I am delinquent in my blog writing, I know. Let’s get caught up, shall we?
The weeks between our trips to Udaipur (right before Christmas) and Pench (mid-January) were rough ones. If you’ll remember, our house had been torn up since early December due to the Sprinkler Debacle. They ended up replacing all the sprinklers but to do so they had to cut eight holes in the ceiling, change the sprinklers, replace the cut portions and re-caulk and sand them before painting each ceiling again. This had to happen in every room in our house (except the hallways which had no sprinklers).
There was fine white dust (from sanding the ceiling) EVERYWHERE. I tried controlling it for a few days but eventually gave up. I made a little ‘Christmas corner’ in one small area of the living room that had the tree, stockings, a little circle rug, a chair and a loveseat. Kind of pathetic but more manageable to keep clean.
That wasn’t all though. When I came back from Udaipur, I caught a cold. Not COVID, which I was sure it was, but a good old-fashioned cold. Who knew you could get those anymore?? :) I kept COVID testing, sure it was going to show up sooner or later but nope. It started on the night of the 23rd and by Christmas Day I was feeling really crummy , so much so that we had to cancel our plans. My cold incapacitated me for a week and just as I was on the mend, Nick and Nia went down (of course). Same thing for them, seven days, this time over New Year’s. Lots of COVID monitoring again. No COVID to be found though. But it meant a lame New Year’s too. Definitely NOT a holiday season to remember.
All the sickness delayed the ceiling painting as well, so we didn’t get the construction crew out of our place until January 8th. I was so over it by that point. I even debated leaving the ceilings unfinished for our last 6 months. In the end, they did complete the work and it looks decent.
I was also over having Nia home from school, since we’d been out since December 17th (break was 3.5 weeks total). The night of Jan 11th I had her lunch all packed and ready to go but of course the dreaded email arrived (at 6 PM, no less) saying that school has to go virtual indefinitely due to the Omicron flare. BOOOOOO.
Thankfully that only lasted a week and we’ve been in person since the 18th of January. I’ve learned that I’m much happier when I have a consistent routine — no private time + a house out-of-whack really threw me for a bit there. Let’s just say it wasn’t a very productive writing month.
Flamingos in the City
Last weekend we took advantage of a really fun phenomenon that takes place in Mumbai each spring — the migration of thousands of flamingos from parts of India (and all over Asia) to Thane Creek, located 45 minutes north of our apartment.
The flamingo population has been growing in recent years because of the increased pollution in the creek (which leads to more algae, which they eat). If the pollution keeps growing though, the swamp may become toxic and then they may leave altogether. Hopefully Mumbai can maintain this balance for awhile so that Mumbaikers can continue to enjoy this unique ‘nature in the city’ experience.
Flamingos are born grey in color and feed on algae found in swamps and lakes. As they eat the algae, their digestive systems extract a red-orange pigment from the algae that’s called beta carotene. That, in turn, causes new feather growth to turn pink in color. We were fortunate to find a stray flamingo feather floating in the water!
Nia loved every minute of this adventure, especially the fact that we got to go out on a boat with some of her friends. She’s become a big animal lover of all kinds. Doesn’t she look so grown up?
All in all, it was a great way to spend the afternoon. It’s hard to find much nature in a city of 21 million, so this was a real treat!
