Houkutuksia

Lieneekö onni vai epä-, että työpaikkani naapurissa sijaitsee pieni kahvilakonditoria. Siellä leipurit pyöräyttävät joka päivä tuoretta pullaa, jonka kanelinen tuoksu leijailee juuri sopivasti silityspöydän ääressä olevaan nenään (ainakin kuumina päivinä, jolloin ovea pidetään auki). Paljon ei ole tuoksuja, jotka voittaisivat vertailussa vastapaistetun nisun! Kertaakaan en ole vielä haksahtanut naapurin houkutuksiin, mutta viimeisenä työpäivänä aion.

Parvekepenkin suojissa varttuneet puluvauvat alkoivat eilen lentokoulun. Emo ei paljoa lapsiaan säästellyt, vaan tökki surutta nokittaen kaiteelta alas siipiään arastelevan aloittelijan. Kaipa tuo hengissä selvisi, kun pesässä tänään nököttää yhä kaksi lintua. Yksi tunti ei siis näemmä riitä, ja ainoa seuraus lentokoulusta onkin se, että nyt parvekkeella on kakkaa joka puolella. Ennen sitä oli vain pesässä. Siivota ei kuitenkaan saa, ennen kuin lapset ovat lentäneet pesästä ihan oikeasti! Siinäpä houkutus vastustettavaksi.

Sandwiches in the church park

Wow, reading back I can trace a hint of melancholy in my Spring. I have managed to pass the bend in the road and left the moroseness behind me, and even though I will have to put up with a month and a half at the dry cleaner's, I believe I will survive it because I won't have to work weekends.

I had mozzarella-and-pesto sandwiches and coffee in the church park today with miss P. There was an accordeon player belting out summery tunes and children running up and down the grassy slopes. Lovely! And just as we got up and went to buy ice cream for dessert it started raining so we went in. (The weather's been very unpredictable today. Quite like England.)

Around the bend

Anne Shirley thinks there is something wonderful waiting for her just around a bend in the road. I'm thinking along the same lines, although I'm fairly certain Anne is more positive in her expectations than I am. What if this summer is going to be the most wonderful I've ever had?

I moved to a new flat over the weekend, and that marked a definite up-turn in my mood. Not only was the whole moving-process nerve-wrecking, but there is so much more air and light in the new flat that I can't help feeling lighter myself! Also we've been blessed with so much sun lately that I feel like I've been soaking in it.

Rainy days and Mondays

They always do get me down. My summer job situation, which I thought was quite good two days ago, suffered inflation and is now as uncertain as ever, and this piece of bad news came with horrible, wet weather. (Well, we did glimpse the sun just before its setting, so we might get more lucky tomorrow as far as the weather's concerned.) I feel melancholy and rather hopeless, and it seems that I will be destitute soon and forced to throw my hands up.

On the positive note-- No, I can't think of anything positive just now. I must be downcast for a while.

Giving up coffee, day 19

Yesterday I was possibly most sorely tempted by coffee. My sister had her birthday on Friday, and yesterday we had some delicious chocolate cake in her honour. You know, the best coffee is always had with some chocolate cake... But I defeated the temptation!

Soon we're going to go and collect the keys to our new flat. I'm excited! I'm so looking forward to moving. Last night the Neighbours did their best to entertain us with a piece of family-fighting (again).

Skiing

The long-awaited, fondly thought-of mid-term break began last Saturday. I got up early, swallowed some oatmeal porridge, and bolted into the silent, snowy woods for a ski.



I hadn't been on skis for years, so at first I felt strange and unsteady. I was a bit disappointed in the absence of sunlight, but perhaps it was just as well: if it had been sunny, I probably would have gone snowblind in fifteen minutes.



I used to love skiing downhill, gathering speed and feeling the wind on my face. But, as I said, it had been a long time since I was last on skis...



... and as a result, I fell over twice. First time intentionally, because the speed was more than I had bargained for, second time un-, because...well, I think I simply lost faith and gave up. It was marvellous, though, and there was enough snow to guarantee a soft landing.



I had read on the news that a lone bear had woken up early and gone roaming about the woods. I didn't run into it, but what I did run into was a solitary hut, in the middle of nowhere... The abode of a mad recluse?



However, no recluse, mad or otherwise, intercepted me en route, and I made it back to my parents' house - the minute the sun showed its brilliant face. Our dog, Pella, was basking in the light and warmth, clearly not making much of darting around the forest on two wooden boards.



I left my skies out in the garden and went inside, rosy-cheeked and happy, to enjoy a large cup of hot chocolate. A morning well spent!

Winter sunlight

I still catch myself wondering at times: is this really true? Can we be blessed with such a glorious winter after the most wet and dismal autumn I can remember? And I look outside, pinch myself, and revel in the soft, white sight. It really is true!

Last Sunday we (my sister and I) went to enjoy the bounteuous sunlight sent to us from the high heavens - and beautiful it was!

Spring is in the air

We've been treated to a dazzling amount of light today. The sky seems so high above, the air is cool and clear, and the (apparently) ever-lasting snow cover sparkles under the rays of the sun. On a day like this, one should go out to nature and laugh out loud in reckless joy of living!

To celebrate Spring I organized the window sill anew...



...bought a yellow primrose...



...and put the loveliest cook-book in the world on display (Christmas gift from miss P).



(I did this quite some time ago, but it was to honour Spring. I'd just forgot about the pictures.)

Giving up coffee, day 3

Still going strong. I thought I'd take up Rooibos.

Giving up coffee, day 1

Tomorrow is the official beginning of Lent. My big sacrifice is to give up coffee, my solace in a life crowded with deadlines and continuos assessment, and today I began. So far, things are spiffy (as P.G. Wodehouse might say), and no withdrawal headache is mine. Hooray!

The reasons I'm giving up coffee are numerous, but among the most important are

1) that I can prove myself I'm able to do it

2) that coffee is something it's really hard for me to give up, so doing it would count as a sacrifice - otherwise it wouldn't really be Lent

3) that I know, deep down, that coffee is bad for you, so de-toxicating my system every once in a while is not such a bad thing.

Demonstrating

Today I took part in the first real demonstration of my life. University students in Tampere and Helsinki displayed their opinion on a certain legislative proposal of the Ministry of Education in Finland: this proposal, if realised, would severely damage the autonomy of universities and introduce an 'experimental tuition fee' for students coming in outside EU - among other things.



I hope our voice will be heard, all the way in Helsinki.

Scatterbrain

At times I feel like there's too much going on in my head and that I need a break from it all (anybody interested in swapping heads?). It's difficult to keep track of my to-do list (not that it exists in any concrete way), and maybe that's why there seems always to be so much I should be working on. Time is very stealthy. It pretends to be ample, and then suddenly it vanishes into thin air and leaves you unprepared and hopelessly late.

Tomorrow I'm going to write down everything I have to do in way of studying. See if I won't.

Self-marketing

The most dreaded time of the year is here. The leisurable days of autumn are gone and one must turn one's look towards the future: where to find employment for the coming summer? Applying for a summer job is probably the worst thing I know, and that's why I put it off - hopefully not until it's too late, though...

This year I have decided to treat myself to a proper holiday, instead of working myself to near exhaustion like last summer. There's less money involved, of course, but I'd rather scrimp and save than be destroyed (even if that means I have to skip the cottage in the Isle of Wight).

Me, driven to madness by job applications. (This is the picture I plan to enclose to emphasize the fact that I really do need work.)

Shoes

I like shoes. A friend of mine once said that to her, Spring arrives with the clickety-clack of high heels on pavement - and much as I like winter, I'm also eagerly waiting for the opportunity to put on my spring shoes!

Chivalry

Today I was walking down a street which in places was covered in ice and very slippery. So, at one point I slipped and fell over, and a passer-by kindly stopped to offer his help. My first instinct was to refuse the offered hand. Of course I didn't need help! I hadn't hurt myself, and there was a railing I could hold on to while getting up. So, kindly but firmly I said no thanks, I'll manage. I regretted it as soon as I had let the words out of my mouth. To be sure, I was capable of getting up on my own, but would it have degraded me if I had leaned on some stranger's hand instead of the railing? I would have got up just as quickly, and he would have had reason to feel good about himself after helping out a damsel in distress, as it were. Maybe this was my chance for a life-long romance, too, and I had bolloxed it up!

I think we Finnish women are too used to the idea that we can get along on our own, without any special treatment. Old-fashioned chivalry is quite obsolete here. When I lived in Bulgaria for a while, it was really hard for me to get used to having doors opened for me and my coat helped on me. The point is, it doesn't make you feel as if you weren't able to do something yourself; rather it makes you feel very feminine, which is really nice! Maybe I have to teach myself to be a little less independent.

Pussycats

Our cat Nekku is 95 % hair and 5 % other substances. She is the cuddliest cat I know, and she loves sitting in people's laps and purring. What I love most about her, is the total and unconditional trust she feels for whoever it is that's holding her: she doesn't hesitate to uncover her underbelly (which grows curly hair, by the way) and is calmly certain that whichever way she turns, she will be held on to. And she always is.

Nekku is our cat by her own choice: when we went to get a kitten at our neighbour's farm, she walked right into my sister's lap and made herself comfortable. How could such confidence be resisted?


This little pussy I got from my sister as a Christmas present. He's stuffed with oat grains and can be put in the oven or the freezer to warm or cool and then applied to a sore or something. Well, that's what he's meant for. But I haven't had the heart to do it! I prefer keeping him for company on my bedside table.

Winter woods

Now we have it - snow, I mean. Lots and lots of snow! I wanted to embrace the snow and tell it how much I had missed it, but instead I rolled around in it, made a snow angel out of it, and slid down the slope of a hill on it. It's such a beautiful thing, snow.





And I love this blue moment in the late afternoon - sininen hetki, as we call it (although, thanks to Fazer, nowadays it mostly makes people think about chocolate).


I'm romantically thinking this is a fox's trail, but it might be our dog, Pella. Although she would fit in the picture, being a winter-friend like myself.

Diamonds and hearts

I was at work today, after a looong break, so I was a bit apprehensive about how everything would work out: would I still know how to use the dry cleaning machine, would I remember to turn on the water tabs, would I possess the patience to be friendly to stupid customers? Well, as it turned out, these were rather useless worries, as I didn't have to operate the dry cleaning machine at all, and no stupid customers appeared (in fact, hardly any customers appeared). And the water tabs I turned on first thing in the morning.

As for how the header comes into this entry, there wasn't much to do at work so I spent a lot of time playing FreeCell. I have this - oddity - that whenever I play FreeCell or Patience or some such game, I have to arrange the cards by suits so that spades and hearts go together, clubs and diamonds together. And when you have to reorder the deck by suit and rank, starting from the aces, I have a special order for those, too: hearts first, then spades, diamonds, and clubs. It's really annoying when I can't do this, and sometimes I lose because of this principle. But what can I do?

Clickety

What I don't understand is, why do female agents wear high heels when they know that most probably they will have to chase some perpetrator into a dark, deserted car park. First of all, it's very risky to run in high heels: you might very easily twist your ankle. Second of all, it makes a lot of noise, and you want to be quiet and not catch the perpetrator's attention before your own agent Mulder gets there. Third of all, you might inadvertently step onto some alien body fluid that will corrode your newly-bought suede court shoes into a state of complete hole-ness. Maybe this is something they should bring up in the Federal Agent High School.

Searching

I need to rediscover my self-esteem. Right now it has gone missing, leaving me in a state of discombobulation (there, Mama K, I did use your word!). A person who cannot compile a timetable is not clever enough to be a university student!

I have done nothing useful today, but now I'm going to take on that pile of important papers and file it properly. Before I watch another episode of The X-files.

Settling down

Today I returned home from a nearly three-week holiday in the country. Three of my pot plants had taken heavy damage from lack of water; I will see if I can save them! Otherwise everything was fine in the flat, it was tidier than usual and I blessed myself for having been conscientious enough to do the dishes before leaving.

Some lovely things about my holiday:

- sitting in front of the fireplace with chocolate

- watching the stars in the frosty night sky

- playing boardgames with friends

- listening to our cat purring

- reading a good book

- receiving so many wonderful presents

- watching dvds together

- doing nothing at all

I especially liked the last entry. Alas, now I have to start doing something - but not before tomorrow. Today is still holiday.

Stars

After the rains in the first half of December, we were treated to an unexpectedly cold and frosty second half. Christmas Eve was a wonderful day, with clear skies and a fantastic trick of light my father called 'double suns': three balls of radiant light side by side in the sky. I have missed the light so much that it's been like an early Spring to go for a walk in relatively bright sunlight - albeit the day lasts only for a few hours.

The other day I went for a night time stroll - it was maybe 10pm - to catch a glimpse of the New Year Eve's fireworks. I saw some of those, but what really took my breath away were the stars: the gloriously vast, delicate, and brilliant lacework of the high heavens... (I don't know anything about stars or constellations - the only one I recognise is the Great Bear that we call Otava - but they carry an intrinsic sense of mystery which never fails to fascinate me. I hope that some day I will have the chance to see the starlit sky spanning above the wide open spaces in the Great Plains - just like in films!)