28 January 2013

Motivation Monday: Sleeping In Edition

Ha, I wish that was me these days.

I've been having so much trouble getting out of bed but my schedule is such that I'm getting treadmill runs and yoga sessions in later in the afternoon. And on the weekends we go out for runs as a family a little later in the morning. This is not how I envision myself as a runner. But I'm getting some miles in so I guess this is how it needs to be right now.

I'm signed up for two 5Ks in February but we might go away for a long weekend and skip one of them. I'm keeping my Providence half marathon in mind every time I hit the treadmill. I'm working on that base mileage, slowly but surely.

And I do mean "slowly" some days; we did over a mile at Muffin's pace on Sunday before she acquiesced to riding in the stroller. She did a sixteen-minute mile, but it took her over thirty minutes to run that mile. Lots of stops to play with dirt, drink water, and take her shoes off and put them back on.

A friend from my high school cross-country team invited me to join his Tough Mudder team in August. It sounds like fun but I don't know what the timing will be like with our arrival in the U.S. I'm keeping it in the back of my mind though, for once we know our schedule.

24 January 2013

First Part of the Auto Rickshaw Bed Project: Finding A Place That Might Actually Sell Us an Auto Rickshaw

As I told one of my friends, it's like a race car bed only it's an auto rickshaw.

We have an idea for making an auto rickshaw bed for Muffin. She loves riding in autos. She talks all the time about how she's going to drive one some day. We think it will be a fantastic souvenir of Hyderabad. When we get tired of it being a bed, we can turn it into a bench or some kind of artwork.

Mike's office was closed for the American holiday on Monday, but it was a regular working day for Hyderabad, so we kept Muffin home from school and started searching for an auto to buy. We just want the body, with no engine. Mike had a lead on an auto rickshaw mechanic's district where it was rumored there were salvaged autos to buy. He tracked down a phone number, our driver tracked down a general location, and we hopped in the car and took off.

It took us over an hour to get across town and find the hospital that was the landmark we were looking for. Then our driver had to stop and ask for directions. We were directed to an auto detailer's shop, where you get the decals and stuff that go on autos. So we stopped again and asked. We were directed to a retailer selling new autos. But someone loitering around there knew of a mechanic nearby who sold used ones. So we drove there.

That mechanic only had an auto pickup truck for sale but said he'd let us know if he had any "4-in-alls" (four-person passenger autos). He was working on a couple autos, and one had the engine out of it, so he let us take some photos for our research and planning. Just imagine taking out the front and back seats, and, according to the measurements, a twin mattress should fit perfectly.





One of the guys at the mechanic shop said he had a 4-in-all auto for sale at his house, so we got back in the car and he directed us through a warren of dirt roads until we came to a field with this in it:
He was asking way too much for it, and a lot of the parts we want to salvage are rusted or missing, but he let us take a few more photos. We are having trouble figuring out how to take the front and back apart and modify the chassis so getting some photos of the undercarriage will be useful.

This is what the underside of an auto looks like, in case you've ever wondered:
Somehow I went the whole day without taking a single photo of Muffin.

We're kind of stuck now. There must be some place else we can go to shop for autos but Mike needs to work his contacts for some more information. No one can understand why we really want one and the lack of understanding is a roadblock to getting the information. 

18 January 2013

Oh Nose!

This is not a running-related post or an India-related post. This is a two-tired-parents-of-a-sick-toddler post. Just warning you now. It's not gross; just parental.

The plague has hit our home and so far it has hit Muffin the worst. When she has a stuffy nose, she says she's feeling "nosy." We've had that nosy feeling all week long. It started with a little head congestion and has moved into a full-on runny nose and cough. She never actually had a fever and didn't seem over-tired, so after Monday and Tuesday being school holidays, I sent her back to school for the rest of the week. She seems pretty overcome by the cold now, though, and has been sad and snuggly since I picked her up today.

Mike and I are just plain exhausted, me to the point where I'm collapsing at bedtime and not hearing when Muffin wakes up coughing at night. Mike's been doing all the middle-of-the-night medicine giving and humidifier refilling, which I am so grateful for. According to my dailymile profile I ran three miles this week but I don't even remember doing it. On Tuesday I was feeling unusually warm and exhausted, and low and behold, my temperature was higher than usual. Not really a fever, but high enough that I was really worried about getting sick and put the brakes on the whole day. We sat on the couch watching TV and dozing. And that's the day Mike came home from work, put Muffin to bed, and then collapsed into bed himself at 8:00 pm. I think that's the only night in the last week that Muffin has slept all the way through.

Er.

That leaves me not really knowing what to write next, so here are some photos of Muffin with her kite. Last weekend was the kite festival and Muffin had some fun before she got sick.





09 January 2013

Mad World

Yesterday "Mad World" by Tears for Fears came up on my shuffle and I nearly cried. Had it been the version of the song from Donnie Darko, I probably would have cried. Events of the world have been weighing heavily on me lately. Mostly in India, but the United States, Central Africa, and Afghanistan/Pakistan have not been to far from the front of my mind either. Hearing the song made something "click" and I suddenly felt like I knew better how to express some of what I've been feeling lately.

By now the world has heard about the young woman in Delhi who was gang raped and subsequently died from the assault injuries. But she is just one small piece of the women's issues here in India. Here is a sampling from today's newspaper:
A spiritual leader said that if the Delhi woman had prayed and asked for mercy from her rapists, they would not have raped her and perhaps divine intervention would have prevented her from getting on the bus in the first place. He later said that he didn't say those things and offered to apologize if he offended anyone. 
A politician was arrested for crimes including hate speech, which is a capital offense, but law scholars are arguing that the death penalty should not be considered for rapists. 
Under the headline "21-point resolution for women's protection passed" the first line of the article is "A 21-point resolution for protection of the fairer sex was passed at a seminar on sexual violence against women conducted by the Andhra Pradesh Judicial Academy [emphasis mine]." 
A 16-year-old girl was gang raped but it wasn't reported until she tried to commit suicide by setting herself on fire. She's in critical condition at a hospital. 
A top state-level official Chhattisgarh (if not the governor, then someone nearly as high-ranking) blamed "planetary positions" on the current increase of assault on women. According to him, "Only astrologers can explain this."
It's like this every day. It's exhausting.

In in my own Indian microcosm, this wasn't in the paper but I heard that a five-year-old girl in our neighborhood was lured to a construction site with candy. Whether there was a rape or attempted rape is unclear and doesn't really matter. It's horrible either way. It might have been one of the little girls that Muffin sometimes plays with in the neighborhood park and that hits too close to home.

And what feels like the last straw for me, our housekeeper's husband has been beating her and her daughter and she refuses to go to the police about it. I can't report it for her due to the wonderful intricacies of the Indian legal system; they hardly care when a (poor, lower-class) woman reports abuse herself, let alone when an expat does it on her behalf. There's even a Women Police Office not far from her home, full of female police officers whose job it is specifically to protect female and child victims and investigate women-specific crimes. She has her reasons for not going and all I can do is ask her every day if she's reported it or not. I'm getting tired of hearing the same answer though. I urged her to make sure her daughter has the phone numbers and knows where the WPO is in case she's ever in trouble on her own. I'm hoping her daughter, a 19-year-old university student, can grasp the situation a little differently than her mother and will seek help. I know this is not a problem specific to women in India; I know women in the United States are abused and do not go to the police for a variety of reasons. I can't help but think though that in the United States a woman has a better chance of being protected and supported once she does seek help.

I'm not sure what my purpose is in sharing all this. I think I needed to let people in on what's been on my mind lately; share some of the headlines you won't see on CNN. I also needed to purge some of these thoughts from my head. I feel a little guilty making myself feel better, though, when that's not going to help any of the women and girls in these stories. I can extend a little influence on my housekeeper and I can protect Muffin and myself. That's about it. I feel better, writing it out, but not good.

07 January 2013

Motivation Monday -- HBBC Final Chapter

It's the end of HBBC. I didn't exactly end on a bang. I ended with a decent mileage week, compared to the previous weeks. I ended with my dental thing fully healed and with not actually getting sick even though I feel like I'm continuously just on the edge of having a cold. I ended with not taking advantage of cooler weather when I should have because the days are getting warmer now. I ended by signing up for two months of yoga classes (starting tomorrow), signing up for a 5K here in Hyderabad in February and a half marathon in Providence in September. Training for the half marathon begins a couple weeks before we move from India to the States, so I'm sure it won't be hectic at all. Until then, I'm working on base mileage.

I'm working on my One Little Word for the year in lieu of a resolution. I'm not going to share my word, but it's helped me through some tough times already. India has been kicking my butt lately and oddly, working out and running have been relatively simple and a constant, reliable thing. If I choose to relive some of the negative stuff, it will be in other posts, at other times.

Thirteen points this final week, for mileage and Facebook check-ins.

To cheer myself up, I cleaned out my closet and replaced some of the clothing with new running clothes, specifically, shorts that I can wear when we set foot in the States this summer.

You can see other HBBC roundups at JillConyers.com.