In my previous post I Documented the Death of my Diet.

Now obviously, it wasn’t titled THAT, and I didn’t mention anywhere (at least not in detail) that my diet went for a toss, but it did and allow me to explain how.

This may sound very privileged, but having maids who don’t show up without as much as a phone call has put a damper on my plans. And when I say ‘maids’ I don’t mean that I have more than one person at a time helping me with household work. It’s more than one person filling the same position because these women are extremely irregular and therefore extremely replaceable, and I’ve had three different ones in January itself.

Last week started off amazingly well with Sandeep being home on Wednesday because we had a meeting with our interior team and on that day, we had been sans-Bai for four days already. The thing is that my actual Bai is on a long leave because she recently had a hysterectomy. So since December 6, a temporary maid has been coming in, recommended by the original Bai only, but she was never on time and so, so flaky. Between December 25 and January 19 she didn’t show up on 6 days and only 3 of those were communicated to me in advance.

When she didn’t show up on the weekend of Jan 18-19, with no intimation either, I called my original Bai , told her that it wasn’t working out and asked her to send someone else who was trustworthy. And so she did. She sent another lady who came on Wednesday, January 22, and it seemed like she would be a good fit. But it’s 10:23 PM on Wednesday, January 29, 2020 as I write this and the replacement of the replacement hasn’t shown up since Monday either.

At the beginning of this week (when this post was supposed to go up), I was in a terrible position because I had to look for a new maid, probably a permanent one because temporary maids will flake and my original Bai had also given up on the fact that she will have a job to come back to once she’s all better because her friends are so trustworthy. NOT.

So what started with not being able to make complete meals everyday turned into eating out more frequently than I’d have liked to. And then with more chores added to my list, and more demanding Laddoo, a jam-packed weekend, and of course, the cherry on the cake, a husband who was NOT AVAILABLE through all of this (in the past two weeks he’s only come home to eat, sleep, get dressed to go back to work, and oh, drop Laddoo on the way too. Thankyouverymuchforthat Well, he did do the dishes ONE DAY, but so what?) ultimately resulted in the death of my diet.

First the food went for a toss. I ditched the salads, because making one meant extra peeling and chopping. On some days Dal Chaawal was the only saviour. You get the idea.

Then went my first cuppa in the morning – cinnamon tea – because I just couldn’t deal with the day (and a dirty house) without coffee, so I started with that.

And then the steps.

I have no idea when I last clocked 10,000 steps. I could look in the app, but let me be a bit dramatic, okay? It’s all I have right now.

I managed to cook on Tuesday (January 28) and made enough to last the following day as well and as I write this (January 29), the sink has only three dirty dishes, the laundry is hung out to dry after only 24 hours in the machine, but the house hasn’t been cleaned in 4 days, there are two loads of dried clothes on the dining table waiting to be folded, and by the time I get to it, I’ll be two days behind on posting my word for week (I’m actually 5 days behind) and as I write this I only have a vague idea of what I want it to be, I’m 5,000 words behind on my word count for January, I haven’t worked out in almost 8 weeks now, and I feel like I’m ready for my next INDEFINITE social media break.

This is very similar to what happened last year. It was just after my sister’s wedding and my husband’s work routine had changed and I was overtired because of looking after Laddoo and doing all the house chores by myself, and I started emotional eating and gained so much weight that I looked like I was ready to pop again.

But worrying got me nowhere back then. Nor will it do me any favours now.

So this week, I am not going to worry about things I cannot control and…

EMBRACE

…all the crap that comes my way.

While I’m at at, I will also try to ENJOY it, because, why not?

And because my diet has gone for a toss anyway, why not EAT guilt-free too, huh?

That’s my plan this week and since I’m posting this ~~four~~ five days late, you can see I already don’t give a crap about how late this is.

Or that I haven’t lettered this week’s word. I tried to, believe me. But all this while, the word in my mind was ‘ENJOY’ inspired by @playfulparenthood’s post. I tried to letter, it, it did not come out well. I even put ‘Enjoy’ and ‘Eat’ on my letter-board, but as I was writing this post, EMBRACE just came to me.

And now I’ve got to go and change he damn word on the letter-board, click pictures again, in crappy lighting, no less, and thank my stars that I did not actually WRITE THIS WITH A PEN OR PAINTBRUSH because imagine how much harder that would be!