Maulik Shah

J. went away this weekend to a wedding in Chicago. We would have loved to have gone together, but dragging the kids along was a little too much, so I stayed home with the kids and she went with a friend. She had a fabulous time – missing the kids, natch – and I enjoyed the time with the girls. I was also looking forward to having a Saturday night to myself once the kids were in bed- watching the movies I wanted to watch , sitting around in my underwear, eating pizza and drinking beer. I ended up doing the dishes, drinking diet coke and barely (I nodded off twice, forced myself to continue) making it through “Tinker Tailor Solider Spy” before collapsing in bed. So much for my big night off!

Still, it was fun but exhausting. Savita is at a particular age where she’s supremely needy. She needs to have you close by, and I think after the second day she must have felt the loss of J. because she was even more vocal in her whininess than usual. She also refused to nap at all in the morning (*very* unusual). Annika did fine – a little more clingy on Saturday than normal, but only in a very subtle way.

The experience, however, reminded me of a difference between Jyotsna and myself. I love my children, of course. But I’m also a classic introvert in that people *drain* me instead of energizing me. (For a most excellent article, check out this.) Not to say I don’t *like* people, but at the end of the day I need time to myself. Jyotsna is more of an extrovert than she is an introvert (although she has her days), so she seems to have an easier time just hanging with them. I think I deal with this by being a little more directed in my interactions with the kids; For example, I’d prefer to go out and *do* something with them, like run an errand. J. is more apt to spend more intentional time with them than I do. It’s obviously not an either/or thing, but I definitely tend to one end of the scale while she is more able to hang out on the other end.

It’s already May. Savita is going to be turning 1 in a few weeks. Seems surreal.

Thanks to Netflix, we spent Saturday night trying to figure out what to watch. After browsing for a while (and a few, “Just pick one already, damn it”) we ended up watching “Religulous”, a “documentary” by Bill Maher. Now, both J. and I think Bill Maher looks suspiciously like a penis, but he’s often funny and espouses a certain viewpoint that’s occasionally interesting. So his movie was on our to-watch list at some point, but not high enough on it to merit going out of our way to watch it.

We lasted maybe 30 minutes before we turned it off. We both appreciate a well done documentary, even ones that obviously have a bias (take Michael Moore’s films, for instance.) But Religulous is mean to the point of hitting you over the head with it. I’m sure there are better parts that we didnt watch, but it was just too annoying. A lighter touch would have served the movie so much better. In the scene we watched before we turned it off, he was interviewing a leader of a church in Florida. Bill’s sharp enough to interview him well and trap him in his own hypocrisy at times, but every time he did so we got a comic clip that was the film equivalent of a pratfall or an applause meter. I can’t help but think in other hands an earnest interview of someone who takes himself seriously but doesnt realize he’s being skewered would have been so much more meaningful (and funny.) Ah well.

We turned it off and ended up watching a documentary that I had heard about on NPR – “Being Elmo: A Puppeteers Journey”. It was fascinating, and even J. stayed up to watch the whole thing. It’s hard to imagine that a working class black man is the spirit behind Elmo, but the story is fascinating and uplifting. It’s somewhat light and short on criticism (his divorce is barely mentioned and glossed over at best, you can’t help but think his role as Elmo had something to do with it) but that’s a mild rebuke to a wonderful film.

Saw “The Hunger Games” last week with Jyotsna. I liked the books – Jyotsna liked them better – but they weren’t life changing or anything, so I wasn’t *dying* to see it. And I think that attitude carried over into my reaction to the movie – more “Meh” than anything else, although they did a fair job of sticking to the book and bringing the story to life. I suppose I thought Jennifer Lawrence was only marginally effectual as Katniss, and the actor who portrayed Peeta was totally blah. (He reminded me of that annoying kid that surfaced toward the end of “Facts of Life”. Remember him? ) It’s a tough job to pull off the conversion of a book to film, especially one where most of the interesting stuff (to me)happens inside the character, rather than the plot. The book, for example, makes the love triangle believable, and Peeta is a much more complex character, rather than just a wink and a smile. The scenery and the visuals were considerably less than what I expected, which was disappointing.

One thing I didn’t expect though: How affecting it was to watch children killing other children. In the book, it didn’t bother me as much. Maybe because it’s easier to escape the reality of it in the book, but I was shocked watching it. Maybe it’s because I have kids now, but I find myself noticing violence in general more than I used to.

On the other hand, I read a fantastic book called “State of Wonder”, by Ann Patchett. She wrote Bel Canto a few years ago which I loved as well, and there are remarkable similarities in the books. Her writing jives with me, engaging, descriptive and occasionally revelationary. Both books offer plots that border on the surreal, but somehow make sense given the characters. A surprise and a pleasure. I need more of these book experiences, too much schlock.

It took me a couple of weeks to go through over 2100 posts in my livejournal and baby blog. It was an interesting exercise, looking back on both what I’ve been through and my thoughts about them. My first reaction was: My GOD I can be a whiny bitch. My second reaction was: I did WHAT? I swear, there were more than a few posts about events I have *no* memory of. I even apparently dated someone for a couple of months – including going to a party where I met their friends – and I have *no* idea who she is. I even went back and looked in my archived email to see if that could jog my memory, but after reading through them I *still* can’t picture this person.

How odd is that? Memory is apparently closely tied into emotion, so I obviously didn’t have much emotion tied up into it. But what’s scarier is losing the memory altogether. I had a similar experience when I had surgery back in 2002. After the administration of the anesthesia, I apparently had conversations and interactions that I have no memory of. If we’re the sum of our experiences, but can’t remember them, then what are we?

Anyway, I’ve been through them and I’ve classified all of the posts as private, “members only”, and public. I’ve tried to keep as much post 2010 as public as possible, with the rest being “members only”. (I should make a jacket). There’s an astonishing number of private posts though.

I’ve missed writing and journaling. I hope to get back into it…

Its been on my todo list to consolidate my web presence in some way. Way back in the 90′s I used my personal web site (www.mo-shah.com, woefully outdated) and a paper journal to share my public and private thoughts. Then I used LJ pretty religiously for years to do the public and private journaling. Then I stopped journaling consistency, and started using facebook to share the more mundane stuff. But I miss the journaling. LJ isnt what it used to be, and Facebook isn’t conducive to thoughtful and meaningful interchange. So now I’m fractured – picture , videos and incidental memes and jibjab on Facebook, a sporadic baby blog at baby.mo-shah.com and my mature LJ content.

But despite my wanting to consolidate everything for my own ease, I’m aware that I kinda like having some segregation. I dont have a sense that there are more than a handful of people that would be interested in *everything* I talk about. (More importantly, I’d only *want* a handful of people to read everything). Family would be most interested in photo and video content. Maybe folks that are technically minded would be interested in my work content, primarily. Maybe another “facet” would be

I’d like to maybe start using my personal domain again, maybe setup a master blog site to consolidate everything and then replicate content down to LJ and facebook, depending on type of content. That should be doable with RSS, right? Some of you use dreamwidth, I believe – is that worth exploring? 10 years ago I would be challenged to figure it out on my own. Now, I just want someone to tell me. It seems that it would be a facet of some type of blogging site somewhere. Setup a main private site, then subsidiary sites based on tags of your content. Private would stay private. Work content would go to “work.myblog.com”, baby stuff would go to “baby.myblog.com:, etc. Someone has *got* to have figured that out somewhere, right?

In other news I’m seeing a personal trainer. J. has been seeing one for a couple of months now, and after some initial trepidation (mostly surrounding the fact that she works out of her home and wondering if I would be worked out “enough”) – I’m hooked. She kicks my ass for an hour twice a week, and unlike PT’s I’ve had the gym who basically count your reps and with one eye and on the lookout for other clients with the other, she pays rabid attention to form and is constantly challenging me. It’s only week two, but I forsee sticking with this for a while. It’s an investment, but worth it.

Work has been kicking my ass recently. A big deadline this week, and despite the nanny being out on Thursday, my having the kids on my normal Friday, and Jyotsna working this weekend/being away, I’ve probably logged close to 70 hours this week. I want this phase *done*, so I can coast a little bit into the holidays.

Actually, what I want to do is retire. But that’s not happening anytime soon.

I still need to put my outside Xmas lights up. We have the tree up and decorated, but every other house on my street has lights up, I’m feeling the peer pressure.

Maulik Shah

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Finally Finished

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