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!)