MY SON, THE TATTOO ARTIST

It does not take much longer than a hair wash for your child to decorate himself throughly.
And when your own canvas is not enough anymore you will want to continue onto the next one - Dag thus gave me a foot tattoo that he got a little eager with and extended onto my leg.

I noticed the kid had managed to "tattoo" himself on the neck as well. Rather impressive, I'd say.

So much concentration.

So now I have a leg full of ninjas.

And Dag has them on his arms and chest as well. Plus in the face.
Time to pour up a bath I think.

OUT IN THE GREEN

The other night when I couldn't sleep I did something I haven't done in almost a year I think: I browsed a couple of the blogs I used to read. I've missed reading blogs.  And both of them were just the same as they've always been, with similar photos and happenings and themes. Which made me laugh a bit at the fact that it's just the same over here as well. So now I'll do yet another post about me having a day off and thus finally get to attend things in my garden. But you know what they say, few things are as important...

We had lunch with Dag on the porch. Fresh tomato-filled pasta with herbs from my garden.
In the background you can see my tomato plants, which I planted from slices earlier this year. They've grown so well!

Here are the herbs "in action". As I suppose their action is growing.
This year I didn't grown them myself though as I was too late, so I bought them ready and planted.
Dag loves to water plants. He also loves to go on excursions and "secret discovery expeditions", which I once used to get him along on a walk and that he now wants to go out on all the time. But it can be turned into making plain things interesting: watering the plants turned into one task we had to do on our secret mission. Well, the kid actually loves to water plants. But it works well with other tasks.

 Dag equipped me with weapons, in case we ran into any bad guys.
(Also note my haute floppy pink home-wear shorts. Or un-note them. Not very picture worthy in any more vivid angles.)

 The cats serve as panthers.

The first thing we saw on our investigating excursion was that the wild strawberries are ready! THey are THE absolute taste of summer.

Noticed it will be a good cherry-year! Wohoo!
Last year we did not get any berries; I am not even sure the trees bloomed then.

And then we ended our mission by harvesting the rhubarb. Pie and jam coming up!


And I'll be bringing some (= a lot) of that pie out with me to the archipelago; heading out there for those classic three days of summer, family, food and wine (in moderate doses only folks!) tomorrow. Happy midsummer!

TWENTIETH OF JUNE

Dag turned four (!!) and we had a big birthday party last Saturday.
...Of which I didn't take any photos but afterwards, as I had my hands full. (It feels like that pretty much all of the time nowadays, too busy to take out the camera to document things, or to even bring it along. Having that said, I do have a big bunch of pictures intended for posts that have never made it that far and most likely never will either...)


I did manage to take one during the day even though I missed the candle blowing with a few seconds!

But here's the little mister instead opening up his birthday present on the actual day (Monday; yesterday). He has a total ninja-phaze going on and got these soft ninja throwing stars that he was very exited to get.

Dag was born on the lightest and thus also longest day of the year; summer solstice, and quite suitable the name 'Dag' means "day"in all Scandinavian languages. We had decided on the name before already, but he sure came out on the right day!

Four years ago he was just a little bundle in my lap and now he is throwing ninja stars (and even doing so in English, because youtube and Lego Ninjago). Although that does feel like FOREVER ago already. The newborn phase; the first months, were so weird and kind of hard to remember by now.

(The blurry photo is from the hospital just moments after he was born, before he (and I) was washed up. I remember being totally beat, obviously, but still mumbling to Eddi to "change the ISO settings damn it they photos will be crap otherwise".)

But everything after the acute baby-phase feels like on long year only. When Dag turned two and we had pancakes? What, last summer, no? Two years ago!? NOW That's crazy.

On a sidenote, as I mentioned I have been going trough laptop hell (rather craptop or lapcrap. Not bitter at all.) and while sorting out some files I came across this folder of short texts I'd write every now and then back in the days, often late at night.
One was about staying out on the balcony of my building with a smoothie and a cigarette (I was always about balancing things up...) at 4am (I've always been a bad sleeper as well) looking at the light summer night sky. It said I had been listening to Röyksopp. There was a man on the opposite side of the street bending over the flower bed along the house wall. It was a nice flower bed with lots of orange flowers; I think they were poppies. The petals were spread out on the sidewalk underneath him like a orange carpet. First I thought he was about to pick some flowers, or collect petals, but then I saw he had a knife and was just smashing them, flower by flower. Why would he do that.ö I was thinking that I should yell at him to stop, but then someone came walking along the street and he put the knife in his pocket and walked away. A swallow flew by and I went inside. Eleven years ago, but I remember that strange incident well; it was dated June 20, 2005.  That year it was also a Monday, like yesterday.

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...

SEWING FOR TWO

Sometimes I manage to surprise even myself with the amount of things I am able to get done at the same time. Or, in some (most) cases; the amount of things I manage to do when postponing something else that I actually should be doing.

So because organising my paperwork for my bookkeeper brings out the creative need in me instead, I sew a slipover for Dag -

A slipover pretty much the only thing I can come up with to sew him "just like that" as he is not a little girl I can sew dresses for  -he could have worn those kind of mini muumu-style baby/toddler dresses when he was smaller if I'd made him but I think he's beginning to be to old for such. So slipovers it shall be!

I made this for winter out of a warm stretchy soft fabric. Might try to give a pair of (simple) pants for him a go too!

As I was on it I also sew myself a skirt! I always had this cute-and-stupid idea of making matching mom-girl dresses if I had a girl but I can do it like this instead!


It is something of a 1/4-circle skirt -normally I always measure and do the circle-skirt maths, but because I was kind of in a hurry (=wanted to wear it straight away) and since the fabric is very stretchy and easy, I just measured it on me from one corner; how much I needed to get it to cover my behind. Then I sat down and cut the quarter of a circle straight on the fabric. I sew it together in the back and added a two small darts in the front and two in the back for a slimmer fit, and then attached a thick waistband afterwards.


I also added suspenders.


The suspenders can be attached or removed with small hooks for variation.


And now we are adorably silly and matching!

The fabric is from Eurokangas and my knit top is from KingLouie, shoes Frollein von Sofa. I've worn them all Christmas whenever we went somewhere.

BY HIMSELF

Dag has for some time been approaching, and now definitely reached the age that most parents recognise; when he needs to try and do absolutely everything himself.

It is heartbreakingly adorable but can also be highly annoying at the same time, in those moments when you are in a hurry or really need to get things done.

Having two bigger (half-)brothers that are a lot older than him of course also pushes it, because he wants to do everything the same way. Plus the huge need to HELP MOMMY.

Dag wants to use a knife while eating. He has been eating with a big fork a long the time since he does not want to be the only one with a spoon in the table and baby cuttleries is hard to hand to him when the whole family is dining. THE BIG ONE. (I can then have the tiny fork.) But he's quite skilful around the kitchen already so he can handle a lot. (He actually managed to peel some clementines rather well the other day. And once he had done one he wouldn’t stop. TO MOMMY he says and pushes a whole one , warm and rather well worked-on, inside my mouth so he can go on peeling a new one for himself.)

And then he's cleaning the table. When I was washing walls and doors the other day it wasn’t as successful as the floors were very wet after him “helping out”.

And when we go grocery shopping he has to, really has to, put everything in his little cart himself. The whole world will fall apart if I am the one to put it down or even. god forbid, put it in my cart.
Well as a parent you develop lots of ways to innocently trick your child, and so I have developed a system for secretly moving some items into my cart as we shop along. Altough sometimes he outsmartens me too, as surprising and random things might show up at the cashier.

But shopping - he has a lion-cap that he shopped himself! ("The Lion Cap" has to be said with a rrrroaring sound when you say LION.) Sort of. We were at the mall doing some errands when Dag showed me he wanted to visit this one accessory shop. Um, OK. Then and went right to one shelf an pointed at the lion cap and said THAT ONE. I was not raised as a child that got everything I pointed at, and so will Dag be,  but in this case I had to give him the hat that he surprisingly enough must have spotted earlier and remembered!

As it was father’s day yesterday (over here) I will end this post with a pic of me and my father thirty years ago. Like Dag (or, Gad as he says)  in a mini dirndl!

OCTOBER; 33, THE EIGHT YEAR AND THE SECOND ONE

Arrived home after a fabulous and work-filled weekend in Turku (of which you can see an ultra quick  fun time-lapse vide of on vimeo, by Tuomas) just in time to catch all the lovely colours of autumn - last year I missed it, as the leaves fell of quickly, and I was in Stockholm performing during those short days of excessive colour.

Dag and I had to go out on a mission immediately as some of the lams had decided the grass was greener on the other side of the fence rather literally, and for some reason also on the road. So we chased them back much to Dag's excitement. 

He is wearing a Mickey Mouse-coat that both me and my sisters have worn when we were kids, that we got from our cousins who were a few years older than us. There was one in about every size and this is the first one. Dag finds it very fancy.

Lambs trying to camouflage themselves.

Last weekend, on Saturday, it was also my 33th birthday. I rarely celebrate mine; last time was when K and I threw our very fabulous True Blood feast when we turned 30. Usually I have been at work on my birthdays as a grown up, first in the harbour (where one tended to spend the whole day as shifts are long), now on stage. This year was no different!

As those of you who have hanged around here for a longer time know, my blog also gets a year older along with me - so we are entering our eight year here now. That is a long time I tell you!
If someone ever wondered about the rather imbecile but catchy name of my blog it has been explained here on a few occasions back in the days but we can do it one more time; the idea of a blog was born way before it actuallystarted, when blogging looked a bit different that now. I had just found fashion blogs that consisted of outfits and outfits only, and I found them both inspiring and a bit silly at the same time. So The Freelancer's Fashion Blog was an ironic idea -  I have always had a big wardrobe, but from time to time (a lot like now) I haven't really been able to use it properly. Back then in 2006 and -07, when thinking about blogging, I had finished my studies and worked with freelance graphic design as well as in the harbour. So I was basically working most of the time (like now, but in a different matter) and felt that I mainly was wearing black tights or leggings (or underwear) and a black t-shirt or a top, when in front of my computer or under my workwear. What people who work from home often look like... And I thought about how that would make it in a fashion blog, different versions of something that looks just the same. Well, that blog never happened. When my blog then started it was all about drawithe outfits though and staying incognito -it took until March the next year until I posted a photo of myself - and as with most blogs this one slowly developed into something more personal.

This was that very first photo, from many years back.

Speaking of outfits, there is of course a reason why I have been walking around mainly in stretchy wear and sneaky yoga pants, other than the one that I am always running from workouts to rehearsals and classes nowadays- I got pregnant again! And unlike the pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage this summer, when I had felt strangely well when I thought back on it, I this time felt bad and swollen,  just like I had with Dag, feeling like I was hungover for two months. Until week seven was over I was a bit scared every time I went to the toilet that I would see blood, and was reliefed when I passed the weeks of the previous miscarriage. I had my first prenatal appointment and had all future ultras and appointments set now, as is the custom. But, even though I am lucky enough to get pregnant easily - so far always on the first try, I am apparently not as lucky after that. Last Friday, the day before my 33rd birthday, I had an ultra sound and found out I had had a so called missed abortion; the foetus had died a few weeks earlier. Well, I could almost see it right away - the baby in the monitor looked too small for it's weeks, although I kept thinking that perhaps they always grow miraculously just the week after this. But I moved my face from the screen to the doctor's face and saw he looked serious and then he told me he could not see a heart beat. As the first miscarriage came rather slowly I had time to let it sink in and it was an event that made me disappointed and frustrated, but this was totally different. I couldn't imagine it could go wrong a second time because everything had felt so normal!  Not now, not this one! I was rather shocked. Not just because of the loss of the  baby-to-be, but because of how much we already had planned with everything else around the fact we would have a baby in April; jobs, life, arrangements. It's because I was looking at maternity dresses onine already. I shouldn't have! Everything had been just right, damnit! But it wasn't.

I had a lot of things to take care of during that day, which was awful to go trough, and I skipped out on some because I was so tired and just wanted to lie in bed. My body still felt pregnant, swollen and nauseous, and I was distressed over the fact that it was not over totally yet, but I would still have to abort it during the week to come. The thought of the pain that might bring, and all the arrangements around that felt the worst for the moment. I would have to call lots of places and re-arrange meetings and cancel classes and tell them I had the flue or something because you don't tell people you lost a pregnancy. You could, but you don't, because they will get uncomfortable. Too much info, stick to the flue.

As Scandinavia is ruled by the Jante -law (the 'don't think you're any special'-one, which in cases like this translates to: don't think your pain is any worse than anyone else's), and as I've grown up in a society that looks down on self-pity (well, don't they all?) and go by the mentality that one should shut the fuck up and quit whining, I thought it was best to do so. And as everyone keeps telling you: it is very common and it happens a lot. So it is. I had a lot to do during the weekend too; had to perform and hold a workshop and first the thought of all that felt rather horrifying. But it actually helped to be busy and around people and kept my mind off the fact there was a little dead beginning of a human lying inside of me. On Monday I went to the hospital and got the pills to empty the womb and so today this second one was over with less physical pain than I had expected. (For the record, for those who might read this in a similar situation: they gave me Cytotec, which is what they use over here pretty much as the only option, a drug I have had once before -I presume- many years ago for a similar reason and that was a very painful experience. Well at least I was prepared for what the beginning of labour would feel like when the day that came. The almighty internet is also full of mainly horror stories on said drug, as you see I of course googled a lot waiting in horror for it to kick in, but let it be said here for those who have an interest in this: This time I was stocked up with strong painkillers and it was not all that bad, by evening the medicine had done it's job. So it worked for me.)

As I wrote about the first miscarriage I thought it would be strange not to mention this second one. And, as I said the last time, when you have some sort of situation going on, you google all you can find about it, and then you google some more. (I always search in three languages to get as much out of it as possible). You want to and need to read about it. There is always someone out there who feels better reading about things like this, because of how one can relate, even though this story here is not one of those miracle stories where there was still a living twin inside!  (which will only give you false hope, because you know, there seldom is).

But it is still a bit odd, how we are not really supposed to mention miscarriage, and are not supposed to feel bad about it either. It is something of a taboo. With a friend who was, and luckily still is, as many weeks pregnant as I was, we talked about how you usually feel your worst and weirdest in the beginning of pregnancy but you are not supposed to talk about it because things can go wrong , and then if they do go wrong and you feel terrible you can't talk about it either because no one knew about it and you know, it does happen all the time.

So, no use of dwelling on things one can not change! I have a lot of work and projects that I will concentrate on the rest of this year, and also on the wonderful little fella in the Mickey Mouse coat that I shall snuggle up!
And come the weekend, I will drink some wine, oh yes.