DIRT & DIAMONDS

I just drove my husband out to his tractor on the field to work. It is so dry and dusty everything gets coated in a layer of dirt. And I laughed a bit at me driving trough the fields because that was that one thing I never saw myself doing earlier in life.

Never say never and all that.

My nails still look like this though, and that won't change.

BLACK CATS AND OLD EASTER DETAILS

Happy Easter!

Here is my little black cat on this year's Easter-ing tour (or whatever we shall decide to call it in English).

As our house still looks like shit I'll post some old pictures of how it looked this time of year back when it was stil nice.

Enjoy your chocolate!

MY TWO-DECADE CARDIGAN

The other day I realised that the oldest piece of clothing in my wardrobe, apart from vintage, is a cardigan I bought in 1997 that I still use.  I was a bit impressed actually, as we seldom tend to think of clothing of today to last for that long. And cardigans tend to get floppy easily; this one not.  I remember the store I bought it from (which is no more), and was looking at it twice or three time before actually buying it as it was expensive at the time at 120FiM, which nowadays equals to about 20€. But back then that was a lot more. You could really get a lot for the green one hundred bill, with a stubborn Sibelius on it.

There was also this little episode when this cardigan went missing for about a year and a half or so after I moved away from home and I was certain I had not lost it anywhere. It was later found in a bag under my teenaged sister's bed, as she had borrowed it without asking and then hid the evidence. Nowadays she thoroughly denies this ever happend though. Now that I remembered this again I have to tease her a little about it.

FROM FROZEN SPARKLE TO SEAGULLS

Today I heard the first seagulls - winter will be over soon! Here are, however, some pictures from last week when it still was very much winter.

And here I am aswell! Slowly returning as the light slowly increases here on these latitudes. Like a Moomin troll I have hibernated from the blogosphere during the darkest months. (I always liked the Moomin winter book the best -well that one, and the one with the flood and the drifting heater - how he, against his nature, wakes up one winter and finds the world totally different with different creatures existing around him).

But as much as I sometimes can love winter, I do long for summer, for everything to wake up from around me. This year it feels specifically significant, as I feel a lot of things have been resting under snow so to say, for now to finally move on and be able to enjoy the sunlight. 

This year winter came late, so late that the snowfall now in mid-march does not bother me. The end of February was super cold, colder than usual for the time of year, but so beautiful I had to stop every now and then and just gaze with my mouth open. And then close it rather quickly again, as you may now it does hurt a little to breathe when it is below -15C. But really, it was like the winters from my childhood and even more - everything coated in a white glittery layer, sparkling in the sunshine, sunshine with a hue that gives everything this cold golden-turquoise shade. The air actually sparkled, as ice crystals slowly fall down from the clear sky.  (There was more sparkle all around than the backstage floor of a burlesque show and for those who know, that is A LOT) So inspiring. Photos can not do it justice, and actually can’t do at all, because both my phone and camera shut down due to the cold. Winter is so quiet, everything is padded in snow, like sound isolation, and you can listen to the silence. The other however week I heard something that I have never heard before - the tingling sound of the ice crystals falling on the hard, frozen ground. Pure Narnia; better than Narnia, because this is real! (I, amazingly enough, managed to get a little bit of it on my phone, which you can almost hear on instagram, before it shut down.)

Look! Everything sparkles.

The past year I’ve read up on my old interests of space, physics and cosmos in general (maybe because my interests moves in waves and comes and goes, perhaps it has something to do with ageing to choose this topic again, not sure) and I think about all the things that grow and exist on this planet and how versatile it is and what it would look like if someone from another existence would enter and if they would be amazed at what they saw. I also think about the face that some people, many, will never come up to these latitudes, or feel cold like ours, and never get to see how this looks and feels. Just like there are many other places and phenomena that I will not experience elsewhere.

We usually get this kind of cold once a year, or every second. The tabloids do mention it all WINTER IS COMING-style each and every time when temperatures are about to drop,  but this year “the cold from Siberia” got a little extra coverage. Since Siberia actually is our north-east neighbour, it is not that strange, and since it does indeed get below -20 every now and then it felt rather exaggerated to make a big fuzz about it. This year there were even warnings not to go outside, as some cold days were windy (which lower the temperatures even more.) at which point I clearly knew I have gotten old(er), as I find myself thinking that “back in my days when I worked out side in the harbour nobody came with any warnings to us No”! Or perhaps they even did, we just did not have the internet, glued to the palm of our hands all the time, to check from back then.

Lets insert this picture of a branch covered in beautiful frosty flakes of ice here, so that there's not too much text all at once.

So last year was busy, the last years have been busy, as have been noticeable trough my blog hibernation. But I have been here for over ten years; 2018 marks is eleventh year blogging - that is such a long time! Blogging is so different nowadays - of course, everything develops and changes with time. I never thought I’ die blogging still. Or, I never thought that I wouldn’t either, I just did not think about it that much, no plan. That’s the whole thing with everything, you never know what will happen and how things will turn out. I did not think, ten years ago when I started with burlesque, that performing would be my main profession within a few years, and that I’d be running a burlesque school. I couldn’t even have imagined that. Eight years ago a burlesque school was the dream, but it sounded so crazy; we thought it could never work over here. But - here we are. Not exactly getting rich but getting by, somewhat. But more on that topic another time.

I did think that ten years from then I would have children but not only one child.  Not all things can be chosen. I never thought I’d live out in the countryside either. Or marry a farmer. But, again, here we are.  (I did remember thinking maybe it was time for someone more academic as I was getting tired of all those rock n’roll and Big Artist guys, and without doing that much more about it still I ended up with my farming geophysicist. That’s how things sometimes go, premonition.)

Deers on a morning walk, a rather daily sight when you live out here.

No I never thought I’d live on a farm but here we are in midst of fields and forest. Still less than an hour from town, so in some ways I guess it’s the best of both worlds. We still have a labyrinth of boxes at home, and a renovation that is happening at such a slow snail pace it’s frustrating. Both Eddi and me work and travel a lot and when we are home relaxing is so much more tempting than emptying out past generation's stuffed-away-stuff from the attic or tearing away and old roof. The living situation has thus been very un-inspirational since we moved away from Tapiola, and unpractical. Which, apart from having approx. 12 hours too little per the daily 24, is also one of the reason for my little time-out. But some things have actually happened here at home, bit by bit, and it feels like we are actually starting to get somewhere, that it will soon be nice to hang out here again. Along with the light starting to flow in from the windows in the morning, I feel a lot of other things as well are moving forward. Something feels different and new.

Spring is coming, summer will soon arrive, the seagulls are shouting already. Lets see where we go from here!

À BRUXELLES!

Hello there!
I am on my way to Brussels to perform and it seems I am only, or well mostly, planning on wearing green things.
Must be a sign that autumn is here.

THE SILENCE

Hi! Here I (still) am. Sitting by my flower-and herb pots on the backdoor stairs. And it's sunny and almost warm -which is something of a thing this summer, the coldest of the decade they say- and I am wearing a selfmade dress I haven't in years.

And I wish I could sit like this more often, just sit there, listen to the wind in the trees and look out on the field and road in front of me, and feel good about just doing just and only that.
But I don't get to too often. The classic -  there's seldom time for it. And when I perhaps try to for a while I tend to look at everything that needs to be done, that are in the yard and garden waiting to be fixed or maintained.  That's a line you often hear from a lot of people, but in this case here everything really is waiting for the next step. The house is still full of the Tapiola-flat still packed in boxes, waiting for us to renovate more space. It looks like shit. And the to-do's from work never end; there is always something you still need to do. And have I worked, a lot, building the business, constantly. And it might even start to show soon. The two hours I spend on commuting every day are those two I spent at blogging per day before (I spend a lot of time and eat a lot of my meals in the car these days).

So I took a lot of stress during the past year of not having time to blog like I was used to, or like I wanted to. Many are the list of posts that remained on there, as notes on a list, and many are also the photos since 2015-something meant for the blog, still lingering on the memory card, to the point that it became a thing, like a barrier I couldn't get across, to actually produce something. But at some point this summer I just let that stress go. I've been here for a decade. That's a crazy long time and sometimes, when I take the sudden extra moment, I may browse back and look at what I used to do during the past ten years, and also at how one used to blog for the time being. Because that has changed as well, blogging itself has changed, the way it is done it seems. Few out there interest me anymore, many became too branded and "clean"- which is something I totally understand, the need and reason to brand oneself, for those making a living out of it.  Everyday life for me has been so hectic and at some points heavy possible blog subjects have changed and the current state of many affairs and situations in society has also had an effect on what I have felt, or rather not felt like blogging about. And all the boxes and halfway-there things at home do not serve as too inspiring an environment for the moment either.
But that does not mean I am done. I just stopped feeling bad about not being able to constantly produce material (and answer emails, sorry for that!).
And damn, that feels good!

NEVER GETS OLD

Some things that never get old -

That first warm summer evening when you can have dinner in the green and the wind is warm and soft.

Sudden snuggle-ups and love declarations from your child.


Twin Peaks.

Anything with chocolate. Well, almost anything.
(and then I wonder why some of my clothes won't fit me in the waist anymore. If they don't fit my behind it's of course just because of my squatting and heavy weight leg pressing at them gym, obviously.)
ps. Pictured are the almost healthy chocolate raw food muffins.

Gardening. You know all those things they say about gardening and life and so on. All true.

And then of course This One.

FOUR SMALL NICE THINGS RIGHT NOW

Four nice things right now.

Small kumquats on a branch.

Who wouldn't get happy over cute small orange thingies like these?

Green branches and leaves in a vase; a mini jungle,  left over from when I had a mini-spa for my plants at home some time ago.  (I wonder if these are of the kind that they'll grow a root of their own and I can plant them? Hmmm...)

Green grapes in a pretty bowl.

And green grapes in their most superior form, helping me tidy up the kitchen.

A SELFIE AND IT'S META VERSION

Last night at the club night I co-produce -RubiesKlubit -Nancy took a photo of me and these two gold sparkling performers, Bébe and Bent, while we were indulging in the act of taking mandatory backstage selfies.

I probably have a thousand of photos like these by now in my phone, smiling fab people with a lot of glitter on them squeezed together to fit an instagram square (as well, as fit in a tiny backstage). But they keep on appearing, just the heads in a different order, after every show...

PALE BLUE KITCHEN HUES

Today the dishes were matching each other.

FOUR THINGS TODAY

Today-

-it was raining.
I do enjoy the summer rain, and how fresh everything looks and how sweet it smells after it, but only if it comes every once in a while. On a day when you have things you need to do the rain is welcome, as one does not get a bad consciousness from sitting inside when the sun is shining outside.  Since summers here are short we are all taught since childhood "not stay inside when it's sunny outside". So all the time during summer, when you're not on your holiday but working indoors that rings in your ears and you feel a bit guilty to the sun on the other side of the window. Sort of.

So it was also a bit too rainy in order to wear the prettiest shoes in the world, shoes that are MINE. But I took a little moment to admire them instead. These velvet bowed beauties are by Frollein von Sofa.

Some time ago I organised my sewing area and found a bag of forgotten fabrics that have been waiting to transform into (mainly) dresses. Got started, a little bit, on one of them! (Although, that was not really one of the things that I was supposed to be doing).

Then I made a set of quinoa cookies. Or, perhaps they should be called 'quinoa balls' when in this shape. Not really first on my to-do list either but oh-so worth it anyway; they really are very delicious! Getting back to those some day here soon.

I also fought with my computer(s) for a few hours (that was what I was suppose to be doing. In short, my old mac is dying and my new one does not recognise my external hard drive I had all stuff stored on and the old maccadelic is not really into migrating itself over or to upload anything to icloud, just the spinning rainbow wheel of death, and all this right here is definitely one of those things testing how long it will take before you lose your shit for good, you know, as in both the shit on the computer and the shit in your MIND). But then I left the computers to suffer alone and had a long late night production meeting. New work and projects coming up on the showbiz front. That's a lot more to do (once more) but it will also be fun!

BALANCE BY THE SEA / SUMMER AT THE STUDIO

I'm back from our usual three days of archipelago midsummer celebrations! It wasn't all wine-sipping and constant eating for me 24/7, I took some time to do some pilates and balance practices as well. The setting kind of calls for that; I've always liked to work out by to the sound of the sea.

In summer my pilates classes over at our studio are Monday evenings, and what better way to continue summer after the celebrations by celebrating your own strength, hmmm..? Tomorrow at 18:30! With the Elvis themed dance workout before that. (Which we also did with my mom and sisters too at the beach today. It's fun!)

I also have a morning pilates class every second Thursday, and every second Thursday Ruska has her Seasonal Yoga Body Clock Yang class. We have a summer discount for the whole season where our anytime card is only 90€, and you can buy our 10-times card for the summer season for just 100€ (normally 140€), until July 15. We're open all trough the summer except for week 29 in July!

And -woop woop!- next week we're having a burlesque beginners-intensive camp! Two days of fun and learning including stage-make up practices as well as a free entry to the Vegas-themed summer edition of our RubiesKlubit in the evening - a complete starter kit that is! The camp is in Finnish but if you speak English eller svenska we will mix! Do join in on the fun!

Plus, one last thing of self promotion (which I often forget to do, ehrm) ; do remember that we organise bachelorette/hen party burlesque classes (burleskipolttarit) too!  At our studio, or alternatively we show up to where you are celebrating (with some limitations, of course). It's is rather popular these days, having burlesque classes for the bachelorette parties, and were actually the first in the country organising them, together with Bettie, Kiki and Olivia. So we know how to keep you entertained!

But yeah, pilates, tomorrow evening -or, today by now I guess, as we are just about to tick-tock over to Monday's side here.
"Be in control of your body, not at the mercy of it." (Joseph Pilates). YES to that. So see you!

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.

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...

EARTH HOUR

It's especially easy to pull off earth hour when half of your house is out of power anyway.

Well, we've had quite some earth hours here already, but there should be an electrician coming over next week. Good thing we have a gas stove.

But yes I know it's earth hour -over here, right now- and I am on the internet. But it's with battery life, not charging! And I will closed the lid soon anyway. Ok! Earth hour. Closing it now. Bye!

THIS TIME OF YEAR -

- is always the one of panic sequin sewing and rhinestone glueing, no matter how early on the process has started. The magnificent 9th Helsinki Burlesque is just a week away and as usual we are producing new stuff for it. And as usual it's late nights and everything at the studio and home(s) covered in blingy things.

-is also the time of bookeeping, which also, year after year, is as stressy and messy, no matter how much I promise myself to get everything in order once per month (or even every secondm goddamit!) and how good any helpful keep-them-in-order- apps may be. Damn you, paperwork!
(But like my bokkeeper said the other day when I was stressing over the mess -that may not after all be that messy in the end: "one just has to do what one is good at". Phew for that!)

This is also the time for onranges! At least two, often three, per day, yum!

FEBRUARY

Alright, that's it! I am done with winter. I am countdowning for spring! I want new small green leaves, budding flowers and warm spots in the sunshine, dry streets bare legs and flaring hems. The sooner the better!

Somedays everything here is so desaturated it is like living in a black and white photo. And, like every year, you think will this never end..)

 

But then the next day the sun is shining and you know there's hope after all!

And it may even look so nice you may even start thinking about taking the skies back out and go all winter for a little while again.

(Alright, I did not take them out even once this year even when we had more snow and cold so saying 'again' is perhaps a little exaggeration. I'd love to if I had the time though.)

And yes this back-and-forth weather and back-and-forth-thinking goes on until about April.
Each and every year.