Driving with Kids - Minus Apps

So here's how we maintain our sanity on long distance drives.

• Car seats and seat belts - Best thing. EVER. You can't use strait jackets so this is the next best thing.
• Essentially get the kid used to a car seat from day one. Alternatively tolerate the squalling for a couple of weeks, stay firm and you are set. (Same logic for getting said kid to sleep in a separate room). Optional: Get the Mother Care review baby mirror which is kinda cute but mostly pointless once baby is used to the seating layout.
• Lots and lots of potable water, along every door. It will be used for drinking, cleaning baby/kid, cleaning you up. Basically everything other than buffing the car.
• Nice roomy large plastic bag to catch all the crap that travelling with kids entails. Hook it against the front seat and away from longer little legs. Use it for everything that is icky including discarded food items and empty out at your next rest stop/food stop and continue until unbearably smelly in which case replenish with a new bag after safely discarding former.
• Get the older child (if above 4/5 and reading) to read every sign and act as navigator  (Even if you have GPS). Makes them feel important and well, less bored. To be honest, mine was better than the GPS which goofed up a lot over obscure village roads.
• A ginormous set of baby wet wipes - the 1000 variety with bum softening agents being purely optional. You will be cleaning sticky faces and grubby hands a whole lot more than bums.
• No nursery rhymes in the car. Period. My rule of thumb - Get your license and THEN you get to choose your music. Driving from Mumbai to Mercara listening to Itsy Bitsy, I should think NOT!
• A big carton below kiddy feet full of kiddie 'healthy' treats and not the sugary sort that induce throw-up. For baby, I swear by the Gerber dry snacks wholeheartedly abhor the veggie mush (godawful if you are considering the Indian palate) however the fruit variant mash is tolerable. Britannia oat meal and crackers work a treat as do cheese cubes.
• Keep bibs handy as well as hand sanitiser -duh!
• It's not really all that bad but it does require a steely resolve and a lot of patience - which is a bit rich coming from me;) A semi-loud music system also helps. Okay just kidding. Nonetheless, it is worth it because you can stop when you want to and explore slightly pokey, out-of-the-way places (assuming the kids are awake and conducive to poking around aforesaid out-of-the-way place)
  
  FOR THE RECORD
  Miss V (Current: 21 Months)
  
  1. 6 months trial run: Mumbai-Murud
  2. 8 months longer run: Mumbai-Goa
  3. 15 months longest so far: Mumbai-Bangalore-Coorg
  
  Mr Ved (Current: 6 years)
  
  1. 17 Months: Vizag-Chennai
  2. 2.5 years: Wellington to a tour of Malabar coast(And many, many more trips since -Maha-Gir, Udaipur, Ranakpur, TN-Mumbai etc)

 PS: Want to do a road trip but unsure about getting behind the wheel? Going first class on the Rajdhani to Delhi with Miss V aged 14 months and Mr V aged 6 yrs. Lots of leg room, coupe is yours and you are not pissing off co-passengers (which God knows, I hate doing having been at the receiving end for most of my life) and the grub is fab!

Books that I have read lately
Alice Munroe is a pleasant discovery. But here's the rub - it is very dissatisfying and yet so splendidly written, Runaway is like a course of hors d'oeuvres with no main course in sight. Titillating, tantalising, wets your appetite and yet leaves you craving for more. Shrugging off the conventional short story mechanism aka Deus ex machina which I am self-confessedly rather used to, these stories hang in the air - light as powder and yet heavy with intent. This is my first Munroe so I am a bit puzzled by the jumps in time and her stories that do not talk about anything and yet say so much. Passion is my pick about a woman who discovers her own sexuality with minimal fuss but Tricks is the one that fits the perfect story in my head - a chance unhappy mistake ruins a lifetime. Definitely worth a read but in direct contrast to Gillian, this one has no endings really.

Dark Places (Gillian Flynn): After 'Gone Girl' (the book) I should have known better to expect a mystery that will keep me hanging till the end...on tenterhooks. In typical 'Gone Girl' style, 'Dark Places' starts off enticingly enough with a really interesting concept based around a 'Kill Club'. Yup, it's all good but somewhere around 60% (Sorry, Kindle) she quickly begins tying the loose threads and ties them together into a pretty little bow that is jus too neat and too pat - a random third party emerges as sheer coincidence, people who  matter just vanish and the wicked Satanic witch just trots along 40 kms down the road and vanishes off the face of the Earth. Flynn is a fab writer, she is really good in a  Michael Connelly in drag strain but she wants to present a smug solution and that kills it. I like some threads to remain loose:(

Back to work, Back to reality

Of late my digital imprint has been a bit like my cooking. I consume more than I concoct.

I am constantly trawling the net for new web trends, social media bytes and general blather that will knock the socks of my employers. So of course I have no time for anything that entails typing more than 140 characters. And this is when I AM working.

When I was minus a legitimate job, my Facebook floundered, my Twitter hardly chirruped, my blog got bogged down and I dropped from the (digital) social scene like a fly squished by a particularly effective swatter.

Now that I am three days away from my first 100% fulltime job (since V came along) the moths are raising up a storm in the pit of my stomach. I would have stuck to butterfly flutters but that conjures up a vision of a picturesque meadow with butterflies gently flitting to a Chopin sonata. What I feel like is more of a ‘lost in a dark forest torn from the underside of your worst nightmare’– set to Darth Vader’s signature tune.

There are wonder mums with three children who juggle it all without breaking a sweat. I am pretty sure I am not it, not when I still have peanut butter under my finger nails as I dash frantically to catch that damned bus. Why use public transport when you can drive? Well, that is when I get to read for an hour uninterrupted. The old fashioned reading - minus the palm top/the ereader/the tablet sort and more importantly away from the three year old toddler sort. Though to give V credit he is in bed by 8.30 PM, giving me 2 hours of reading time at night as well.


Meanwhile as my clock stolidly plods on, I am back to scouring the net
1. To act extremely knowledgeable about the latest trends
2. To sound relatively adept in geek speak
3. Hoping like hell I am not out of my depth


BOOKS I READ IN JUNE
Devil in The White City (Erik Larson) : Stunningly researched and a ripping good read, if you like the mix of power hungry builders and gory serial killings that make Jack the Ripper’s exploits seem like granny playing croquet. Highly recommended and mostly fact, you get to know about the first Ferris wheel and the incredible, unbelievable effort that went to create the extravaganza that was the Columbian Exposition: The World’s Fair in Chicago of the 1890’s .

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (Stephen King) : I ‘fess up, I am a King addict especially when he isn’t always off on his LSD trips. This one is a fabulous read - a girl lost in the forest for nine days who finds strength in baseball and her favourite star. Simple, lucid and yet frightening. I am not straying away from any path, that’s for sure.

The MoneyChangers: I used to be a Hailey fan but this is definitely not one of his best. Re-reading this after more than 15 years so it felt a bit odd. Déjà vu..

picture sourced from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WorldColumbianExpositionExhibitHall.jpg