet , blogging at times and the list is not endless, mind you! There just isn't enough time. I am sure this is true of all moms, period!

More often than not, for many women,working is not a matter of choice but a necessity. Not having an option can weigh you down and the reasons for this are many. The very thought that in the future if at all I work, I am doing so not because I want to but I need to, absolutely frightens me! There is nothing wrong with it but I want to be able to make a choice about this and I am glad that today my circumstances are such that I can sit at home and make merry, err, not exactly but nevertheless!