On Study Holidays

         Hello, everyone :) As the more perceptive of you may have realized, the last post was a bit of a departure from the norm. Fact is, I've always wanted to try writing a web series, and the Tale of Redbird seems as good a place to start as any. I hope you liked it, and the next edition of the story will be up by next Sunday or whenever I feel inspired to write again.

         I really have very little to write about today, as I am doing nothing at this point in my life except siting at home and staring blankly at my books. The sun's gift, melanin, is slowly draining from my skin and I'm becoming pale and sickly-looking. And, since I have absolutely no exercise except lifting my enormous textbooks, I'm also getting chubby. Sigh.

       Don't get me wrong. Study holidays have their benefits. For one thing, I can spend the entire day in my pajamas with my hair in an unflattering ponytail and nobody freaking cares. The diligent student look is very low maintenance- the only time I bathe nowadays is either when I have to go out somewhere or when the fumes rising from my unwashed skin start melting the low-density plastic objects in our house. Also, in our South Indian family system, anybody who's studying is a top priority, first class citizen.

(When I'm not studying): Ma, can I have a glass of water?
Mum: Do I look like your servant? Get up and get it yourself, you lazy fool!

(When I'm studying): Ma, can I have a glass of water?
Mum: Of course, darling, still or sparkling?
Me: Mum, Abi's breathing is disturbing my Physics.
Mum: ABIGAIL, STOP BREATHING. Can't you see your sister's studying?
Me: Can you feed me?
Mum: Do I have nothing better to do? Am I an unpaid servant in this house? Feed yourself.

     Ah, well. It was worth a shot.

     One of my Mum's few eccentricities is her attitude towards toothpaste. In many other respects,she is a very reasonable person, but there is a slight streak of insanity in her when it comes to toothpaste. She absolutely refuses to throw the tube away until every last drop of flouride-infused goodness has been squeezed out by means of blood, tears and elbow-grease. One morning, when I just couldn't get any more from the dry shell of the toothpaste tube, I walked to the dustbin and announced, determinedly, that I was going to throw the toothpaste out.

     She flew out of her room like she had wings, took the toothpaste from me and, after around fifteen minutes of slightly demented squeezing, she pushed a minuscule glop on to my brush.

      "There," she said triumphantly, in Malayalam, which made it a lot funnier. "And you wanted to throw it away."

          Have a very good Monday, everybody! If you're feeling overwhelmed by something, remember that the world is actually very big, and you're actually very small and unimportant. Hope that helped.

P. S.: Shout out to my readers in America, Poland and Germany. Thank you for reading!

P. P. S. I'm thinking of cutting all my hair off! This is a madness that comes occasionally on me and it always ends in sorrow and destruction. Please, please, someone, convince me otherwise.

Angels and Cowboys

O, Woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!

Yeah, right. Excuse me while I die laughing. Walter, darling, you should have met my mom. She is awesome in many ways, and incredibly cool, but when pain and anguish wring the brow, she's more likely to cut my pocket money (which is what she said she'd do when I told her I swallowed a coin.) than minister angelically. Like today, when I told her I'd hit my head on the rear view mirror twice, confidently expecting comfort and sympathy. She said, "Didn't you find anything better to hit your head on? Now I can't see anything behind." Or like the time my sister slipped and actually fell into an Indian toilet. That is a fate worse than death, and when she went howling to my mother, my aged relative said, "You'd better not have damaged the bowl." So yeah, in some ways we were brought up tough. But she did stay with me sleepless for nights together when I had typhoid, and calm me down during the nerve-wracking spasms of pain I experienced after I cracked a bone in my vertebral column (that's a fun story, remind me to tell it to you sometime), so I guess I don't have much cause to complain.

Hey y'all how's it going? We were celebrating my best friend Irene's birthday today so she, Nathasha, my other best friend, and I went to Millers 46 for steak. It was a good time, even though we were dressed like we were going clubbing and all the people in the restaurant who had got the memo about casual clothes stared at us like we were idiots. Millers 46 is cowboy themed, so if you like plastic horses watching you while you eat, it is the place to be. Also there's a downstairs section where although the sign on the door clearly says "Closed. Screw you. Go eat upstairs" (something like that), there's people inside eating! What is that, like the elite floor where only the cool people can eat? Well, fine! Be that way! We didn't want to eat there anyway. Even if the wooden rocking horses with actual badass saddles are in there (*sob sob* why didn't you people let us in?!). I eat my steak 'well done' by the way, because I'm a chicken, and one of my friends told me that blood is what gives 'medium rare' the flavour. Is that true? If that's true, ew. If it's not, then I spent my evening sawing at a hunk of beek as tough as a chair for no reason. I will be pissed and there will be consequences.

It was nice being with the two of them again after so long. We're in different colleges now, which is weird. Nathasha's in some halli school (not really, it just seriously pisses her off when I say that, which is why I have to say it all the time) and Irene's in an all-girls academy, where extra-curriculars are important. Celebration is a foreign concept in Clarence, so this is hard for me to understand. It's strange and slightly sad that we no longer have everything in common. Speaking of having things in common, Irene almost bought the same dress I own to wear for tonight's dinner. I stopped her just in time. Had she bought it we'd have had to fight to the death gladiator style for the privilege of wearing it, and it would be a shame to turn her inside out and make her swallow herself on her birthday. Thankfully, the crisis was averted by me sending her around a hundred and six messages going: "DON'T BUY IT DON'T BUY IT DON'T BUY IT DON'T BUY IT." I was so shaken that I was not only texting this to her, I was also screaming it at the phone to communicate my point better. Unfortunately the room was filled with family at the time. This is why my cousins don't come over that often. Oh well, they knew I was insane anyway.

Sleepy time for the Science student. I have to wake up at six tomorrow. If you get to wake up later than I do, point at the screen and laugh. Go ahead. JUST DO IT YOU LUCKY IDIOTS. Sweet dreams xoxoxo

LOOK A FOLLOW BUTTON!!!

Aww, come on Mom.

Hey, I've just realized that after I publish this post, I will have posted once every day for the past four days. This has become a daily thing! Isn't this great? You can go to bed today secure in the knowledge that there WILL be another post tomorrow. (Cue group "Noooo!") Yes, yes I am threatening you. I'm hoping that at some point someone will actually PAY me to stop posting crap on the internet. And THAT ladies and gentlemen, is my plan to earn money for college. Feel free to emulate.
Hey y'all how's it going? Good? Great. Today's fascinating monologue is going to be about my mother. Now, I know it's not exactly cool or normal for a fifteen year old girl to feel this way, but I really love my Mum. She's a great person and I genuinely enjoy spending time with her. We get along better than most on the mutual agreement that we don't interfere with each other too much. By that I don't mean we don't have fights sometimes where we shriek at each other and lie on the floor screaming and flailing. I am a regular teenager to some extent and some things about my Mom really, REALLY annoy me. We actually had one of those fights an hour ago and I have calmed down to the point where I've stopped muttering angrily and throwing things, so I've decided to make a list of the things my Mom does that irritate me and post it on-line. See how much I sacrifice for you guys? I'm not going to get an allowance for the next three weeks.

Seven things I hate about my Mom:
(Sha...... sha)
1.     Sometimes if I'm on Facebook or something and I see a funny picture, I call Mum over to look at it. So she looks, and we're both like "OMG LOL ROFLMAO" and then she DOESN'T LEAVE. She just stays there watching. Using the internet when your Mum's watching is the. Most. Awkward. Thing. Ever. I have to scroll down really slowly and hope nobody posted anything stupid.
2.     So after I'm done showing my Mum the funny photo, and after I cough a couple of times in a don't-you-have-a-velociraptor-to-hit-with-a-banana sort of way, she leaves the room again. Here's what annoys me. She NEVER SHUTS THE DOOR. It's not that I'm watching porn or anything, I just like my privacy. (No, really Mum, if you're reading this, I don't watch porn. Stop checking the browsing history.)
3.     She is partial to my sister. All the time. See, I'm the eldest of three, and my little brother is autistic, which is why I completely understand that he gets a lot of attention and cookies, but why does my sister get more support than I do? For example, I recently got a new phone, an expensive one for which I have to pay half the amount (Thanks Mum. Love you too) and today I asked my sister to take care of it for forty-five minutes while I went for my piano class, because I was wearing Jeggings and you CANNOT fit a Samsung Galaxy into those pockets. After my class, I came out and my mobile was lying on a seat in a public place and my sister was gone. Naturally I was pissed off because I'm extremely careless with my things and I hate it when other people are. I feel like they're doing my job or something. So I stormed to the car, where my Mom and sis were waiting, in full Righteous Indignation mode and I started yelling at her. And then Mum took her side. She said it was my fault for a) buying things without functional pockets and b)taking my phone outside when I don't have functional pockets.What?! Ugh!!
4.     This is something that she probably does for my own good and that I shouldn't feel so annoyed about, but I really, really hate it. When I'm sitting in my room and I'm supposed to be studying, she sometimes opens the door, puts her head in, watches me for a few moments and then leaves. This pisses me off so much and I can't explain why. I know she's doing it because I really should be studying and she wants to make sure I do but it makes me want to listen to death metal and kill fluffy things. I need therapy.
5.     The fifth thing my Mom does that annoys me is when I tell her I want to do something crazy fun, but also crazy stupid/irresponsible, she says no,  we argue for a while and then she says, "Do whatever you want." I HATE that sentence. It's like the ultimate Mom weapon.
6.     She compares me to my cousins. Period.
7.     She makes me love her (D'aww! Thank you Miley!!)
LOOK A FOLLOW BUTTON!! CLICK ON IT!! No? Fine. Do whatever you want.
(EDIT: I just realized I didn't post anything on Thursday. Fail!)