Blogging often gives me a complex. Reading others' blogs, that is. Every time I read most blogs, apart from the superior quality of the photos and blog design, I am often envious of the gracious homes, gardens and lives they evoke.
"I served it with ...," they say. Now to me that conjures up visions of picture-perfect hostesses and homes delicately proffering the right delicacies with the right accompaniment, not a crumb or hair out of place.
Not that I haven't used the line myself. I have, but it really makes me feel like a fraud - and a frump - because convenience dictates the way I have most of my meals: Breakfast is had post-morning wash but before bath (clad in nightgown); lunch is had immediately after a bath, half-dressed, powder caking on face, hair drying under fan (or sweat beading freshly washed visage if the electricity is gone); and dinner is slumped in front of TV/in couch/at dining table amidst the junk accumulated during the day, in nightgown.
And, of course, I serve It to myself with whatever is available, not something I have created by design. I end up eating curries by themselves, without rice, and sometimes pair them with idlis or whatever else even though they don't make a great combination, just because I have to finish them.
Sometimes a newspaper acts as my table mat, and there are several pictures on this blog to prove that, I'm sure. Including the one above.
When I moved into my own place, I had visions of maintaining it like those homes in slick and glossy magazines on housekeeping and interiors. That dream died soon enough. Now I just aim for clean and tidy, not beauty, something I manage by the skin of my teeth. Naturally, these dreams went with others where I made and ate perfectly designed and balanced meals, with the right crockery, cutlery and napery. Well, we eat off plastic, microwaveable plates, bringing out the crockery only now and then, and the silverware that we have is in my wardrobe, still securely wrapped in its pink tissue paper. I haven't bought new napkins in years. The oldest ones become kitchen rags and the better ones are washed everyday, journeying towards kitchen-ragdom.
My beautiful home is ultimately a repository of the unused, the unwanted and the unsung, as is my refrigerator, and I find myself confronted with a profusion of things I'd rather get rid of. Much like Five Super Foods to Always Have in Your Pantry or Five Tips for that Super Flat Tummy, I have set myself the task of Five Things I Will Junk Today.
I am happy to report that I have done this to my wardrobe and am at a stage where I need to go shopping for more clothes.
Now needless and unsolicited confessions done with, can you guess what's in the photo above? Not the rice and the chillies, but the other brownish-pinkish things?
Blogging Musings Humour
