The house this week

• I had a guest chef cooking me a breakfast of fish-celery soup and noodles the other day. I guess it would've suited a lunch or dinner menu better but it just happened to be an experimental effort. And the chef was none other than my husband. The soup turned out to be damn good for an experiment - and I am not saying that because he is my husband!
• I let myself be fooled by a guy who came selling vaccine shot cards for Hepatitis and DPT at Rs. 12 a person, and I bought 4 cards hoping to get us all immunised. I thought he was from the Chennai Corporation, and he didnt correct me either. My brain was probably working less than its normal capacity since I had just concocted a breakfast and lunch of assorted Kerala dishes, had handled two hyperactive brats in their weekend destructive mood on my own and had to get ready for work before the nanny made her appearance. I didnt ask him why the Corporation was conducting the vaccine drive at some school and not at the PHC nearby, like it does when it offers free polio doses for kids. I didnt even stop to think why the vaccine had to be paid for, though a nominal sum. He looked at the kids' immunisation cards which said they had completed all their vaccine shots and judged that they required booster shots for DPT and Hepatitis. That reminded me that I had missed one Hep. B shot because I'd got pregnant the second time round when it was due. So I decided to register all of us for this vaccine thing. I asked him if I could see the card and he said he will fill the names before that. Only when he gave it to me did I realise that it was organised by some Hindu mission, existent or non-existent, and I felt like a fool not to have looked at the card earlier. Happens. There are times when you act more foolish than you usually do. The green cards stick out from the sidepocket of my fridge cover as an embarassing reminder.
• The fan and the ac in our room has conked off, the former due to the constant switching off and on pastimes of the kids and the latter god knows why. Maybe the pigeons that are nesting on the other side of it will know. The gas has leaked and the compressor needs to be replaced. A wiser option would be to buy a new one, the technician advises us, as compressors cost almost half the price of a new AC.
• We are lucky to be able to sleep in the guest room in the absence of a live-in maid. Though life has not been easy cooking and packing off 2 kids to school, especially when I dont exactly enjoy cooking. And either of us have to reach home by 7.30 p.m. when the nanny leaves. Nor can we leave the kids at home and go anywhere.
• Well, you cant have the cake and eat it too.