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?