Happiest day of my life

27.8.2015 Marilka

Every now and then you hear someone ask: what was the happiest day of your life? People look back and think about days like “when I got married” or “when my child was born” or “when I graduated” etc. And there’s nothing wrong with that. On the contrary, looking back at the joys you’ve had in your life is usually a good thing. Remembering the good and happy times can be an important resource when life is giving you lemons. It can be the strong undercurrent that helps you make the lemonade.

I can list many of those “happiest days of my life” too. Such as the day I got married – even if the marriage evetually ended in divorce. The days when my daughters were born. The day my current husband told me he loved me. Yet, those are just the highlights. Who remembers the normal nothing-special days as happy?

In recent years, I have been through divorce, brain surgery, my mom’s death, my grandmother’s death and things that I do not want to list here. All of this finally got to me last winter – too much is just too much – when my axiety became so bad I didn’t sleep and I was just screaming at my husband without real reason. I got help, but when the axieties subsided, on came the depression, that probably had been creeping on for some time. I didn’t want to work, not even get out of bed. I didn’t feel joy, life felt like tar I needed to drag myself through. I wasn’t suicidal, but often times thought that everybody would be better off if I didn’t exist.

You know the movie It’s a Wonderful World? We used to watch it every single Christmas with my dad when I was growing up. One Christmas my sister and I hid the movie (a VHS tape) so that we couldn’t watch it. We sat on the sofa with meek faces, watching our dad look for the VHS for a long long time. I even started to feel pity towards him, but my sister pinched me to stay strong. Eventually dad figured out our ploy and I think he was quite hurt. We didn’t watch it ever again with him.

Sometimes in the depths of my depression, I thought about that movie. Just a fleeting thought, but enough to bring me back to reality. Not that I thought that my little actions in this life would have changed the fates of too many people, but there is my family. My husband and our three daughters. Our dogs. All of whom rely on me in some way. So I never neglected my motherly duties, I never shied away from those who love me, whom I love. I tried to be there for them, forgetting my own misery.

Today I woke up – when I finally woke up, waking up is never easy for me – feeling the luckiest person alive. Thinking to myself that this is the best time of my life, the happiest day of my life. There’s nothing special about this day. I snuggled next to my husband for a while before getting up, like I do most mornings. I had my cappucino. I took the dogs out. I started to work. I shed some tears over a video George Takei had shared in Facbook. I missed my mom and my grandma.

I still think this is the happiest day of my life. Ever since yesterday. Yesterday was the happiest day of my life since the day before that. I believe I’m pretty much over my depression. I have always believed in living in the moment. Learn from the past, remember the good times, dream about the future. But don’t dwell on either one. See the good in each day.

Happiness is not a destination, it’s a way of life. It’s little things like sunshine and a smile. It’s the big things, the family, friends, dogs, that are. It’s about focusing on the good instead of the bad. It’s about seeing that what is good in things instead of the bad. It’s about saying “I’m so glad we got our other car fixed and running in time to turn that leasing car in” instead of “oh, this is a miserable day, I need to turn my nice leasing car in”. A deeply depressed person is not able to do that, but as for the non-depressed, it’s about the attitude.

Yes, sometimes life feels too hard. But in the end, it’s just life. I prefer to look on the bright side of things. We have a saying – in Finnish like it is in English too – “Nothing so bad, as not to be good for something”. I try to find the good. And when there is none, for I cannot find anything good in e.g. my mom’s or grandma’s deaths, I try to accept them as what they are: a part of the circle of life. That understanding does not mean that I wouldn’t grieve, I do, fiercely! It gives me the ability to let go. The grief can’t suck me down.

[Edit 28.8.2015 – A day after writing this I stumbled upon this article about happiness. I can pretty much vouch for every point made in it. Happiness is mostly a choice 🙂 ]

You gotta dig dig dig…

11.5.2015 Marilka

The sun was still up high and shining warmly when both I and my husband were done with our day’s work. It was a sure call for some more yard work. We’ve got a couple of parties coming up in the summer time, so it would be kinda mandatory to get the yard in shape by them. There’s so much to do, plus all the things that we want to do, in addition to the stuff that we need to do.

The first stuff went to the category of need to do. Husband gave our reciprocation saw to me and asked me to start sawing some branches into smaller pieces. The winter storms had cut off pine branches and sent them flying to our yard; one of them took the target scope – oops, start – from the hood of our Mercedes. We also cot off some overgrowth from the trees at the edge of our yard in March. I modified an old kitchen cabinet a bit to work as a saw horse and we efficiently worked through the pile of branches together.

The next project was to start planning for our brick grill; a task in the want to do category. We got a pile of bricks some time ago, leftovers from someone’s yard paving and from a fireplace they had torn down. We decided on a spot in our backyard; a nearly flat spot not beneath the trees. We measured it up, then marked the borders with a shovel. “Okay, you can start to dig now,” said husband, and I was like, now? “Okay, I need some inspirational music,” I said and took my phone out of my pocket, launched Music Tube and searched for Summer Stock Dig dig dig.

Nothin’s what you get for free.
You’ve gotta dig, dig, dig, dig for your dinner,
Never was a money tree.
And furthermore, my friends, I must repeat,
Nobody’s livin’ down on Easy Street;
And if you want to owe for groceries,
You’re gonna get an awful lot of “No sir-ee’s.”
You’ve gotta dig, dig, dig, dig for a dollar,
‘Taint as simple as you think.
You can’t purloin a sirloin
Or the butcher will put you in the clink.
You just can’t be a lazy bird,
You’ve gotta get off o’ your twig;
So you can afford your room and your board,
And it’s nice to have the price of a “cig.”
Say, you’ve gotta pay the fiddler man
If you want to do a jig.
You’ve gotta be as busy as a bee
To be a Mister B. I. G.
And if you want some dig-dig-dignity,
You’ve gotta dig, dig, dig, dig, dig for your dinner,
Dig, dig, dig, dig, dig.

https://youtu.be/1ANCuq_RKUs

The movie is one of my all time favorites – I’m a sucker for old MGM musicals, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers… And so I dug. Dug until I had taken out all the moss from the designated area. Then it was leveling time, finetuning, and leveling again. Somewhere there we took a break to grill some cheeseburgers on the gas grill and eat while the Finnish ice hockey team beat Belarus in the World Championships by one penalty shot.

We went back to the yard to fit some flat stones for the foundation of the grill. Then we tried a few bricks for the measurements of the grill. Then we sort of got carried away and ended up dry fitting them all, resulting in a proof of comcept (POC, as we consults call it) grill we named Stonehenge. No, we’re not going to use it for grilling just yet (at least not much…), we are going to mortar the bricks and make it into a proper grill. But yes, we have enough bricks to do it.

By the time Stonehenge was done, my work gloves had holes in the fingers. I just bought them a couple months ago! I’ve been working a lot. Gotta get a new pair. And if someone could tell me where I could get a new back, I’d be thankful 😉 Just kiddin’. Really working and working more is the best cure. In Finnish we say “se lähtee sillä millä se on tullutkin” – the cure is the cause.

Before hopping to bed, I played the hair dresser for my oldest daughter, trimming her hair from the side and applying new hair color (her hair is half black, bottom half since I don’t let her dye her hair all the way to the scalp).

Sauna

29.3.2015 MarilkaLeave a comment

There are different kinds of saunas. There are the regular electric saunas you can find in every other appartment in Finland. There are the fancy Sun sauna home spas, like the one we built into our house with my ex. There are the public saunas in gyms and swimming halls, with that distinc smell of humid hot wood and sweat combined. There are the shared saunas of appartment buildings when the appartments don’t have saunas. There are the “savusaunas”, smoke saunas, where the walls are black with soot and the air tastes like smoke. And then there are the “mökkisaunas”, the saunas with wood burning stove (mökki is a cottage, summeplace).

Some people love the savusauna. I don’t, really. I love the classic, preferably a bit old, mökkisauna. The smell of the burning wood, without the sting of the smoke. The gentle heat from the wood stove, the kiuas, so much sweeter than in the electric saunas ever. The rugged rustique of the old wood panel walls. The kind of sauna people have at their summer places. The kind of sauna you can find in an old house like this one we live in now. The kind where you can expect to find birche leaves on the floor after some back slapping with a “vihta” – a bunch of birch branches – in early summer time.

I’ve experienced them all in my life. I guess most Finns have. I used to think the sauna at our summer place was the best one on this earth, and probably it is. With my ex, we tried to make the sauna experience fancy with the special soapstone electric kiuas, fancy rounded sauna benches, romantic led lights, fake stone walls and smoked glass wall between the sauna and shower room. It was nice, very nice. Given the choice, I’d still pick the one we have now, any day. I love the countryside feeling of this house, of our sauna.

There are as many different sauna-goers as there are people in this country. Some go to sauna every day. Others once or twice a week (probably the most common thing). Some only at mökki, others use only public saunas. Some don’t like sauna, some can’t live without it. The one thing that is common, though, is that everybody goes to sauna naked. Ok, in public saunas, even the Finns sometimes tend to get a bit shy and try to use a towel or their swimming suit, but that is actually forbidden.

Finns have sauna evenings with friends, in company gatherings, with family only, alone, on Saturday, at Juhannus, Christmas or any given holiday and when ever. Sauna is part of the culture, part of social gatherings, part of celebrations. And the experience is always a bit different. The whole event is different depending on the kind of sauna you are going to, the people you are going to sauna with, the occasion.

Finnish sauna is not lukewarm. Finns affectionately call it the Swedish sauna if the temperature is below 70 degrees C (160F). Most commonly the temperature in a proper Finnish sauna is 80-90C (176-194F). And then we throw water on the rocks on the stove to make the air sizzle. The Finnish sauna rocks can handle that, they don’t crack.

Our sauna evenings with my husband are something special every time. The girls used to join us, but no anymore. We used to take the dogs to the sauna with us, but since they really don’t like it, we don’t anymore. So it is just me and my loved one, in our country style old wood sauna, with a sausage pan hanging over the stove.

It all starts with cleaning the sauna and shower room. The floor always has some wood chips and dirt from the previous sauna evening and it’s good to hose it down anyway. The wood basket needs to be filled, the ashes taken out. Then my husband starts the kiuas, adds wood, sees that it keeps going and heats up the sauna nicely, and places some sausages on the sausage pan. While he’s tending to the sauna, I take the dogs out and take care of other stuff so that our sauna evening can be un-hurried and end in relaxing on the bed, drifting off to sleep, sauna-fresh.

When sauna is ready, we get into our birthday suits, take some drinks and mustard with us and go to sauna. Sometimes we just take a couple cans of beer and cider (in Europe, cider is a fermented drink, beer strenght, made of apples or pears), sometimes we prepare a tray with an ice bucket, some frozen soapstone glass holders and a bottle or two of cider.

We hop into sauna, with our drinks, and pour some scented water in our special soapstone kiuas stones with holes to hold water. This way, in addition to getting an instant blast of hot humidity, we also get a steady drizzle going, when the water boils in those stones, spewing out like from a fountain. The sausages are done too by the time sauna is ready, so we munch on some while enjoying the heat of the sauna.

When the heat gets too much to take any more, it’s time to go to the shower. The only thing I’m missing in out home currently is a door downstairs, by the sauna, so that you could step outside to the cool winter air or sweet summer night while taking a break from sauna. As we don’t have that door – once I did open the garage door and go out but that seems a bit too much ado – shower room it is. Shower, hair washing, back scrubbing, sitting around with drinks in our hands, enjoying the calm and the company of each other, in the soft light of some led lights and a candle.

We go back and forth, taking our time in sauna and the shower room. For an hour, two even. And when we’re ready come out, the sauna is not hot anymore and we are ready to relax in bed and have a good night’s sleep, maybe after a smoke (well, husband smokes, I don’t) under a starlit sky, if the weather is nice. Our home is next to small forest, stepping out into the darkness is almost like at mökki ❤

Vuosikatsaus – recap of the year 2014

26.12.20141.1.2023 MarilkaLeave a comment

Yleensä kirjoittelen tämän lähempänä vuodenvaihdetta, mutta nyt kulunut vuosi pyörii mielessä siinä määrin, että menköön. Facebook tarjoilee erilaisia vuoden yhteenvetoja, ja saahan niistä jonkinlaisen vinoutuneen käsityksen ainakin siitä, mikä on ollut suosittua seinälläni vuoden mittaan. Oma versioni on vähän vähemmän popularistinen. Tämä on ollut raskas vuosi niin monella tapaa, mutta onneksi seassa on myös hyviä hetkiä ja onnenhippuja.

***

Usually I write this closer to the end of the year, but now this past year has been haunting my mind, so I’ll do it now. Facebook offers all these different summaries of the year, based on the social popuarity of posts. My own recap of the year is a little less of a popularity contest. This year has been a hard one in so many ways, but there’s been good moments and happiness too.

Tammikuu / January

Mutsi muutti meiltä siskolle leikkaukseni kynnyksellä. Mies kaatui pahasti portaissa rikkoen säärensä; käytiin ensiavussa. Minulta leikattiin akustikusneurinooma (kuulohermon/tasapainohermon kasvain, vestibular schwannoma). Olin sairaalassa viisi päivää, minkä jälkeen kotiuduin opettelemaan uudelleen *kaikkea*, kuten kävelyä ja tasapainoa ja elämää toispuoleisesti kuurona.

Mom moved to my sister’s right before my operation. H fell in stairs quite badly; had to take him to the ER. My acoustic neuroma (vestibular schhwannoma) was operated. I was in the hospital for five days, after which I came home to learn *everything* all over again. Like walking, balance, and life with SSD (single sided deafness).

jan

Helmikuu / February

Olin sairaslomalla, kuntouduin hyvää vauhtia. Mutsi oli vuoroin siskolla, vuoroin sairaalassa kemoterapian ja sen sivuoireiden takia.

I was on sick leave, my recuperation going very well. Mom was at my sister’s when not in the hospital getting chemo therapy and being treated for the side effects.

Maaliskuu / March

Töihinpaluu, tannsitunneille paluu. Jännitti, pelotti. Toisaalta koin olevani valmis, toisaalta en ollenkaan.

Back to work, back to dance classes. I was scared, I was anxious. On one hand I felt I was ready, on the other hand, not at all.

Huhtikuu / April

Mutsi muutti takaisin Las Palmasiin. Minä totuttelin työelämään uudelleen. Meggie täytti 2v, tosikoinen 11v.

Mom moved back to Las Palmas. I was trying to get used to working again. Meggie turned 2y, youngest daughter 11y.

Toukokuu / May

Firman kevätristeily Tallinnaan. Äitienpäivänä puhuin äitini kanssa viimeisen kerran ennen kuin hän kuoli, nukkui pois pari päivää myöhemmin. Pari viikkoa siitä vietettiin mutsin muistojuhla meillä kunnon helteessä, Lennettiin siskon kanssa Las Palmasiin purkamaan mutsin koti ja saattamaan äidin tuhkat viimeiselle matkalleen.

Comapny cruise to Tallinn. Mother’s Day was the last time I talked with my mom. She died only a couple days after that. We held a memorial at our house, in the middle of a heat wave, after which my sister and I flew to Las Palmas to empty out mom’s home and bury her ashes.

Kesäkuu / June

Synttäripäivä meni ohi etten melkein huomannutkaan. Kesäkuu oli emotionaalisesti kovin raskas. Ulkoilua ja oleilua. Juhannus landella.

Nearly missed my birthday. June was emotionally very difficult for me. Doing nothing spacial at home and outside. Midsummernight at our summer place.

Heinäkuu / July

Loma. Loman alkajaisiksi nyrjäytin nilkkani niin pahasti, että se oli pari viikkoa ilmalastassa. Vierailtiin kummitätini luona Heinlammilla ja tuttujen saaressa ja tehtiin pari päiväretkeä miehen ja Meggien kanssa. Heinäkuun viimeisenä päivänä meille tuli Timmy Meggien kaveriksi.

Vacation. It started with me twisting my ankle so badly, that it had to be supported for a couple weeks with an air padded ankle support. We visited my godmother at Heinlammi, spent a weekend at our friends’ island, and went on a couple of one day road trips with H and Meggie. At the end of July Timmy joined our family.

Elokuu / August

Timmyn vuoro satuttaa jalkansa. Alettiin katsella uutta kotia.

Timmy’s turn to hurt his leg. We started to look for a new home.

Syyskuu / September

Uusi koti löytyi, Timmyn jalka parani. Esikoinen täytti 14v, keskimmäinen 13v. Pieni irtiotto arjesta, kun mentiin miehen kanssa kahden serkkuni häihin Nauvoon, oltiin ihan yötä (koiratkin hoidossa).

We found the new home, Timmy’s leg healed. Oldest daughter turned 14y, second-oldest 13y. A little break from routines, when H and I spent a short weekend at my cousin’s wedding in Nauvo without the kids or the dogs.

Lokakuu / October

Muuton valmistelua, flunssaa, pari työreissua, pitkiä kävelyitä koirien kanssa. Siskolle syntyi toinen tytär.

Preparing to move, a nasty head cold, a couple business trips, long walks with the dogs. My sister’s second daughter was born.

Marraskuu / November

Muutto, muuton jälkeinen hässäkkä, remppa, paikkojen laittoa. Rintamamiestaloarki. Öljykriisi lämmitysöljyn ehtiessä loppua ennen kuin viimein saatiin täydennystoimitus. Miehen uusi työ ja työmatkat, koirat ensimmäistä kertaa pitkiä päiviä yksin. Syöty sohva ja sänky.

House moving, all sorts of related stuff, renovating, making the new home into a home. Life in an old house. Oil crisis – we were out of oil before were able to get more oil delivered. H started in a new job, and was traveling some. The dogs were alone for long days for the first time. They ate the sofa and our bed.

Joulukuu / December

Lisää remppaa. Keittiö yhä väliaikaisessa moodissa. Talo yhä monin paikoin aivan sekaisin. Sähkö- ja putkityöt odottavat tekemistä. Barcelona-viikonloppu firman kanssa.

More renovation. Kitchen is still in temporary mode. The house is still mostly a mess. Electricity and water pipe work are pending. Company trip to Barcelona for a weekend.

***

Olihan tuossa yhdelle vuodelle. Isoja asioita yhteen vuoteen monta. Päälle huolta lapsista, perunkirjoitusssäätöä, työkiirettä ym. Ei ihme, että olen niin väsynyt! Onneksi on loma, vaikka vain tämän puoltoista viikkoa.

That’s quite enough for one year. Several major events within a year. Add some concern over kids’ stuff, taking care of mom’s inheritance legalities, work stress etc. No wonder I’m so tired! Happy to be on vacation, if only for little over a week.

Siitäkin huolimatta, oikein hyvää uutta vuotta 2015! – Despite everything, have a wonderful year 2015!

Stubbornness Day

6.12.2014 MarilkaLeave a comment

It’s the evening of Finland’s Independence Day. In Finnish, the words independence (itsenäisyys) and stubbornness (itsepäisyys) are very close to each other, so we, the people with the national feature of “sisu” (the stubbornness to go through granite if needed) often call our Independence Day the Stubbornness Day, Itsepäisyyspäivä, for we also are a people who love to bend words. Ask any foreigner who’s been living here for a while. Finns are incourageable about nicknaming everything.

When it comes to this stubbornness, my American born (as American as the average American is, excluding the Native Americans) husband fits perfectly in with the stubborn, head-strong Finnish people. Jääräpää. That’s the compact Finnish word for it. Not giving up even when it’s the reasonable thing to do. Maybe that’s where Nokia and Rovio came from, and what eventually killed Nokia and is currently killing Rovio too. Jääräpäisyys.

It’s not a negative thing in itself. It may become such, if it you relentlessly refuse to acknowledge the realities and signs of e.g. development developing past you. When it comes to kitchen remodeling, the worst case scenario is probably exhausting your wife by not going where the fence is the lowest (Finnish idiom literally translated) but aiming higher than seems reasonable. Yeah, it worked in the end. (Deja vu, I’m sure I’ve had a dream of this before).

So, our Independence Day dawned (barely) with sleet coming down sideways. That’s what you get for having the Independence Day in December in a country that is intersected by the Arctic Circle. We got out of bed around 11:30 despite waking up at around eight. We made cappucinos, took the dogs out and came back to make some omelettes.

After that it was time to start the kitchen remodeling thing. In an old house like this, anything you try to do: obstacles. We’ve been trying to tackle those regarding the kitchen for a couple weeks already, but still my husband had to go to the hardware store once again yesterday. And we were missing some parts today, to accomplish everything we would’ve wanted to, but obviously the stores were closed today.

Still, we did get a whole lot done today (and last night, as H wanted to do stuff still in the evening and late to the night time), including getting the freezer and microwave cabinet into its place, which resulted in enough cabinet space to be emptying one box and three Ikea bags into it.That was like, wow! H said I looked like I really had been deprived of cabinet space, judging by the euforia I was in while putting stuff in the cabinet.

Um, yeah.

In the evening it was sauna time. This time no Swedish sauna, but a proper Finnish sauna with the quicksilver (or ethanol or whatevs) climing on the plus side of 85 degrees C. The ~~gods~~ dogs got washed too. Sauna clean dogs and humans, drowsy and ready for a good night’s sleep.

Actually, everyone else is already sleeping. So I’ll just finnish this post and my wine and go brush my teeth and go to sleep too.