Lemonade & Family.

me.

Just two quick photos taken by my daughter on a mom & daughter pizza date. Those are fun! My husband will be home soon & I'm quite excited about it.
She always has the lemon soda & I always have the masala lemonade.

Love,
Sheila

G for Goa

Goa is the smallest state in India. A native of Goa is called a Goan in English,Goenkar (गोंयकार) in Konkani, Govekar (गोवेकर ) in Marathi.

This collage is made by Magali after our last holiday.

Though my husband and I are born in Mumbai our parents were from the same village in Goa and the families knew one another. When our fathers were old enough to leave Goa they came to Mumbai to make a living because in Goa there was nothing much to do. They earned enough money and later went back to Goa to find Goan wives and brought them back to Mumbai where they started their families.
Goa is visited by large numbers of international and domestic tourists each year. The beaches of Goa are famous and quite clean. We love Goa but only for a holiday but now with all the drunken driving and drug dealing going on, Goa is not a very safe place and  we are used to the fast pace of  life in Mumbai.
Though we have a holiday home in Goa we visit only once a year in the summer vacations as a family because Ezy is usually home at that time.
We also love to spend time at the resorts in Goa since we have a membership and spend a lot of time on the beach just enjoying the cool breeze and relaxing.
I look forward to our Goa holiday every year and maybe this year we will be visiting Goa in the Diwali or Christmas Vacations.
With lots of love,
Sheila.

This post is part of ABC Wednesday.

D for daughter

Today I dedicate my post to my daughter Magali.

My daughter Magali when she was a baby.

I do not know when and how it all started but I have seen it in many families that the parents always favor the sons. I do not know the reason for that behavior but it really irritates me when the daughter is completely ignored and made use of in all ways while the son is the Lord and Master in the house. Maybe it has to do with the dowry system here in India that parents find that the daughters are a burden on their finances.
My parents too were always partial to my brothers and quite ignored my sister and me. It really hurts that now when the brothers are married and all the assets are taken over by the brothers their wives want nothing to do with the Mother because she is old and not useful to babysit and now that the children are grown up they do not need the unpaid maid servant (the Grandmother).
When I was pregnant my husband always wanted a girl but I told him that we should be happy with either a girl or a boy but  my only prayer was that I should have a normal delivery and a normal child. God granted me my prayers and I am thankful that I  have a daughter.
My daughter is 18 years old and a blessing to me and my husband. Though she may pester me for many things that she wants she is a good and loving daughter who is kind to all and loves animals. I am really happy that I have a daughter and do not wish for anything else in this world.
Dearest Magali, Dad and I love you and want you to continue being  a good person that you are.
May God bless you and keep you safe always.

Love,
Sheila

This post is part of ABC Wednesday.

Being lazy and not blogging

Hello everybody,

It has been a very long time since my last blog post and though my daughter Magali has been after me since a long time to write a blog post, I have been very very lazy.

After my husband arrived on 11th April from Brazil we packed our bags and left for Goa the same afternoon.

The time we spent in Goa really flew fast and we enjoyed our stay there especially at Haathi mahal at Mobor.

After coming back to Mumbai we spent 5 days at a resort here and I was in no mood to blog even though the internet was not disconnected at home.The little time I was at the computer was spent reading the newspapers and doing other things like checking mail and replying back.

We left for Kovalam Kerala with high hopes, because until this holiday we were lucky to have really great holidays in India and abroad. But I was really sorry that I had booked into a resort where the people as well as place was not really to our liking. Everyone in Kerala was out to take us for a ride and to add to it was the weather with Thunderstorms and heavy rain which forced us to spend our time in our room . We did not even have cable TV for 10 out of 14 days we were there at Kovalam. The only saving grace of the place was the scenic beauty.

Life is busy now as my husband is at home and is hungry all the while.So I spend time making some different things for him to eat. Even Magali has cooked a lot of food for him and he jokingly tells me not to get her married soon as she has to cook for him when he comes home. And sometimes when he is angry with her he tells her now that she is 18 years she can get married and go live separately.

Will try to take a tag a few days later.

Take care,

Sheila.

Happy Birthday Magali

Today my daughter Magali is 18 years old.

I still very clearly remember 9th April 1992 when I was all alone at home and waiting for some news about the return of my husband Ezy from Gibraltar.

Around 7 am I started feeling restless and a few minutes later I felt the first contraction. Actually the due date for the arrival of my baby was 21st April but after all the football playing and kicks that I got, I was very sure that this baby would be wanting to see the world earlier than the date he/she was supposed to arrive. Having been a nurse I knew that her father would never make it for the arrival of his child because he had told the Doctor that he wanted to be in the labor room when the baby was making his/her entry into the world.

I ran up to my Aunt's house to call my sister since at that time we did not have a phone at home.

MTNL connections were being given after 2-3 years and we were staying in that house for only about 10 months. My sister and her husband came and picked me up and took me to the hospital.

By then the contractions were more frequent and painful but naughty Magali was not coming out. I had to wait till 8 40 pm before she decided that she had put me through enough of pain and with the help of forceps she made her entry into the world. A few seconds later I heard a loud angry cry and saw a red angry baby yelling. She looked so cute like a small chimp.

After that ordeal the only thing I wanted to do was to eat something since I was very hungry as I was not given anything to eat because the Doctor thought that if a Cesarean section had to be done then it was better that I should be (nil by mouth) hungry. An Intravenous drip was started in the morning itself so as such my baby was getting nutrition through that.

My sister and brother then went out and got me some hot food which I ate and fell off to sleep completely exhausted.

The next day onwards till to date I have been taking care of her single handedly with no help whatsoever.

The years have gone by really fast and I thank God for all my blessings.

Ezy will be coming home tomorrow and then we are off to Goa .

Summer Holidays begin.

Lots of love,

Sheila

Egg sandwiches and college days

Yesterday began as any other day since Magali was sleeping late and being a Sunday I too did not have to go out in the morning. At around noon time I received a call on my cell phone from a number I did not recognize and a female person asked me to guess as to who she was. I thought of a different friend from college who is settled in Mangalore but the voice did not match.

Sitting on the steps with my friends in
Lonavala. Can you spot the 17-year-old me?

She reminded me of our degree college days when we used to play Table Tennis and bunk college to go for movies. Now I somewhat guessed that she was one of the five friends from my group because she mentioned 'egg sandwiches'. Those were the days when we were allowed to carry whatever we pleased into a cinema hall and our group always planned as to what each one of us would bring for all to eat during the intermission. The menu for the four of them used to change but I invariably had to make egg sandwiches for all of us because all of them loved the sandwiches and so did I. I had finished college and gone to Bombay Hospital to do my Registered Nursing while the others did what they planned to take up as a career. Two of the friends got married and are homemakers and two are single and career women. While two are in Karnataka state (one in Udupi and one in Mangalore) three of us are in Mumbai itself.

Us again! (left to right): Sujata, Neeti, Eleanor & Me!

The best thing that happened was I got hold of all their telephone numbers and spoke to all of them. So yesterday I got in touch with four friends whom I had not met or spoken to in years. We are planning a get together either here in Mumbai or in Mangalore.

A holiday together would be great fun. We had gone on a holiday together in December 1980 to Khandala and I happened to have 2 photos which Magali has managed to capture with her camera as we are too lazy to use the scanner.

With love,
Sheila

Hello everybody

My husband Ezy in his uniform
feeling very bored.

Hello. My name is Sheila Araujo Vaz. I am born and brought up in Mumbai and I do not think I will be happy in any other place. I am a homemaker though I trained to be a nurse before I got married in the year 1990. My husband Ezy is a Captain in the Merchant Navy and I have spent many years sailing with him and though I had terrible bouts of sea sickness in the beginning I later became 'a sailor's wife' according to Ezy because after 2 months the sea sickness flew out of the porthole (that's sailor lingo for window).

My daughter Magali pretending to
steer the ship.

My daughter Magali is going to be eighteen very soon. How the days have gone by. I remember holding her as a baby the day after she was born and her father was speaking to me on the phone from the port of Gibraltar and feeling very sad that he could not be with us at once. He came 10 days later. Now she is a childlike mature girl who still wants to play silly games with me and I sometimes wonder how the years have flown by. She herself has been a blogger since a long time & introduced me forced me to blog.

Ezy & Me on the ship.

Though I had not started blogging I have been reading a lot of blogs and I really do not know how often I will blog because I am not much of a writer. That is Magali's forté. I will write as and when I am in a mood, and I should warn you all that I am a pretty moody person as I am a Cancerian.
My free time is spent as a Volunteer at The Home for the Aged close to home. I have been going there for nearly seven years.
This is all I can think of for my first post. Will post sometime soon.

Take care,
Sheila

*all three pictures in this post were taken during our trip sailing with Ezy in the year 2008.