After the long dark and cold winter time, when the rain has melted most of the snow and the sun comes out, warming the world sweetly, the people of these northern hemispheres get out of their little holes and onto their yards, out to the sun, and the world seems to be alive again. After two springs in an appartment building, we have truly been enjoying our own yard with this coming of the sping.

For a while there, I was afraid the snow would never melt, and the temperatures would never rise to tolerable levels again. But of course, I was wrong. Spring comes always. Sometimes earlier, sometimes later, but it comes. It’s not warm enough just yet to have breakfast on the terrace, even though it gets the early sun, partly. But by noon, for the second cup of espresso, the terrace already has warmed sufficiently. Sufficiently to have the backdoon open for several hours, just like all the neighbors have too.

Yesterday we started hauling our summer stuff out of the storage. Those chairs and little garden tables and deck chairs. Half of our terrace was still buried under a huge pile of snow, where all the snow from the drive way had been dumped to all winter long. But there was enough snow-free space there for a couple of those chairs and a table.

The girls scurried out to the yard too to play ball and run around and whatnot. They spotted the water hose and wanted to wash our cars, so that they did! The driveway wasn’t exactly in the sun, and the water was cold, but it didn’t seem to bother the girls. They were having fun! And I was bathing my face in the sun while my boyfriend was potting some herbs there on the yard. Birds were chirping and crocuses were blooming. Perfect!

The one thing we still miss here, is a grill, a barbeque. We both had one in our “previous life”, but none anymore. It’s on our near-future shopping list. We went to the store yesterday and got a bit carried away by the spring, getting some mushrooms and sausages to grill, even though we don’t yet have that grill. We have an old disposable picnic grill, and thought we could just use that one. It wouldn’t burn properly at all, so we ended up cooking the stuff inside. Besides, it was already too cold again to be eating outside anyway.

Today I decided that the mountain of snow simply had to go from our veranda. So I dug in with my shovel and shoveled away like that giant from that story where he says he can move a mountain but he can’t. I guess I don’t have that faith that moves mountains either, so I had to go about it with my shoulder muscles. But I did it! Freed almost the whole veranda. A 40cm deep pile on maybe four square meters. My muscles are sore now!

We also finally got our storage organized, and after that, I was beat! The girls went out to the park to play with the girls next door. They have an amazing amount of energy! They came home screaming hungry, we made some chicken salad, and two of them went back outside. First they planted some dill and chives in our big pots, then they played some football. And whined when at 20:30 I told them it was time to come inside to get ready for bed.

This has truly been a wonderful spring weekend! The first real spring days. With the sun in my face, the girls’ happy voices sounding like music to my ears, I watched my boyfriend – and as of rather recently, my fiancé – potting our thyme, and remembered how he was once playing with words, asking me if I’d be his “partner in thyme” when we were cooking. I can so very easily see him as my partner in time, or thyme 😉 Life is good 🙂

To find something positive instead of whining, the sun is out. Has been lately, except for that storm and some snowfall yesterday too. But even yesterday the sun came out before going down. This morning I woke up to see snowflakes nonchalantly fluttering around again, giving the trees yet another frosting, and the merciless thermometer announced a cruel -12 degrees Celsius. By the time my bus had reached Hakaniemi, the outskirts of the city center, sun was shining through a crack in the clouds, making my mood brighter immediately.

I was almost going to write how at this time of the year, my mind is oocupied by the weather. But while that is true, it’s not the whole truth. My mind is occupied by the weather all year round. Mostly because up here north, it most of the time is not to my liking, making me dream of something else. Dream of warm and sun. Going through life being unhappy about the surrounding weather is hardly my goal in life, or the way I intend to live, but to be happy about it – frankly, I live in the wrong climate. Cold and dark affects my moods in a deeper way than being decidedly unhappy. They depress me.

At this point of the year, it is at its worst. Finns know the consept of “kaamosmasennus”, roughly translated to polar night depression since even the word “kaamos” (allday darkness) does not even exist in English. Finns also know about “kevätväsymys”, spring fatique, that in used to puzzle me (because spring makes me feel alive again) until I realized that 1) I had a different definition for spring than the calendar and 2) it takes time (maybe the longer the older I get) for the winter-drained batteries to collect the sunlight energy into the system again.

So while I start to wilt by mid-Novermber, my mental fatigue is actually worst right here, right now, in “spring” (my definition of true spring would be when the birches get their leaves) when the sun is starting to shine again and the world is seemingly a brighter palce again. Especially if the winter still drags on, despite the sun. Snow keeps coming in instead of melting away and the temperature dips below zero, takes dives to fierce freezing levels (ah, the English language does not know the word “pakkanen” either, the below zero freezing weather) instead of climbing up to defrost the world.

It’s snowing again. It puts me down. Where did the sun go? I want summer! I know it won’t help much to stomp my feet and through a fit. But I feel like doing it anyway. Or crawling back under my blanket and getting up when it’s +30 degrees – which would probably mean several years of huddling in my bed, since many summers the quicksilver never climbs that “high”.

Have I complained enough? More than, I guess. Aside from the sun, all’s well under my (cloud-covered) sun. We Finns say “siitä puhe mistä puute”, roughly “you talk about the things you don’t have”. Sun sweet sun! Sun is essential to life and by all standards, this country gets too little of it. I am sun-deprived.

Snow has been coming down in Helsinki again for days and again. Today the temperature climbed somewhere slightly above zero, though, making the world wet and the downcoming snow sleet, almost rain. Somehow more familiar than these heavy snow winters, that sleet is, even though I can remember winters like this from my childhood too. But my own kids needed to wear some “tecs” when they were small, to avoid being soaking wet all the time.

I had the idea to walk to the store today. But when I stepped out of the door and took a look at all the snow hanging from the roof right above my car again, I knew I needed to move the car to a safer place. So while I had to start the car anyway, we rode it to the store too, wondering on the way, where the h*ll to put my car again, anyway. Our driveway is kinda problematic with all this snow.

For the lack of any better ideas, I left the car on the side of the street, thinking that since the snow was pretty much melting as it landed, ther probably wouldn’t be any snow plows and my Honda would be safe right there. But as it often happens, the temperature started to drop again towards the evening and snow piling on the road, as well as of course on the driveway where it actually had more or less stayed on the ground all day long, on top of the old snow and ice. I needed to come up with a plan B.

In the meantime we had heard the neighbor start pushing the snow on the driveway, and feeling a bit guilty for not shoveling the snow at all for a couple days now, I went out to help him. Except that he wasn’t there anymore, he’d only done a little bit behind our house. So anyway I started pushing the hellishly heavy snow, did as much a I could before I was down with an asthma attack. It gets me every time.

A couple hours had past since this clearing the driveway when I started to think about that plan B. At first, I simply tried to park my car as much to the side as I could so that the neighbors still had enough room to pass. But as soon as I had done that, I noticed that it didn’t really work, so I tried to manouver my car away and maybe take my chances with the snow plows. After all, I am leaving bright and early (what a silly idiom to be using right here and now; it definately is not bright yet at seven, this time of the year).

But. What happened next was what I sort of had been afraid would happen next. My car skidded and slid and slipped until it was diagonally in the uphill driveway, its butt in the snow wall. And not moving to any direction anymore. So I had no other option than to go ask my down-with-the-flu man to help me. And of course he did ❤

So together we shoveled and pushed away a load of snow from all around the car, and then he pushed the car enough for me to get it out of its icy shackles. Then, with the car in the middle of the driveway, we dug into the snow big time. I cut the snow wall on the side of the driveway into chunks of snow and we pushed and shoveled it away to make more space in the yard.

[Somewhere there is a car… not mine, though]

Finally I managed to back my car up right beside the wall in a way that still left room for the neighbors to come and go. I needed to climb out from the passanger side.

After this whole ordeal I was wet and cold to the core, chilled to the bone. I dried my hair as best I could and crawled under my nice thick blanket to defrost. My hair seemed to like the moisture though: it went all perky with corkscrew curls – the only good thing I could come up with about this sleety business… Did I ever mention how much I hate snow and cold?

[Yes, it can be beautiful too]

Some sort of uneasiness and restlessness has parked itself inside of me but I can’t really pin it down. I woke up again from strange dreams, somehow disturbing yet not really bad dreams, several times in the course of the morning hours, starting at five or so. By the time it was seven o’clock and time to get up, I was tired and unhappy. Cappucino and some fried “eggwitches” (with cheddar cheese) made me feel slightly better, boyfriend’s reassuring and empathetic hug and kiss even more so.

Halfway to work the USB drive in my car was done with Aerosmith and started playing Alanis Morissette, the old album Jagged Little Pill that I used to listen to back when I was working on my Master’s and used to go to this gym in our appartment building for a midday workout. The lyrics came flowing from the back of my head even though I haven’t listened to those songs for at least ten years, probably more.

Somehow Alanis’ Hand in My Pocket fit my morning mood quite well. The world’s not ready yet, I’m not ready yet, life is in constant change and I don’t have to have everything figured out just yet.

I’ve got one hand in my pocket, and the other one is holding a coffee cup 😉

[grrr… I couldn’t even figure out how to embed the video here; the embedded iframe did not work!]