CLOUDS, TIME, LIFE AND ALL THAT

I'm going to start this one a bit tacky here now, because I thought of this back when I was fifteen (when, you know, you easily tend to be rather dramatic and corny about things). So here we go: life is  like the clouds. Constantly moving, changing shape, without really noticing when or how it happens. You look up at a cloud, it has a certian shape and you follow it with your eyes. It is changing form in front of you but you can't see that. It is not until you look away for a while and then back that you may notice the cloud has taken on a totally different shape than before. It is like a whole different cloud. (It was a rather long time ago that I was fifteen though. Phew.)

Well, yes, in any case. Everything indeed changes and evolves (that is perhaps what time is all about, changes in- and layers on eternity) and sometimes things go so fast you that years just pass by and if you get a second to think about it, it will very likely become a 'whoah, how did we get here'-moment. And then it's WOOOM on again to the next one.

Changes are what life is made of. Something is always changing even when you think it's not, time goes on, trees grow bigger and people grow old. No matter how well thought out or planned something may be you never know how it will turn out as anything can come up along the way. Or it may go just like planned, but the outcome may still be something different than you though.  And so on, yada yada. I don't really believe in finding reasons why random things happen or in meant to be's, it's just something we have come up with to make the chaos that forms everything more understandable, and bearable. Stuff just happen. Some by itself and some you make happen.

I've been making some things happening lately. I quit the harbour late this spring. Which wasn't a big thing per se, as I had not been working there for three years, but I had remained employed there anyway. Now my time for parental time-off was up -in short, you getup to 9months off paid, and can then get an unpaid leave until the child turns three, when you are to return (unless you get another child before the 3 years date when it all starts over again. I always knew I wouldn't go back, but sometimes some parts of me miss that. By now I have forgotten how it felt to be out there no matter what weather (or time of the day. And year).

(Here's me in the harbour a long time ago, a shot from that German tv show with fine shots of the Baltic Sea that airs every now and then and always brings me lots of strange Facebook messages from strangers in various European languages. "hello, I saw you on tv. Bye")

Dag did indeed turn three this summer which is both totally strange and totally natural at the same time. (We're on a feelings-level here, as I do know that turning three when you have lived three years is what most would describe as "natural"). He just started attending play school (or play club, whatever you may call it, a few times a week) and he's talking and making jokes and all and soon he'll be going to school and wanting to use the car and then moving out. The way it goes.

See, here he's already flippin' me the bird:

(To his defence -or mine, it's my kid after all- he is actually showing us thumbs up from a very unfortunate angle.)

It feels very odd to think I at this point of the year could have had a baby of a few months already. As it didn't turn out that way, I fast forwarded some other plans instead. Now the baby-thought feels very distant, and, I'm perhaps a little relieved (that's the brain working I guess, creating reason and meant-to-be's again). You do get kind of comfortable with time, and it's like I've almost forgotten the baby time with Dag, how it felt and how 24/7 it was. Not that I remember it being that rough then, comfort wise, but thinking of it now feels like it would be an awful lot of work to go trough again. I mean I have a child that can go to the toilet by himself already. So easy nowadays! I of course know that if or when such a time will come again the brain will settle into that mode and it will be fine and great all over (and tiring and messy too of course).

You may have noticed I have been rather busy the last year and my blogging has been less frequent.
As I just said I'd quit my old job and that my son is starting to mind his own business a lot you may wonder what the hell I actually have been doing away from the internet.

A whole lot. One of my fasts forwards was starting to study to become a pilates instructor (classical, mat. Apparatus are not very common over here. Yet.). It's something I had thought of for many years, to perhaps do at some point, and then decided to really go for in 2016. But it then came to happen this year already. I started in January and hold one certificate now, but will still be continuing to study for a long time. More on that later.

But what I also have been working on is a thing I had dreamt of for years, but never really felt was realistic. (And soon we will see it if is or not, dum-de-dum) : My colleague and performance partner Ruska and I are opening up our own studio, the very first one dedicated to burlesque in Finland!

There has been classes here and there for years already, and we have thought many of those and kept a small studio ourselves for quite some time already, but now we are opening up and actual burlesque school, a studio that has burlesque as it's main thing and that is the first one over here. We will combine that with other classes under the same roof; yoga and pilates (Ruska is a yoga teacher) and stretching as well as other dance exercise. The name Studio Shangri-La comes from our duo performane The Ravishing Shangri-La Rubies and we have coached our own performing student troupes for two years under the name The Shangri-La School of Showgirls. (I linked our Facebook pages there. Do go and like them. All in Finnish, but don't let that stop you.)

I really had intended to blog about the process of fixing up our new space. "I will have so much to post about". And alas - I would have had, and did. But what I did not have was the actual time to do so. (Well you have seen some on instagram along the way, for those of you who hang around there.) In between waiting for contrucion guys who never came (and then came late and charged too much and so on) and painting and ordering things (and spending up a lot of hard earned cash) and planning and plotting summer just went by and here we are at the opening already. On Wednesday!
Eli sinne kaikki, dit allihopa eller hur!

Apart from that we are working on the Pin-Up competition and putting together a custom performance for the book launch of Sofi Oksanens new book. And then I'd really like to fix up some rooms in the farmhouse plus grow back all the kale that the lambs ate.

Well, this started with clouds and ended up in Shangri-La in something of a mish mash of a post.
So for now: studio studio studio. And buy classes!

Oh and also bangs or no bangs?
Oh the choices in life.

KEEP YOUR MIND CLEAR AND YOUR SHIRT CLEAN

I have neither as I have some of Dag's dinner on my sleeve and red wine in my glass.



But what I do have is a terrible nostalgia for the harbour, summer nights in the city, beer and jukebox playlists, running along the shore in Merihaka (my old jogging route) to some Marko Haavisto, driving my old Taunus to the same playlist. (Which I  can't do because Eddi has lost he keys to the Taunus and it has now been parked for xx years under an apple tree at the farm. This summer it will happen though. Locksmith. Clean up. Roadtrip, if only just a small one around the corner.)

We have this this Finnish music- challenge going on on Facebook and listening trough my favourite Finnish songs (which all tend to lean to the rautalanka sound) I got an itch for all of the above and some more. I was sure I had posted this song by Marko Haavisto & Poutahaukat here before (as seen in The Man Without a Memory by Kaurismäki) but apparently I hadn't. Well, here you go - it does not get more Finnish than this.

Now I'll have another glass of wine and play some rautalanka and then watch some more Kaurismäki clips.

IT'S ALMOST MID-MARCH ALREADY

...which means summer will soon be over. Because that's the way it goes you know. Fast.

Oh well hello there! Yes I am still very much alive, although it may seem a little too quiet over here. With all the work, hanging out with Dag, puzzling babysitting around for my work as Eddi is abroad because of his work all the time and when at home out on the farm because the older boys go to school there now and I'm kind of living part-time in my car due to all the going back-and-forth between homes and jobs and gigs and rehearsals plus the pilates training I am studying I have a pile of posts stacked up that will soon be too old to post anyway.

Well that was a long sentence. But it pretty much describes how things are for the moment, in the way it was structured. A highly energetic mess. But, here are some thing's I've been up to the past week as my phone and Instagram saw it:

We have started our own recurring club at Mascot -

The first of Rubies Klubit was last Friday under the theme 'Abstinence'. It was a really good night!

(The last shot is from the curtain call at the end of the night that I took from our golden gogo-boy's Instagram, orginally taken by JBM.)

Go ahead and like our page to find out the dates for the following ones as we set them!

Then I head over to Turku to perform at a Women's Day celebration event. Here's a shot from out small backstage as well as one of dragqueen Miss Divet performing before us and our huge mirror in our hotel room.



Then I came back home and by yesterday spring had arrived for real! I'm tempted to say the classic "finally" but to be honest it's pretty early and apart from that magical Christmas week winter was not that long or cold or white but seemed to pass rather quickly this time. We took a walk outside and it was warm. I feel all my shoes starting to wake up from their winter sleep and making small sounds in the closet already.

Also yes, that is how my son keeps putting his glasses on, constantly.

Later then showed up to the dinner table dressed as a sailor.

TREATS

My PT sessions are back! To illustrate this I have a highly informative picture of my super shaky hand that feels like it’s stuck in grip-mode after a hard workout (and yes you can also check out my nails with their icy winter manicure).

I worked out with my personal trainer for ten weeks last winter, and it was the best money investment I had made in a long time. You really get to push yourself in a new way. Plus get a bunch of new moves to work on. And, it really is something of an investment, not only from the money point of view, but also (cheesy sentence alert:) an investment in yourself because you know, your body is the one thing you have to live with your whole life. So at the end of last year I gave myself a present when the tax return money came and got myself a set of 10 new sessions. A great decision, once again.

I have always worked out, sometimes more, sometimes less, even though it seldom makes it here more than in a mention or two. What I really loved doing was Savate; French (kick) boxing. I’ve always liked martial arts. I used to do Tae Kwon Do when I was in my late teens. But then my knee got fucked up (a friend sat on my leg so it turned the wrong way, kind of, and things broke) and I had to take a break and then other things came up and I never returned. The reasons I then quit savate about seven years ago were that my working hours in the harbour were so hard I seldom managed to work out on a schedule. That, and that my other knee got fucked up (things broke during a jumping practice) and I had to have an operation and take a 6 month break. Afterwards I returned but when I started performing the bruises all over did not really fit in. Now I live too far from the boxing gym for it to be convenient and my nails are too long to fit in the boxing gloves. But one day I will return! (Add to list of things to take up again). Because, there is no such thing as too old.

Speaking of which; being older today than yesterday, as we all are, I remember reading a blog post from some 19-20-21 year old fashion blogger quite many years ago (I must have been about 26 or 27) where the young author was posting some red carpet celebrity pictures. She was being surprised and impressed that this one celeb woman (can’t remember who and don’t care) could be in such good shape at the age of thirty four! Well, this of course was met with some  amusement from many older (or, “older”) readers that stumbled by, and also by me, not because I didn't think thirty-something was that old back then, but mostly because I had always though I would be in a helluvalot of better shape at 34 than I was at, say, 22 or 26. See, even though I was working out regularly at that time I also went out and partied very regularly. I always thought (and was perhaps hoping) that at 30-something I’d be working out more smart and more dedicated, going out less and having less drinks. And so on. And, ta-da, so indeed I am! After childbirth few will have the same measurements back as one had when 21, but I am in better shape now, in a smarter way, than I’ve ever been before. Moving around for a living also helps, and now of course also because of the pilates training. Being healthy feels good, but I consider myself to be the kind of person that will never get super duper I-will-start-an-instagram-account-about-it fit, neither do I have the need to, because, well, chocolate and red wine are also totally awesome things in this world. But when I’m 34, which is this yearI’m going to be ripped! (or then not, you know, because chocolate. But I like saying it just for fun.)

I also gave myself another treat - a set of vouchers for Liangtse Wellness (a Chinese medicine wellness center). (To illustrate that is the tiny little tea pot you are served tea in when you wait, and later a content me in those small gold pyjamas you get to wear during your treatment.)


I got a gift card there from Eddi for Christmas - I had been planning to of there for years but I am the kind of person who is really bad at getting such things done for myself. Now as I was at it I went all pay-now-think-later and got myself that voucher set.  But it was a good pey first think later moment, because nothing beats someone kneading you aching head for half an hour. Well that would then be one whole hour (and perhaps some other things as well. But it definitely makes top ten of certain lists at least!) My relaxation for the ongoing year is guaranteed.


Now if I could only learn to treat myself to do my book keeping on a regular basis and to fall earlier to sleep at night things'd be even better.

HOME(S)

Or, why we have two.


Sometimes it may seem confusing posting pictures and stories of two kitchens and two different bedroms, from two homes. Where do I-we- really live?

Well, we live both in the apartment uptown in the city, and out on the farm. For me the city home has been my main home, for my husband the farm.


It is not uncommon over here to have a "summer house" or country/weekend cabin, either owned or rented for the summer, often shared within the family trough generation(sisters, parents, uncles aunts and cousins and so on), and often rather plain and simple without running water. Like my family's place in the archipelago, bought in the 1930's, which does not even have electricity, or the small cabin from my grandmother's side. But the farm house is not like that.



Even though we tend to stay out on the farm during the weekends and holidays and practically the whole summer, it's not what one would call a leisure or vacataion house or a weekend home. My husband grew up on the farm and was living there when we met. He now runs the farm with his brother, who live in another house on the premises. So there is a lot of work involved, and Eddi often goes out to the farm after work to work some more, even when we stay in the city.

The farm is about (a little less than) an hour away from town, so it's possible to live there and work in the city.

But why do we then have the flat in town? It of course results in a double set of bills. And it can be a bit annoying dragging  kids and cats andthings between two places. And as I sometimes tend to joke, hard to keep plants alive in two homes.

Well, there area lot of things to it,  but in short it has been the most -and only- practical solution. Eddi's two older boys, now in school and high school,  live with us every second week and their mother lived in the city so they went to school there. Our flat is close to their school, my studio and Eddi's work. And while I was working from 5:30 in the morning or until night in the harbour the shorter the way to work the better.


We rent the flat from my grandmother and after I sold my old small flat downtown we renovated it before we moved in. It's in the same part of town where I grew up in (so we both have ended up in our childhood homes, sort of).


We have been renovating and renewing the farmhouse too, as you know. And as it tends to be with big old houses it is something of a never-ending process, and there is still a lot to do. Like open up the roof and take out some more windows so we can get a few rooms more and more use of the upstairs. And open the floor down to the ground in another room downstairs before it can be renewed...

As we have been renovating the house on the farm we have also been staying there more.  One day we will move there out permanently, as keeping two places and going back and forth is not the most economic solution.  But if that is sooner or later is yet to see, now it's one week at a time.

And well, one week at at time is actually literal, as from the start of this year, with a very short notice - as everything tends to be so from that behalf- the boys moved with their mother (for every second week still) to a small town west of the farm, and now go to school in the countryside. So from now on, for now, we will basically live every second week out on the farm and every second in the city.

Bedside in the city. (this is my most pinned and shared image btw. Sadly not the most credited one...)

WHAT IS NOW CALLED LAST YEAR

And so yet another year has gone by.

Altough, a year does go by every day and every second, and I am not one of those starting a new life each and every first of January (it’s going to be real crowded at the gym the following weeks, I know).  But as everything is always rounded up around the change of the calendar year, so do I. 

Many might have noticed I did been less blogging during the second half of the year;, I had a lot on my mind that took up time but mainly I was very caught up with work, which, as most of you know, takes time, especially when you do not do a nine-to-five but a wherever whenever combined with a small child. And over here, on the blog, I have tried to prefer quality over quantity which leaves some blanks every now and then.

Last year had lots of ups and downs,  more of the later, but I - apart from a few exceptions - seldom go into those here; this is mainly a space for the good stuff. So here's a little well-compressed lookback on 2014.

So - during 2014 I worked a lot. On stage and behind it, coaching students, making costumes, teaching dance clasees  and travelling back and forth performing trough the country.

There will be lots of work for next year too, and lots of new things! But we'll get back to those when the time comes, some sooner, some later.

Not the most fashion-orientated period of my life going on -I feel I never have anything suitable to wear for most of the time as I do so many different things during the day. But I did do many wearable diy’s and clothing projects.

Thought a lot about hair and then went for it; cut my bangs back last spring.

And -apparently - cooked mainly raw food. (Altough now after Christmas is certainly does not feel like that...)

  

And Dag grew bigger, like children tend to do. I think he looks all the same but then I look at photos of him from last winter and spring and see the change and how fast it in fact goes when they are small.

And the seasons keeps on changing and time flies. It will be warm and summer again in no time! 

Next year's New Years-post is just around the corner, believe me. But I'm not going to be all too 2016 yet, let's give 2015 a go first. And a great go it shall be!