July isn’t exactly my favourite month of the year simply because it has 31 days.

Somehow, this one extra day makes the month interminable for me . Yet this July , like all months had its good days and bad. In fact the month reminded me of the spaghetti Western starring Clint Eastwood ‘The Good, The Bad and the Ugly’.

The Good

July began with a visit to my parents’ place in Pune. The wonderful weather and my father’s messy garden had a reinvigorating effect on my spirit that was feeling grey and gloomy after the celebrity suicides that brought back memories of my friend Yasmin.

Sitting in my father’s balcony I got inspired for my best blogging yet. I came up with a serial story for the Bar-A-Thon hosted by Blog-A-Rhythm. While the traffic didn’t improve, this got me many compliments which was gratifying. Sadly, I lost all these posts in a major blog transfer glitch.

While in Pune, I visited cousins who were part of my childhood – a time that always brings back happy memories.

Grandchildren : Many of my friends grumble about my lack of time spent with them but honestly, nothing can be more rewarding than having little children running around, dodgy knee and all.

Returning home, I was busy with Little Po’s third birthday. Unfortunately, Little Po always celebrates his birthday with ill health and this year was no different. But thanks to the magic of modern medicine, he was able to enjoy his party without many sniffles.

Since Wow Dinga was on holiday, Anna Shetty organised an Art worskhop at home and for 4 mornings my house was transformed into a day care. The highlight of the session was the enthusiastic pillow fight that ensued amongst the participants who were more than delighted to destroy my living room.

The end of July also brought back Daughter No. 1 and the delightful Ms Papaya for a two month holiday. I’m grateful to have my grandchildren in my life. Children are truly a joy, dodgy knee notwithstanding.

Food: Being a passionate foodie, I am grateful that I could grab a bite at two restaurants that I’ve been longing to visit . ‘All Day at the Quarter ‘ is a tiny balcony restaurant at the renovated Opera House. Two of my cousins joined me for lunch – part of my year long celebration of turning 60.

I also had a quick meal at ‘ Gajalee‘ where I wolfed down prawn curry with neer dosa. Even though  Hubby Dear was the non-participating partner at this meal, I am grateful for his company. Eating alone is definitely not fun.

But the highlight of my food experience was undoubtedly the chocolate cake that Wow Dinga and Ms Papaya helped decorate. Mistakenly, I followed the recipe for a chocolate mousse instead of the one for the ganache but that was a happy mistake that we quickly polished off.

Greening my life : My visit to Pune was relaxing and rewarding. I came back with happy memories of visits with cousins and plenty of plants for my balcony. After years of barrenness, I am slowly bringing back the green to my life.

Books: Finally I did manage to read two books this month .’Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand’ was a somewhat lukewarm read. I’m not really a fan of romance in Old Age and was a bit disturbed by this book. However, my personal prejudice aside, this was a well written book replete with British humour.

Another book that had me hooked was ‘Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine’. I would strongly recommend this book to everyone for its subtle humour and well told narrative.

Volunteering : I’ve been volunteering my time at St.Jude India ChildCare Centres for over 10 years now. The past few years my participation has been sketchy but I’m grateful that this organisation still welcomes me . This month , after years of trying to find a solution to our long standing problem of how to document the stories of the children we’ve helped,  we finally managed a break through.

The Bad :

Home front : All hasn’t been quiet on the home front this month with the household staff getting in each other’s hair as well as mine. While I am grateful to have them for doing the grunt work, it is quite a task getting people to work in peace and harmony. Sometimes I wonder if it is really worth having help at all because the time and energy I’ve spent getting their egos sorted out is quite something.

The Ugly :

Since I had to renew my blog hosting, I thought I’d change over to SiteGround. But this turned out quite ugly as I lost almost a whole month of blogging! I still have to sort out this mess but I’m grateful that my previous hosts Webhostinghub.com were co-operative enough to transfer my back up files that were on their server.

SiteGround was quite co-operative with their endless chats with me, but finally I’ve realised that this problem is mine to solve eventually.

So, I’m grateful that this month has come to an end !

August will be another 5 week month of 31 days but tomorrow is another day!

Cheers then from a wet an gloomy Mumbai. Here’s hoping it is less grey.

Sharing this post with Vidya Sury on #GratitudeCircle and Shantala on #ChattyBlogs

Ciao