( Today has not been great. )

Tomorrow I go Christmas shopping! I have a List and a Plan, and I have confidence that there will be less people out there than past Christmases because people have been clever and bought things online in advance. Oh yes. It will be so.

Other than that, nothing new has been happening. I figured out that headache thing I was complaining about a few posts ago. Yay!

Icelandic flatmate has decided she's staying in Finland after she finishes her Master, which is also not a bad thing. (I'd maaaaaybe be a little bit happier about it if she stopped leaving beetroot smudges all over the kitchen, but in the grand scheme of things, I really have no leg to stand on when it comes to criticizing other people's cleaning habits.) The apartment has dropped to the usual 16 C indoors, as it does every winter. Ah, student housing. It will go up a little in January, I think, once there's more people in the apartment again, but for right now it's... actually a little bit cozy. I have a legitimate reason to drink a lot of tea, and walk around wrapped in a blanket.

Finally, I want to make a Christmas voice post here - but the quality of my recording equipment is very, very bad and there's a weird background noise to it. I can't quite decide if it would be worth it to do it anyway. Is it worth it?

Say. 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.