THE LAST OF APRIL

Voom voom, time flies and it's almost May! Yey!  I've been busying around, but here are some of the things that happened during the last week of April (as my instagram saw it)...

Ok, this is the shittiest picture I have ever posted, no doubt about it. An iPhone really is no night time camera. So in this picture you can se an in-real-life gigantic full moon to the left, and two huge moose to the right. Or you can if you could.

I was driving home to the countryside from the studio late at night, as usual, when I saw a big moose (or actually, elk, as they are called over here) standing by the road. And they are huge. Majestic. It really is a sight, especially if they are standing still and not running away. They are rather shy, so you don't get to see them that often, although this time of the year the elks and deer move around a lot.  I stopped the car and stepped out to take a picture of the animal who had joined another moose on the field. With poor result. They just stood there a while and stared at me and I stared back and drove off and spotted a crowd of white tailed deer skipping over the road at the next turn. The following night as I was driving home from a gig, at a spot a few kilometers before I had seen the animals earlier, just before I turned off the big road up to the farm, I saw a big dead moose along the road; it had been hit by a car. They were trying to ligt  it on board a pickup. Elk-accidents are dangerous, and often fatal for the weaker part, but can be for bothm as the animals weights several hundred kilos; you don't want one trough your windshield. Those warning signs you usually see on tourist mugs and t-shirts are not just for fun.... I drive a lot and see lots of roadkill during the summer months but I've never seen a moose crash before. It was so sad to think of the beautiful animal by the road before, and now to see a similar (or, probably the same individual) dead the night after.

I finished filming the music video for Dark Country. It was cold and raining, as it usually is when filming outdoors, and I was happy from the waist-down-shots, strutting around in my summer dress plus knitted dance-wear-pull-on ballet stretch pants, knee socks and boots (and later, to make it even more stylish: rubber boots).

Filming in dark and wet woods. Phone-shot by @jamipietila.
There is some awesome behind-the-scenes footage from the shoot but that will be for another time!

Dag had a masquerade at his playschool, and he had planned to be a lion for some time now. But then he suddenly grew up to become a big boy and didn't want to be a lame lion anymore but a kick-ass red ninjago ninja. And for those who don't have kids (or are Lego fans), that's a Lego character.

And at the end of the week I received my Peak Pilates advanced matwork instructor certification!
I have had the certification for some time already, but to get the actual paper is always a final manifestation of the achievement. Yey! (I intend to continue the education with apparatus but that will have to wait for a little while now.) Pilates is the most awesome thing you can do for your body (it really is!)  so do come and try out a class, wink wink!


And today it's Vappu! Cheers!

"SON OF A BITCH, I'M SICK OF THESE DOLPHINS"

The other night I was talking about movies and reminded myself about  my love for Wes Anderson's films, in the same time realising it's been a while since I've watched any.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is one of my absolute favourite movies of all time, so full of detail that I've been able to watch it over and over again. And so are all the Anderson films, very visual, with a subtle humor that works. All the worlds and characters Anderson creates have always appealed to me and somedays you just want to get lost in them. Last night we were filming until three in the morning so today is really one of those days; my tired mind just wants to soak into a pastel coloured space where everything is specific, tidy and everyone deeply dysfunctional.

(The internet provded me with screencaps 1, 2, 3)

What is your favourite Anderson movie? I actually haven't seen them all (yet!) though; Rushmore still to go! And a new round of Zissou, of course, always.

THE BLACK SUSPENDER SKIRT

I finally had the time to sew myself a long-awaited (bought the fabric last autumn already...) new black suspender strap A-line skirt!
I made a copy of a skirt I already had purchased from ze interwebz two years back, but the quality turned out to be so bad it became pretty much unwearable after a few washes (floppy and noppy).
It was one of the easiest pieces of clothing I had so I'm relieved to now again have something quick to pull on before and after work, that can easily be styled into anything.

MONDAY IS MY SUNDAY

Monday, wohoo!

During the weekend I went over to Turku with Tinker Bell to teach our posing & posture class.
Kiki snapped this unofficial photo of the class getting ready just before everyone started posing for the actual photo.

We also hosted a pin-up fleamarket sale in our studio. There has never been so many people in there at once before (sadly for us, ehrm...). There was in fact so much fuzz that I didn't have the time to snap any picture of all the dolled up sellers and their nice stuff, neither did I get any stuff myself (that I wouldn't really need anyway so yeye!). Well, apart from a gold lurex overall. Which of course is very essential, not sure how I managed without one until now.

After that I went to film day1 of a music video. This was on stage at the theatre museum and the next location and mood will be something very different. Back to that later!
Photo by Minna Lehtinen @minnaminnanen

But today I've spent my day how most people spend their Sundays. We stayed in bed long with Dag and just took it easy. Because it's Monday and that's my day.

A day when I  can have a long late breakfast and catch up with the weekend's newspapers for example. And water all my plants.

Everybody hates Mondays. Or, not everybody, but you know- Mondays are Mondays and the thought of those are usually followed with a sigh.
Not for me however - that is most often the only day that is a day off for me; as a lot of my work occurs in the weekends. It's been like that pretty much my whole entire adult life actually, the good monday-thing: when I worked in the harbour Monday was off the weekend after the nightshift, and when we did the full 7-day morning shift week Monday was the last day before the glorious six days off. Nowadays it's usually the day I can calm down after the weekend (and wash some laundry. Plus organise my papers and bills and such - although I usually spend Mondays to think about that and won't manage to start doing it until the day after.) Or well, when you run your own business you seldom have an actual day off; I do update social media sites and stalk my email as much as usual, but I really seldom have anything scheduled and that is a bliss.

Finally, after almost a week of waiting, I  got to do a good set of pilates myself, but that does not really make for a good self-taken picture and there's already one here of feet... But more still about feet here anyways - I finally also got to open up and try out the wild-mint foot bath salt my friend and student Melody from Superfiilis gave me. She has her own little well-being centre in town.
Even though it got more splashy than calm; Dag discovered footbaths, joined and stuck his feet in and splashed around like whoah.

Then we played a Lego-game for a while, where you are supposed to build what a card tells you to. I clearly will never be scouted as a builder for Legoland but my son still stands a fair chance. (That's an old-school carriage in the picture btw. And not built by me. I had to make a toothbrush.)

Then the two of us head in to town for our workweek, me the studio and Dag for his day club/play school. And now it's Tuesday already i.e, super late and I am still awake, as usual.

2030

It just struck me the other day that we are now closer to the year 2020 than we are to 2010. Which was like just a little while ago. That also makes us closer to the year 2030 than 2000. Which is freaky.

Altough the yeear 2000 does feel like a very long time ago, when one thinks back on everything that's been in between.

(Illustrating this post is a photo from 1999 - further away than 2030 that is - that has an actual analog light leak in it. No filters here no!)

But the same goes for when you talk about years and you think "10 years ago" would be somewhere around 1996 but that's twenty years ago already. If I really start thinking about it 1996 was indeed ages ago, I was just a kid. And everyday life was very different.  From what you did to how you did it and what you had to go along (no lattes back then no!) But 2006, that was ten years ago already? No way! THAT feels very scary. But, as we talked about this with a friend the other day we started going trough things we did in '06 and some everyday life details, realising that quite many things still have changed in a decade -I didn't get my first computer before 2005 for example; I read my emails at school back then and certainly not ten times per day like now -even though it feels like it went by with the blink of an eye.

I also realised my age is now closer to 50 than 20. Which is both totally something of an of course it is or whatever , and kind of terrifying at the same time. We were talking about age yesterday with Dag; I told him the cats are now ten years old, and then, mainly just stating it to myself, I said that that makes them "pretty old already". Dag then asked "Oh, so they will die soon?" to which I replied that not quite yet, although it will eventually happen one day. To which Dag replies, with his calmest and wisest voice, the one I use when I explain things to him:
"You know mom, one day each of us shall die."
(Then he listed pretty much every person and animal he knows that will all die one day, just to prove his point.) I still remember one night when I was about five, or max. six years old, lying in bed, thinking about how much I loved Christmas. Then I started calculating that my parents were 30 years old and that meant there would only be about fifty more Christmases to spend before they would DIE. And I felt so so sad when thinking about it and started crying; 50 Christmases felt like so little and Christmas was so awesome and it would all happen in no time. My mom came into the room asking what was going on. I didn't tell her why I cried, and I have remembered it like she got a little annoyed at my late-night-whining. I was really hurt that she did not (read my mind, apparently, and) appreciate me crying over her mortality.

It is actually funny how you can remember some thoughts and insights from your childhood, but you still cannot recall how it actually felt, or how you reasoned like that, how the exact thoughts were at that time. The brain can store so much but it can't store, how would one say it, the mind itself(?) as that constantly changes as life goes by. It's not the way you can save and choose to run an older version of your  operating system...  Memories of how one thought are more like headlines-  my parents would die one day, only fifty Christmases left - or a synposis. Well not only thoughs, but whole periods of times feel like a quick synposis when thinking back on them. I wish there'd be some way to record how the mind functioned and how it really felt at a certain time. And not only for childhood, also for the teenage years, (yikes). That  might help with the teenager here at home (during which discussions I always feel so very old). Or to serve as good and painful torture some ten, twenty years later. For oneself, that is. "Did I think like that?" Well, a regular recorder would do for the torturing part, just to get to hear teenage-oneself later in life. Teenage sarcasm is certainly not that refined yet and the lines are less quick that the youngster thinks, I have noticed. "Omg did I actually say that". Sometimes wish my parents would have recorded my shit. Or well, not really. But if it would've been common practice you know. I did keep a diary that I haven't ever really opened afterwards, but one thing I remember telling my self in my teenage years was the following: Remember, when you are fourteen you realise everything. You think so much about it all and you think about everything.
And it worked; I remember thinking that, but alas, I have no idea how my mind actually worked back then and what all those things, apart from the usual teenage stuff and time and the universe and so, I actually was thinking about were. (I was always one to stay up late at night back then as well, thinking about Things.)

When time and age and how fast things go gets to me (summer is on it's way but it will be Christmas  and winter and darkness here again in no time - see, little five-year-old-me was right- and then it will be not only 2030 but 2050 and I will still have the same things on my to-do-list, you know) I just try to think about the fact that time really does not exist at all, everything just is in a constant state of RIGHT NOW and that is all there is.
Which to be honest, does not exactly help me to start sleeping earlier at night either...

WONDERFULLY CONSERVATIVE FOR WONDERFUL DRAG

One of my favourite eras to get inspired with make up from, when wanting to do something more specific, is the sixties.

Last weekend I went to (amazingly fabulous) Drag Me to Hel, this time just as a happy spectator off stage and this year not in drag.  But still felt like dressing up (or rather, down a little bit differently than the usual burlesque-drag-extravaganza night glam and went with some kind of sixties housewife instead.

"Don't you look wonderfully conservative tonight", as Taabe joyfully said.

The dress and bag are vintage and the shoes - first time this year outdoors in heels, finally - are the waterproof flocked Melissa ones.

FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW: THE LIGHT IS BACK

 Lulu enjoying the sunshine by the window.

(I drove in to work to town and saw Pekka -that's the other cat- on the field by the road a bit from home. I stopped the car and opened the window and said "Hi there!".  I'm such a cat-dork, I know.
He did answer with a long Meooow though. But that thing when you knock on the window and wave to your cats when you see them outside that means you're even more dorky does work because if they see wacing they come back in. Hah!)

I've -slowy, with baby steps - started my plant projects for the coming seasons. Re-potting and planting. Read about this "plant a tomato slice" way of growing tomatoes; let's see how it goes!

 Plant plate symmetry.

And I've bought us a small lemon tree that smells heavenly. Now we can watch it wither and die.*

*) Because that is eventually how this will go -  every fancier, expensive plant, especially the mediterranean ones,  I've ever had has died sooner or later. I am trying though, so let's cross our fingers and hope this one will make it...

CREAM CHEESE 15 MINUTE-PASTRIES WITH SUNDRIED TOMATOES AND HORSERADISH

Here's an easy-to-make salty pastry that I sometimes put together for when guests come over or to have as a quick dinner with a green salad.

You'll need ready made pastry dough (puff- or butterdough sheets), cream cheese, sundried tomates and horse radish.

The quickest version is to use horseradish Cantadou cream cheese and chopped sun dried tomatoes to get this done in less than five, but in this version I chopped up the tomatoes myself and mixed cream cheese with a handful of grated horse radish that I had in the freezer from last summer.

Cut the dough plates in half into squares and place a small spoonfull of the filling on half of the square.

Fold over and press the edges together with a fork. Press some holes on top of the folded triangle with the fork, and  glaze them with  a beaten egg or some water on top. I sprinkled on some sesame seeds as well.

Bake for about 12 minutes at 225C (or at whatever temperature the dough packing suggests), let cool a bit and munch on!