House shifting and related realisations

Last month, we decided to move to our apartment that we bought around five years back. My husband and in-laws have been living in this particular rented-house for the past thirty years. I must say that this area which is closer to commercial street is not only convenient but a lot safe too as I have never come across any situation of eve-teasing or a non-sense-street-guy comment (Thankful, if people don't find me worth that!).
When we saw the so-called modular kitchen which was great looking in this apartment, all our materialistic-show-off dreams came true. After five-years of usage by a couple of tenants, all the sliders are rusted. Water seeped from near the sink has rottened the wood which is emanating a funny smell and it is a house of cockroaches of all types, shapes, sizes and other insects. The top cabinets are also the least usable. So with the dreams shattered, Shiv and I decided to dump this existing one to a normal slab kitchen with better top-cabinets. The work is going on and hopefully we should be able to shift by this month-end. All this is keeping me on my toes all the time. With some research, running around and contacts, we have picked up the necessary things and have narrowed down on shops from where we will buy the rest of things at the best prices.

Meanwhile, I got a change of team and profile, which I wanted to be in :). Ganesh is walking full-time (like a drunkard though!) and doesn't want to crawl at all. He has realised a new found independence as both his hands are free and wants to "touch" everything at a higher level. Things are slowly moving upwards now! He likes to play in water and sand and resists by anger-crying if we take him off before he is done! He has graduated from a mono-syllable blabbering to multi-syllable one. He would really "talk" with a very serious expression and stresses on some word that he has to hold his breath. All-in-all he is more interactive and more fun. Total time-pass.

During all this chaos, I just realized that I have mellowed down to a level that I am not getting attracted to the hi-fi things that I used to and had dreamt of for my own house! Infact, I am preferring a single-color or very mild color combination in case of multi-colored walls and the cheapest decorative lamp-shades for the CFL lights, that too just because they are there. Otherwise, I would have avoided them. I remember when my father was constructing his house in Kerala a couple of years back, me and my sister had told so-many tings: "Appa, do this". "Appa, do that". When none of these were applied, we requested him, later begged and even emotionally-blackmailed him atleast not to have a show-case, as this is old fashioned. We suggested to leave that area empty and have a white paint as background and concealed LED lights on top which will highlight a BIG painting. That also was literally ignored and a show-case was setup and both of us were cribbing BIG-TIME as to how he can do that to us. When Ganesh was two-three month old baby, he would continously look at the colorful things set-up at the large show-case. My mother while talking to him would sarcastically comment on us pretending to be reading out Ganesh's mind, on how much he likes the show-case that his grandfather has made. She would also say that, this was made specially for this baby. Having said that, I am not responsible for any damages done by Ganesh, if he really wants to explore things in the glass shelves when we go there next!