A Brownian Walk Through Life...

I now completed 3 weeks of working from home; and 2 weeks with family working from home. The second week brought with it much needed smoothness in our daily routines. We went for walks everyday; made simple dinners every night which served as left-over lunches for the next day and found us managing our work time with daughter's remote learning time without anyone having to pull their hairs apart - all in all, it was harmony and I think we are settling into this new normal :) I found some strategies which work well for us, the first is time limiting the news hour and coronavirus topic at home to evenings 5-7pm, which hugely helps manage stress/anxiety particularly as kids are always listening, even if we don't think they are! The other is shifting the kids school week so that she has no work on Mon/Tue two of my busiest workdays while she makes up for those days on our weekends.  We also set aside some time every week to just have family fun - cook…

One of the silver linings for me during this stressful stay-at-home period is that it's the first time I really spent so much time with my daughter at home! Otherwise it has always been daycare or school or summer camps - we took vacations together, sure, but those were generally time spent away from home.  It has been lovely spending more time and doing more activities with my 8 year old. One of which has been trying new recipes or making something we haven't made in a long long time.. generally by her "farmaish" or request. This is how one rainy and cold afternoon we decided to make batata wada. Batata wada is a crowd pleaser deep fried dish which almost everyone loves! However I am not a fan of deep frying and also at these times wasting a whole bunch of oil after frying seems a bit risque move, don't you think! So we settled on a plan B - which is using my trusted aebleskiver pan (or appe patra) which had been sitting catchin…

Here in California we finished our first full week of social distancing and shelter-in-place. It's an unprecedented time which calls for unprecedented actions and co-operation from everyone.  The usually overflowing bay area freeways were empty this past week and home streets were lined with parked cars as most of the residents stayed home and practiced social distancing and did the best they could juggling work from home with kids' school from home. It was hard to get going at first but I think I am settling into this new rhythm. Even as we complain about small inconveniences, I keep reminding myself that we are amongst the more fortunate ones - not having to worry about living paycheck to paycheck or having jobs to go back to or with elderlys or folks with special conditions to care about. Like others we spent a bunch of time getting groceries and pantry organized. We stocked our pantry with staples such as different kinds of rice (plain, w…