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Dec. 3rd, 2011 01:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unikorentoSay. Who wants a Christmas/winter card? Drop me a PM if you do. Yay for December! \o/
I'm back home in the countryside again.
During the past few months, parents started cleaning out and renovating the little cottage by the house. When my grandparents were still alive and well, they used to live in the main house that my parents now occupy, and so me and my siblings more or less grew up in that cottage. It's been a fixer upper for as long as I remember, so I hadn't taken either parent very seriously when they've been talking about getting it cleaned out.
As it turns out, I should have. It looks amazing now.
We've filled about three more bookshelves in the main house with books mom found in the cottage, along with several boxes of our old toys and - BEST OF ALL! - almost all our old children's books. For a children's lit geek, this was striking gold. I wish I could somehow post some of them here. They are fantastic! We have Elsa Beskow books, and Mauri Kunnas books, and they're so pretty and they bring back so many memories.
And then there were pictures. We already found a suitcase a while back, but mom came across a whole new box. After flipping through them for two hours or so, I can conclude that
a) I did not like wearing clothes as a kid, and my parents were way too bohemian to argue the point.
b) brother was an ugly baby! But a beautiful child.
c) my parents should have hid their 70's pictures. O.o They partied, like, a lot.
d) There is an endless supply of pictures of brother, aged 5-7 holding me, aged 0-2. Mom says I was his whole world back then, and that he was never jealous. The photos are so goddamned sweet. It's like having concrete evidence that I can wave under the nose of whatever random insecurities I have and go look here, bitch, you are loved!
e) My 12-year-old self was right to have body issues. ._. I was in no way a joy to look at as a pre-teen. Ugh.
Two of my cousins are coming over tomorrow, and we're going to hang around and catch up and do nothing except sauna and relax. After, sister and me will go pick up cancer cousin's(*) kids, and we'll make gingerbread. I haven't seen them in over a month, and it'll be great to see them again. (It sort of warms my heart that Sumu, the younger one, has been telling everyone for a week already that he's going to come to our house this weekend. "Sitten me leivotaan Jutan kanssa pipareita!" I'm not sure if I need anything else from life, now that I'm considered cool by the standards of a three-year-old.)
(*)I know that's a horrible thing to call him, but I honestly don't know what else to go with. >.< I have like 30 cousins, I doubt there's any point using their names or initials.
I'm back home in the countryside again.
During the past few months, parents started cleaning out and renovating the little cottage by the house. When my grandparents were still alive and well, they used to live in the main house that my parents now occupy, and so me and my siblings more or less grew up in that cottage. It's been a fixer upper for as long as I remember, so I hadn't taken either parent very seriously when they've been talking about getting it cleaned out.
As it turns out, I should have. It looks amazing now.
We've filled about three more bookshelves in the main house with books mom found in the cottage, along with several boxes of our old toys and - BEST OF ALL! - almost all our old children's books. For a children's lit geek, this was striking gold. I wish I could somehow post some of them here. They are fantastic! We have Elsa Beskow books, and Mauri Kunnas books, and they're so pretty and they bring back so many memories.
And then there were pictures. We already found a suitcase a while back, but mom came across a whole new box. After flipping through them for two hours or so, I can conclude that
a) I did not like wearing clothes as a kid, and my parents were way too bohemian to argue the point.
b) brother was an ugly baby! But a beautiful child.
c) my parents should have hid their 70's pictures. O.o They partied, like, a lot.
d) There is an endless supply of pictures of brother, aged 5-7 holding me, aged 0-2. Mom says I was his whole world back then, and that he was never jealous. The photos are so goddamned sweet. It's like having concrete evidence that I can wave under the nose of whatever random insecurities I have and go look here, bitch, you are loved!
e) My 12-year-old self was right to have body issues. ._. I was in no way a joy to look at as a pre-teen. Ugh.
Two of my cousins are coming over tomorrow, and we're going to hang around and catch up and do nothing except sauna and relax. After, sister and me will go pick up cancer cousin's(*) kids, and we'll make gingerbread. I haven't seen them in over a month, and it'll be great to see them again. (It sort of warms my heart that Sumu, the younger one, has been telling everyone for a week already that he's going to come to our house this weekend. "Sitten me leivotaan Jutan kanssa pipareita!" I'm not sure if I need anything else from life, now that I'm considered cool by the standards of a three-year-old.)
(*)I know that's a horrible thing to call him, but I honestly don't know what else to go with. >.< I have like 30 cousins, I doubt there's any point using their names or initials.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-03 01:28 am (UTC)Also, I don't think most kids liked wearing clothes. I know I didn't XD
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Date: 2011-12-03 01:09 pm (UTC)Also, I don't think most kids liked wearing clothes. I know I didn't XD
XD Well, I guess that makes me feel a little bit less like a freak. I wasn't sure if I was happy I grew up in the middle of the forest and my parents just let me do my thing, or if I should be annoyed that no one bothered to try an civilize me :P
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Date: 2011-12-03 10:22 pm (UTC)Hahaha, I think you should be happy you grew up in the middle of the forest! After all, the "more civilized" folk let me run around in my birthday suit so I guess we're not that much different. Then again, this was a small town about 8 hours away from any major cities, and outside the city limits was nothing but farmland...
OH BY THE WAY YOU SHOULD COME DOWN SOUTH WHILE YOU'RE HERE FOR A MONTH. DOOOOOO IT!! Also, may I solicit some help with my French homework? I have some stuff written down that I'm not sure is grammatically correct >_>
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Date: 2011-12-03 10:48 pm (UTC)South has very much been a topic of discussion! I want to see alligators, man! And I want to feel the heat! And.. and.. FREAKING DISNEYLAND. We're having a hard time getting a handle on what the distances are like. You can drive through Finland in just a couple of days >.< Google maps tells us we have plenty of time in three weeks, but the thing about road tripping is that you never know how fast you're going to move before you're actually on the road. We might find ourselves stopping at every roadside attraction and minor town we come across. We don't know! (This one trip, we drove from Stockholm to Paris in more or less a day, but then got stuck for two weeks just circling around, and never made it to even half the places we'd planned, before we had to turn back. Epic bad planning, but Normandie and Bretagne are amazing.)
I'll be glad to help with French :) But you know I'm not that good at it, right? There's a very good chance I won't be able to correct everything correctly. But I can promise to do my best.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-03 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-03 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-05 03:38 pm (UTC)That's so sweet about your brother. :) I'm the oldest kid, so I'm the one that shows up in pictures holding my younger siblings. I can remember going to the hospital both times my younger siblings were born, and holding them when they were only hours old. It's some of my earliest memories. With all that's been going on lately, maybe I need to remember them so young, and remember the awe of realizing I was a big sister.
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Date: 2011-12-11 01:03 pm (UTC)I remember going to visit my newborn baby sister as well! It's a sort of peculiar memory. I was about four, and the thing I was most focused on was that while mom was washing the baby, I could see her bellybutton - which of course didn't look much like a bellybutton at that point, but the wrinkled leftover of the umbilical cord. I kept trying to explain to everyone that they'd gotten it all wrong. The baby wasn't a girl, it was a boy who had weird boy parts in the wrong place. XD The joy of having a new baby was slightly over shadowed by this worry, but I got with the program a little bit later when the baby was wrapped up and I got to hold her. Apparently the fact that she got swathed in pink made it okay that I thought she was secretly a boy.