Bunnies! Aww, I love to watch bunnies!

7.10.20237.10.2023 MarilkaLeave a comment

I now have two rabbit tattoos. I once mentioned to my tattoo artist that I’m a rabbit-person, when admiring a little rabbit ornament on her shelf. While she was inking March Hare to my calf, she asked: “So what is it then with you and rabbits?” Yeah, what is it with me and rabbits?

My first tattoo ever, taken in June, 2002

[From 2002-2020 my tattoo count increased bit by bit from 1 to 8. During the past 3 years I’ve gotten 10 more, added a bit to one older one, and in two weeks will have one more inked, last one for now. Yeah, things kinda escalated in the autumn of 2020…]

So, let’s see. Me and rabbits. Those soft and furry long-eared creatures with a quivery nose and big front teeth. Even though I have dogs, terriers, and am very much a terrier person (oh, I’m really just an animal person, I love animals and will bond with any animals I encounter as much as possible), I was a rabbit person first (despite growing up with a terrier) and will be a rabbit person forever.

I think the very initial rabbit fancy started when I learned as a kid that I was born in the Chinese year of the Rabbit. That would supposedly make me gentle and loving, creative, compassionate and sensitive, stubborn and hot-headed. And while I can totally see myself here, I DON’T see all of my same year born peers there So, you know 🤷‍♀️ Still, I was born in the year of the rabbit. In my mind, it made a rabbit, of sorts.

Still, the actual infatuation came via real living bunnies. We got our first rabbit when I was 9 years old, thanks to my sister’s persistancy. I loved her, our “Pupu” (really, our imaginative name for her was simply “Bunny”, in Finnish), she was my dear sweet friend. I took care of her to her quite untimely death; she was sick for the last few months of her less than 3-year-old life. I mourned for years. And I started collecting rabbits. In any and every form. Little ornaments, cards, everyday items with rabbit patterns, you name it. Rabbits became my obsession.

Pupu
(or Vanha Pupu, Old Bunny, as we started to refer to her after getting the next ones)
Pupu was a huge “country rabbit”, “maatiaiskani”, as the farmer we got her from put it. She was a pure white albino, with red eyes and all, as an adult the size of a cat. Looking at the Wikipedia rabbit breed page, I note that she quite resembled the Blanc de Bouscat, but the farmer knew nothing of this. Not that any of us cared. She was our sweet bunny, breeds be damned.

Pupu lived in our kitchen, where she had her cage with food and hay and water, but was allowed to run free; in the night time and while alone at home restricted to the kitchen, in the daytime when there were people at home she had free reign of the entire apartment. In the evenings, she liked to snuggle with me in bed, until my lights out, when mom took her to the kitchen. I would whisper my secrets to her, and take solace in her soft neck fur when feeling agitated, which was often. Neurodivergent (though never even heard the term back then), teased in school, my life was not all happy happy joy joy growing up.

Even though Sis was the one who wanted it and whose wish was granted, it was me who was appointed to cage cleaning duty, and poop collecting duty, and later on poop cleaning duty, when she was sick and her stomach was permanently loose. I was a bit grumbly about this, but 1) I did understand that my 4yo sister was too young, and 2) in the end, I very rarely minded it for real, because she was my best friend.

Pupu came to us as a “small” kit, in quotations because even then she was already the size of a “regular house bunny adult”, if that is a thing; I believe everyone can sort of understand the concept. Maybe. Anyway, as said, she grew up to be huge, and being a female, she also grew a huge bag under her chin, a dewlap. She was an active family member, liked to be where the peeps were, was social and snuggly and most certainly very bonding.

One of Pupu’s favorite activities was to “organize” our dry laundry, which our ND family simply dumped on the sofa from the drier to await the moment when mom either was in the mood to sort them out or (more likely) ordered me to take care of the pile. Either way, the pile of clothes often stayed on the sofa for days, bunny “sorting” it in her leisure, which obviously resulted in all our clothes having little holes from the rabbit teeth. When she died, I revered those holes; they were a long-lasting memory of my bunny.

In February of 1987 mom took me to Japan to visit the family of my best (human) friend; they lived in Tokyo for a year or so at the time. We were away a mere week, or 10 days, but while we were gone, Pupu refused to eat. She missed us, the two family members who were her main caretakers and feeders. This resulted in her getting sick. Dad took her to the vet, but for some odd quirk of luck and life, the vet misweighed her, giving her too small of a dose of the antibiotics.

So, instead of getting better, she developed an ear infection, which caused balance issues, which broke her heels, which got infected and despite everything we/the vet tried during the following months, the infection spread to her organs and we had to put her to sleep. She wasn’t quite 3 years old yet. I cired for years. Seriously. And promised myself never to get animals again, never to get attached again. I’m both glad and sorry not to have kept that promise, but losing my furry babies has never gotten any easier and I dread the moment our dogs start dying..

Pupu, 1984-1987

Some 5 or so years later, when I was 17, my dear sister hit again and smuggled two baby bunnies home from my godmother’s “bunny farm” (she got a mini bunny and a floppy eared bunny and they were supposed to be of the same sex, but oops, they weren’t and next thing she knew, she had 80 bunnies in the barn of her parents’ old manor in the countryside) and I was sold again. My Jeri was a bit of a bull terrier of a rabbit, really, and in no time at all I was fully bonded with him. People often forget or don’t realize it, but dogs really aren’t the only animals with personalities and ability to bond with people. Cats do too. Rabbits do too. Rats do too. And so forth. And me and Jeri, we were bonded.

Unfortunatly Jeri needed to be returned to the farm only two years later when I got married. I couldn’t take him with me (when the marriage was unraveling 14-15 years later, this was quite high on my list of resentments, for I did want to take Jeri; he forbid), and he couldn’t stay with mom and Sara due to him terrorising the house and fighting with Sara’s Jami, even after being neutered. So Jeri went back to live at the bunny farm and my heart was broken. I believe his was too, at first, from what I heard, but fortunately for them, bunnies have a shorter memory than us humans.

Jeri lived quite happily for two more years there on the farm with a bunch of other bunnies, though not 80 or so anymore at that point; closer to 10 or 20 retirees. In the end he died of heartbreak, after his best pal ran off and probably got eaten by a fox. Jeri mourned and stopped eating, withered away, at not quite four years of age.

Jeri and Jami
(Jeri: Jercy, Jercyrotta, Jercyrat, Jerry Cotton, Tamiilikamiina / Jami: Jamsi, Jasmine, James Bond)

Jercy and Jamsi (because that is what we mostly called them, instead of their “official” names – as official as a bunny’s name gets i.e. what read in the vet’s papers) were tiny baby boys when they were smuggled to our home. Small enough to fit on the palm of my hand (one at a time). Jamsi was fully white, Jercy gray as a kit, but turned brown when he grew up. Both were of moderate size, maybe 4kg at most.

I originally wanted to have the white one, Jamsi, for the memory of Vanha Pupu, but Sis was adamant: she looted the bunnies, she gets to choose, the white one is hers. I had been taught to be the older and the wiser so yes, I gave up (my normal strategy with Sis was to first want the thing I didn’t want, so when she wanted it, I could gallantly give it up and actually get what I really wanted, but in this case, my emotions ran hot and took over). In the end, I was happy having Jercy. I would’ve loved Jamsi just the same, but Jercy’s nature matched mine better.

Jamsi grew up timid and calm, probably mostly due to being partly blind. His eyes turned a peculiar violet when he grew up and according to the vet, he was most probably quite bad-sighted, if not blind. What the ailment was exactly, we never knew or I don’t remember, but with it (and maybe just the way he was born), he was the sweetest gentlest little creature, and lived a good full bunny life with my sister.

Jamsi died a few months before Jercy, in the spring when Jercy died in early summer. Sis had to make the tough decision to put her sweet boy to sleep when he fell quite severely ill. The summer before that he was still very much alive though, but gave me a bad scare. Sis and mom were both away for a couple of weeks, so I took care of Jamsi, visiting him on my way to work at Linnanmäki amusement park where I had my summer job. While I was in charge, he got the sniffles, and I needed to take him to the vet, and was scared shitless that he would die in my care! Those sniffles didn’t kill him thoug; instead, to my utter relief, turned out quite harmless.

Jercy, on the other hand, was quite different. He was a fierce alpha male, who started fighting for dominance with Jamsi, as luck would have it, while Sis and I were at my then boyfriend’s family cottage for our autumn break. Up to that point the boys had shared a cage, but after Jercy beat up poor Jamsi quite badly, they were separated: Jamsi to Sis’ room, Jercy to the combo of our small kitchen and my adjacent small bedroom. Needless to say, they never roamed the house free, but were allowed free roam of their respective territories.

Jercy spent the nights in the kitchen because I was a light sleeper even in my teens and Jercy was night-active as bunnies are wont to be. I the daytime, while I was at school, he had both rooms to himself. When Sis came from school, usually before me, she was faced with the task of shooing Jercy to my room, behind a closed door, while she got a snack, for my tiny warrior-bunny attacked Sis (who permanently smelled like Jamsi) as soon as she stepped into the kitchen. Sis came up with all sorts of tactics that included e.g. my tall rubber boots, and usually succeeded in this dangerous quest.

Usually. However, it wasn’t an unusual occurence either, that Sis would call our mom at work: “Mom, come save me! I’m in the living room, held hostage by Jeri!”. If Jercy managed to slip out of the kitchen, Sis ran to the living room and closed the door behind her, after snatching the phone with her; the phone table was right next to the living room door, on the other side, though.

And my rubber boots, then. I still have the same pair of the tall Kontio-boots I had back then (since I was 14yo; back then Nokia still made proper quality rubber boots). Those boots of mine are the last remaining physical memory I have of Jercy. All the hoodies and tees he chewed have long been disposed of, but my rubber boots will probably last until I die. And bear the mark of Jercy: he once managed to bite through them, so I patched them with my bicycle patch kit and while I never would’ve guessed, that patch-work still holds as strong as ever, just like the boots.

With me, Jercy was a loving and devoted baby boy, much like Ace-mah-bully-boy is now. When I came home from school, he hopped happily around my ankles, nearly tripping me many-a-day. If I was away for the evening, I could be sure to find a protest pee in my bed (despite my best attempts at building walls to prevent this; he always found a way to get over them).

If I spent multiple evenings in a row with my friends, away doing whatever, third or fourth evening at the latest, I would find Jercy hiding under my desk drawers, refusing to come out no matter what. This always broke my heart, so I was constantly torn between having my “own life” and spending time at home with my baby-bunny. Needless to say, Jercy always came around and forgave me. Next day it was all forgotten and my lettuce offering gone from the floor, munched away in the dark of the night.

The only time I ever got hit by my “killer-rabbit” (as my classmates dubbed Jercy after the incident) myself, was this one time I was sitting on our sofa next to mom, Jercy calmly in my arms, and Sis had the audacity to approach! She came to tell us something, I guess, stepping one step too close for Jercy’s liking. Jeri went nuts, struggled to get out of my arms, but I held on tight. So he bit the closest thing he could, which just so happened to be my cheek. Unlike the bite scars I have on my hands from both Meggie and Timmy (quite similar situations of confusion and fight-whatever-comes-close), Jercy’s bite didn’t leave a mark on my cheek. Goes without saying, I would’ve carried the scar proudly.

Jercy, 1992-1996 / Jamsi 1992-1996

Jeri & Jami on a piano stool the day they came

So, my career with bunnies ended with this second heartbreak of taking Jercy back to the barn where he was born (though to be honest, I had another heartbreak and mourning time when I learned of his death, despite the distance and not having seen him for a long time).

Nonetheless, or maybe even more so because, I still collect rabbits. I don’t have my card collection anymore, nor do I have all of the little proceline etc. rabbits that I used to have, but rabbits are all around our house and I stil try to find a new rabbit item from each trip, as my own little souvenir. I have bunny mugs, bunny plates, bunny figurines (of all sorts of materials), bunny lamps, bunny hooks, bunny pictures on the walls, bunny “statues”, bunny soft toys… you name it. Kids always laughed when their friends came to visit and were like: “Hmm, your mom seems to like rabbits”. Yeah, no kiddin’, right

Be it due to Chinese horoscope (krhm, not) or those two way too brief times of having a bunny in my life, I have always identified with rabbits in general. They’re quirky, bouncy (ah, ADHD), loving, intelligent, alert, even fierce. Rabbits are my totem animal. Or one of them anyway, the initial one. That’s why my artowrk page is Artzy Bunny. That’s why I paint and draw rabbits so much, always have. That’s why my first tattoo was a rabbit and my “We’re all mad here” tattoo is March Hare, not Chesire Cat. I am rabbit.

So, that’s the deal with me and rabbits.

P.S. The title of this post is a Snoopy quote. Back when I was a teen I had this desktop cover mat of solid color (boring!), so I decorated it with all sorts of pics and whatnots. One of the things there (the only one I remember, actually), was this comic strip cut from a daily paper, where Snoopy had gone missing and Chuck finally found him at the mall, looking at bunnies through the window of a pet shop. Snoopy had the bubble explaining his absence: “Pupuja! Ooh, minusta on ihanaa katsella pupuja!” – “Bunnies! Aww, I love to watch bunnies!”. I have tried and failed, multiple times over the years, to find this strip on the Internet. Not found. Total Internet fail.

My body, my positive

1.10.20231.10.2023 Marilka1 Comment

I have no before and after pics. Or rather, I have no real before pic, because I shied away from the camera – except for face only selfies or photos where I’m bundled up in winter gear like an eskimo – for the most part when I was overweight. A couple of on-the-way pics are available, but for the before pic, the one from September of 2020 will have to do (I don’t know exactly, but I think last autumn I even had 6-8kg more than in the autumn of 2020). So here, before – getting there – there (or so, for I’d still like to go down 1 more kilo, but it’s a very inconsequential kilo, really, just the last bit of flab to be rid of).

I have now ~~lost~~ gotten rid of thirty-fucking-five kilos in these past 10 months. 35kg. That’s damn near 80lbs (77,2) for you non-metric peeps on the other side of the Atlantic. And I feel good. My overall health is good. My liver values are not hovering on the border anymore, my energy levels are back to my “normal”, I feel like myself again. Sure, there’s a bunch of mental shit bundled into the equation of me, too, but getting some of that resolved was the key to getting my body back in shape too.

I’m all for body positivity. I mean, the most important thing is to be able accept yourself, to embrace your body as yours and be healthy. Needless to say, while I maintained my style (though changing things to hide the fat as well as possible), I was not positive about my obese torso, nor will I ever be, or even aspire to be, My body, my positivity. I decide when and in what shape my body is good. Isn’t that what body positivity is all about?

Sometimes it feels like it means that you shouldn’t strive to do anything about your body because you’re good as you are. But it’s not always true! However, it IS up to each person to decide. To love yourself, to love your body, is to want what’s best for it. And for me, it’s keeping my weight and my size here where I am again. Where I was for a decade, until shit hit the fan in our lives and stuff got out of hand, and for some years, I lacked the mental capacity to do anything about my weight gain. All I could do was to accept that it was happening and mourn the slim me until it was time to turn around again.

I was never a skinny kid, nor a skinny teen, nor will I ever be a skinny adult. I wasn’t overweight either, just average, with natural muscle. But when you’re not a skinny kid/teen, you’re automatically fat. Because kids are idiots. Some of them grow out of it, some don’t. So anyway, I was called fat my entire school life. I guess it was the easiest hate-word those idiots around me could come up with, for a bit strange neurodivergent not-skinny kid in their midst.

So I started to think myself fat. And became ashamed of my perfectly normal size body. At twelve, I stopped eating pasta and pancakes and white bread to lose some weight. Interestingly intuitive for a 12yo, since (fast) carbs are my worst enemy, as I came to understand as an adult. I did lose some, but not a whole lot. Not that I needed to, and I guess I had sense enough to understand that I never would be skinny like the others and didn’t need to be.

It is true, that I gain weight super-easy – I call my genes the survivor genes, because my body tries to hold on to every calory I eat. Those damned carbs are the bane of my existance, because they pretty much suffocate my ability to understand when I’m hungry, or when I’ve had enough, and so I just keep on eating too much to feel full and my portions get bigger and bigger and my sugar addiction ramps up and… It just slips. Thus, it’s better for me to keep away from medium to high glycemic index foods, which is what I really mean when I say carbs.

Just a few links for you, to understand what I’m talking about:

What Is the Glycaemic Index (GI)?
Glycemic Index Chart for Common Foods
In Finnish: Hyvinvointia ruuasta eli mitä syö ihminen joka ei syö perunaa, pastaa, puuroa…

For weightloss, there’s multiple factors and it’s not so simple – medications and medical conditions included – nor is there one way that suits all. To me, it’s always been more intuition than science; I found the science behind my “system” only after I was already there.

My weight-loss system put simply: I don’t eat carbs (see above), my daily intake of calories is less than I use (I have never really counted calories, so it’s purely instinct), and I only eat once or twice a day. Because in the end, I’m really not even hungry more often than that. I don’t really force anything – though the beginning is a rather slow and decisive process to ramp down from the carbs and overeating – I simply guide myself to what I know is healthy for me, and then start listening to my body again when the carbs aren’t there to lie to me anymore. And the thing is, when I get those carbs out of my system, I really don’t crave them anymore. In fact, they don’t taste good to me anymore, even.

Upkeep? More of the same except I eat a bit more. Still not more than I need in general, but obviously not less either. Carby stuff can be eaten sometimes, just not on a regular basis. Though, that’s the case even now. I have no forbidden foods, I eat what I want. It’s just that I’ve molded my want to what my body wants in order to stay healthy. If it makes sense. Point being that weight loss or weight upkeep has never been a struggle for me. Not when I’ve been ready for it. When I wasn’t, it didn’t happen. And as much as I’d like to swear that I won’t ever gain weight again, there’s no guarantee.

Getting back to being happy with one’s body. I can easily promise I will never be happy being overweight. To me it represents the slippery slope to major obesity, to health issues that are just incredulous, to something I can never let myself slide into. So even when I do gain some, even a lot, there will always come the point of turning back before I’m too far gone. I watched my mom eat herself to death, even though in the end that’s not what she died of. To me, obesity is the ultimate form of unhappiness with one’s self and there is nothing positive – body or otherwise – to me about it.

So what’s my point? Be happy in your body. If you’re not, do something about it. If you can’t do without help, ask for it, be it medical or some other form of help. What works for me, may or may not work for you, we are all different. I’m lucky that my husband is actually similar in this weight loss/control as me (as well as tastes in food), which makes it easy for us to help each other, while also easy for us to slip and slide together.

Top: September 2022. Bottom: September 2023

As an end note of sorts. The one cool thing about this getting back to slim after years of weight gain is that I (well, we, both of us really) got to renew my wardrobe practically entirely. Maybe 10% (not counting shoes) of my current wardrobe is old – some dresses even from my former slim years – but everything else is new. Expensive? Sure. Rewarding? Oh, hell yeah 😂 I’m loving it! I love to be back to the size I, in my mind, should be and feel best in.

Summer as it’s supposed to be

31.7.202331.7.2023 MarilkaLeave a comment

Which really has not been the case much this summer. We had a nice little heatwave in June, but the entire July has been a jacket-July. Cloudy, rainy, windy, cold. I’ve never worn jeans in the summer as much as this July. Nor have a worn my summer dresses as little as this July.

So the moments of summer as it’s supposed to be are gems to be beheld. Like yesterday. It wasn’t really hot or anything, but a gentle 23-25C, with the sun out and only some wisps of clouds in the sky. I donned my long light semi-sleeve dress with an open back and slipped my feet into some sandals, and left my jackets home, as we packed ourselves into the car for a little roadtrip.

As usual, our roadtrip took us west along the coastline. It could’ve been a day for Hanko or Tammisaari, even, but we had other plans for the late afternoon and evening. So we drove down to Inkoo. An ant’s spit of a place in size, it has a church, an S-market (grocery store) pharmacy, a couple of artisan shops 💜that were surprisingly closed yesterday, a museum house area, and a nice harbor with some restaurants and a dog-friendly coffee shop.

For reasons (of limited daylight, mostly) we have twice visited Inkoo in late autumn/early winter. Wanting to go somewhere, but not enough daylight to go too far. This was our first visit during the summer, when there’s actually some life in the town, thanks to all the boats venturing into the pictureque harbor.

With the sun high in the sky we parked next to the Café Wilhelmsdahl and selected a table with half shade, half sun – shade for H, sun for me. Cappucinos for us, water for the dogs, and a lunch of smoked salmon pie and carrot cake. Oh, right, doggos didn’t get any of the pie and cake, but they did get some meaty stick snacks.

I love the atmosphere, the ambiance, of Café Wilhemsdahl be it winter or summer, whether we sit inside or out on the terrace. There is something serene and warm about it. The personnel is friendly and kind, they like the furry four-legged visitors instead of merely tolerating them, the coffee is good, same with everything I’ve ever eaten there. It’s cosy and homey. The café alone is worth the visit, in my opinion!

Once we’d finished our lunch, we took a walk around the harbor. How different it is in the summer when boats are docked, others come and go, there’s people milling about, instead of ice and snow! The only disappointment was the closed artisan shops, well at least the Kiurunpesä curiosity shop next to Wilhelmsdahl was closed. So we just hopped back in our car and drove home.

Sun was still high and the sky still blue as we got home around three. H went to prepare the grill while I prepared a couple of chickens for the rotisserie before changing into some bikinis and settling into my terrace chair to read in the sun.

I had a good hour or so of direct sun left in my hanging egg chair before the sun disappeared behind some tall trees at the edge of our yard. Even then, the air didn’t turn cold, so I was comfortable in my chair as H tended to the grill with the chickens roasting on their skewer. “This is what summer is supposed to be like”, I noted to H.

Finally, when the chickens were done, I pulled on a short mid-sleeve dress over my bikinis and helped with the doors as H brought the grilled goodness inside. The chickens were crispy and emanating such a delicious smell that I literally started salivating and decided to leave the chair covering to a later point in time, when my belly is full of chicken.

Needless to say, I suppose, that I forgot the chair. We ate. We took dogs out. I read some more in the library. We took the dogs out again and retired to the bedroom. I read some more, until I fell asleep. So then, this morning, everything was soaked. Of all the times to forget to cover the chair, I obviously selected the time when it then proceeded to rain cats and dogs all night long or something.

Not that it matters too much that the chair pillows are wet (and drying on the heated floor in the bathroom). It’s not like today would be a day to sit outside reading anyway. It’s not raining anymore, but it’s cloudy with all of 18 degrees C. It’s back to jacket-July, for one more day anyway. Then it’s jacket-August.

While the rest of the world roasts, we here have had a cold airmass all summer long. We’re so close to the North Pole, that while the hot air has been enmassing elsewhere, it’s pulled the cold on top of us from the North. Or something. This summer makes me sing. “I was cheated by you, and I think you know when!” And yet, “just one look and I forget everything!” when the sun is out for one day.

Despite the weather, however, the summer’s been quite good. Good times with family, little sailing cruises of Schooner Kathrina in Helsinki archipelago, birthday parties, reading and resting and taking it easy. My vacation is half done, half to go still. The weather I cannot influence, but everything else in my summer I can 🌞

More photos of this summer in Flickr

Lapsuus/Childhood – Q&A

5.2.20235.2.2023 MarilkaLeave a comment

Tämä on taas näitä Facebookin kysymyspattereita. Ja koska minusta on hauska näihin vastata, vastaan. Ja vein tietenkin tämänkin askeleen pitemmälle, kuvin.

**This is one of those Facebook Q&A thingys, and because I find them fun, I answer. And of course I had to take this one step further and add pics.

1. Missä synnyit?
**Where were you born?

– Naistenklinikalla Helsingissä.
**In Helsinki, at Naistenklinikka

2. Onko sinulla sisaruksia?
**Do you have siblings?

– 6v nuorempi pikkusisko
**a sister, 6 years my junior

Ihmettelen siinä vastasyntynyttä siskoani – Looking at my newborn sister with bewilderment

3. Olitko päivähoidossa?
**Were you in daycare

– En, mutsi teki freelancerina töitä himassa
**No, my mom worked as a freelancer from home

4. Oliko teillä lemmikkejä?
**Did you have pets

– Yhteensä kolme kania; yksi kun olin ala-astella, kaksi ollessani lukiossa
**3 bunnies altogether; one when I was in elementary school, 2 when I was in highschool

5. Muistatko aikaa, kun ei vielä ollut lapsilla turvaistuimia?
**Do you still remeber a time before kiddie seats in cars?

– Toki, minua nukutettiin auton takapenkillä skidinä, kun olin huono nukahtamaan sänkyyn. Takapenkillä ei tainnut siinä Minissä olla edes turvavöitä.
**Sure, I was not good at falling asleep and my parents used to put me on the backseat of the car, lying there under a blanket. I don’t think that Mini even had seatbelts in the back

6. Oliko sinulla mielilelua?
**Did you have a favorite toy

– Jose-koira, ehkä. Jose kävi jopa eläinlääkärissä, missä ell Ilves tutki myös Josen tutkittuaan ensin isoäidin koiran Dellan. Tai ehkä nukke nimeltä Jerry, jolle isoäiti ompeli samanlaisia asuja kuin minulle. Tai ehkä nalle tai apina tai mutsin tekemä kummajainen, kuka enää tietää
**A dog called Jose, maybe. Jose even went to the vet where the Vet Ilves examined Jose after first examining my grandma’s dog Della. Or maybe a doll called Jerry, for whom my grandma made similar outfits as for me. Or maybe the teddy or monkey or this oddity made by my mom, who knows anymore

Leluja, Jenny saa maitoa – Toys, Jenny is getting some milk

7. Muistatko mitä sinusta piti tulla isona?
**Do you remeber what you were supposed to be when you grew up?

– Aika pitkään meinasin että lääkäri. Siinä teini-iän kynnyksellä haaveena oli eläintenhoitaja-tanssija-näyttelijä-kirjailija-kombo
**For a long time I wanted to be a doctor. Then at pre-teen or so I dreamed of becoming a combo of animal carer-dancer-actress-athor

8. Olitko ns. näkymätön kiltti lapsi vai jokapaikan apina?
**Were you a so called good invisible child or a rambunctious monkey?

– Sekä että. Jokapaikan apina, joka oppi jo nuorena vetämään ylleen kiltin tytön kaavun
**Both. A rambunctious monkey who learned early on to pull on the good girl cape

Se oon minä tuolla puussa – That’s me in the tree

9. Kuljitko pihalla kotiavain kaulassa roikkuen?
**Did you have a key hanging from your neck when playing outside?

– En, mutsi oli himassa kunnes olin 9 ja siinä vaiheessa avain oli taskussa kasarityyliin vaaleanpunaisella kierreketjulla vai mikä se oli
**No, mom was at home until I was 9, and at that point my keys were in my pocket attached to a pink eighties style twirly phone chain or whatsitcalled

11. Lempilastenohjelmasi?
**Your favorite kids’ TV show?

– Pätkis eli Smurffit
**Pätkis, i.e. The Smurfs

12. Muistatko ensimmäistä koulupäivääsi?
**Do you remeber your first day in school

– Jep. Valitettavasti. Olin potenut kipeää mahaa (jännityksestä) niin että aloitin koulun varsinaisesti pari päivää myöhässä, kesken koulupäivän. Olin siis outolintu alusta saakka.
**Yup. Unfortunately. I had been sick with a stomach ache (from anxiety) so I actually started school a couple days late, in the middle of the day. I was an oddball fron the very beginning.

Ensimmäisenä koulupäivänä – First day of school

13. Keräilitkö jotain?
**Did you collect something?

– Kiiltokuvia, pyyhekumeja (kasari…), tarroja
**Kiiltokuvas (the best translation I found was “die cut scrap”, but can’t very well imagine any kids using that; anyhow, definition: glossy and usually embossed little pictures, kinda like pre-stickers, that usually came in a sheet, and girls collected them in their scrap books), erasers (oh, the eighties…), stickers

Kiiltokuva-arkki – A sheet of kiiltokuvat

14. Mikä oli lempiaineesi alaluokilla?
**What was your favorite subject in elementary school?

– Oliko mulla lempiainetta? Lukutunneista tykkäsin, ja kuviksesta varmaan.
**Did I have one? I liked reading and art classes, I suppose.

15. Olitko koulukiusaaja?
**Were you a bully

– En. Olin se kiusattu
**No. I was the one bullied

16. Harrastitko jotain? Mitä?
**Did you have hobbies? What?

– Kuuden vanhana yleisurheilua VU:n väreissä, partiota ala-asteen ajan, about. Pianoa soitin pari vuotta. Lukemista, kirja tai pari päivässä parhaina aikoina.
**At six years old I was part of the VU track and field team for a year or so. I was a girl scout for a few years while in elementary school. I played piano for a coupole years. I read books, lots of books. A book or two a day at best.

Pieni Viipurin Urheilija – Little athlete

17. Ystäväsi
**Your friends

Aina niitä jokunen oli, kirjekavereita enemmän kuin livekavereita
**I always had some. More pen pals that IRL friends

18. Mieluisin muistosi jostain ensiluokkien tapahtumasta?
**Your favorite memory of something during the first school years

– Ensi-pusu: ekaluokkalaisena ihastukseni asui samassa talossa ja leikittiin usein pihalla yhdessä. Erään kerran leikittiin tuijotusta ja ihastukseni pussasi minua saadakseen minut nauramaan. Onnistuikin.
**First kiss: when we were on first grade my crush lived in the same appartment building as me and we often played together in the yard. Once we were playing stare and he gave me a smooch to make me laugh. And succeeded.

19. Minkälainen oli ensimmäinen opettajasi?
**What was your first teacher like?

– Tiukka nunna, varmaan liki kuusikymppinen. En tykännyt
**A strict nun, probably almost sixty years old. I didn’t like her.

20. Oliko vanhemmillasi tiukka kuri?
**Were your parents strict?

– Oli. Siksi kiltin tytön kaapu.
**Yes. That’s the reason for the good girl cape

21. Miten perheesi lomaili?
**How did your family spend vacations?

– Enimmäkseen isovanhempieni mökeillä (järvenrannalla toinen, Nauvossa saaressa toinen)
**Mostly at my grandparents’ summer places (one by a lake, one in an island at sea)

22. Lempiruokaasi natiaisena oli?
**What was your favorite food as a kiddo?

– Siskonmakkarakeitto
**Sausage soup

23. Tupakoitiinko teillä vielä sisätiloissa?
**Did your parents smoke indoors?

– Jep, mutsi poltti töitä tehdessään kun olin skidi, mutta lopetti ollesani varmaan neljän vanha
**Yeah, mom was smoking indoors while working when I was small, but stopped entirely when I was maybe four years old

9y ANniversary

15.1.202315.1.2023 Marilka1 Comment

Yep, it’s been 9 years since that fucker was removed from my head, mostly. I had my most recent MRI checkup a year ago, and the remnants were stable, the same as they’d been ever since the first MRI after the surgery. It think the dr said we can have the next MRI in 5 years, then even 10 if everything looks good (and no new symptoms appear).

Last year I listed in my FB post (and my Healing Diary page) the things that define my new normal, as in, what it is for me to be an AN warrior, in a nutshell:

My right ear compensates the deafness of the left one rather nicely, but I still don’t usually have any clue as to the origin or direction of sounds.
Tinnitus is a life-long companion, but I’ve learned to live with it.
Balance is sort of ok, but I do side-step A LOT.- I get tired easily, especially if I need to concentrate on balance or hearing.
Headaches, check.
Fuzzy brain symptoms, mainly some amount of dyslexia, forgetting simple words, being confoozled at times, all the while having the sharp problem solving mind I’ve always had. Sort of a conundrum.
Sensory overload – when it happens it’s instant and nearly causes a panic attack and I just need to get away.

Let’s visit these in a bit more detail, or put more meat on the bones, as we say in Finnish.

Hearing – SSD

“My right ear compensates the deafness of the left one rather nicely, but I still don’t usually have any clue as to the origin or direction of sounds.”

There are moments when I hear things my husband doesn’t, because my right ear hears perfectly given the chance (ie. little or no background noise), while my husband has some high frequency hearing loss in both ears. Then there are moments when I try to understand what he means when he says that the weather won’t get freezing again until “up cider”.

Quite often my brain figures out what was said, but it takes a few seconds to register properly. I ask “what” but then reply accordingly even before he has a chance to repeat, but I think that’s more related to my ADHD than SSD. But then there’s the cases where words get jumbled on their way to my ear, due to wind, rain, faucet, dog barking, too much distance, whatever. I hear something totally strange and cannot figure out what was said for real.

Up cider == next Friday 🤦‍♀️

Things that are impossible for me:

Making out words spoken (or shouted) from the other room (doors closed in between)
Making out anything while working in the kitchen for there’s always something: water running, dishwasher running, fan blasting, stuff sizzling in a pan…
Finding the source of a sound, e.g. where my phone or airpods are when trying to ping-locate them
Understanding where a person is, when they answer “Here!” to my question of where they are

Hearing 99% of people talking on my wrong side, ie. left side, because usually people talk VERY quietly around here
Being able to hold a conversation in a noisy environment with a group of people; I can pick out words or sentences here and there and participate sporadically
Talking on the phone while dogs are barking
Using computer audio in meetings – the quality is so poor that I lose syllables

Tinnitus

“Tinnitus is a life-long companion, but I’ve learned to live with it.”

There’s the high-pitch A. And a less aubible mid E. And then the low hum. Sometimes I hear music. Sometimes it’s instrumental, sometimes there’s also “vocals”. It’s like hearing lyrics in a foreign language; you know they’re words but they make no sense. Sometimes I think I hear an airplane, but then it doesn’t pass. Sometimes I think a helicopter is hovering above our house, except that there’s no helicopter.

It’s often difficult for me to understand if a sound is in my head or actually outside my head. I try to block my good ear, but then THAT causes a humming noise that further blocks everything else; so not helpful at all.

At home, in relative silence, the tinnitus is ok and I mostly forget about it. In noisy environments it can get so loud it alone causes a sensory overload and I need to flee. If I can’t get away immediately, I try closing my eyes, to block at least the visual input, and block my hearing ear to muffle the sounds, but in the end, I really just need to go. To the toilet, if no other option is available, but preferably outside, away from it all. And ultimately back home to my peaceful refuge.

The only thing that really covers the tinnitus, is blasting music on full volume to my good ear with my airpod. Even my brain can’t compete with that, for some reason.

Balance

“Balance is sort of ok, but I do side-step A LOT.- I get tired easily, especially if I need to concentrate on balance or hearing.”

I went out to eat with my youngest kid (a couple months shy of 20yo) the other day. We met at Forum, this shopping mall in the center of Helsinki, and decided to walk a kilometer or so in the slush (remember, it won’t freeze again until up cider, and it’s been raining water and sleet for over a week and the streets were a goddamn mess) to a kebab joint because daughter really wanted a good kebab.

She grabbed my arm as we were walking, telling me she didn’t want me to fall down. I was a bit offended, told her I’m not about to fall down, I can walk perfectly well on my own, thank you very much! She told me that she’s not taking any risks after I allegedly stumbled several times on curbs and kept sidestepping constantly. “It’s a bit difficult in this slush, but I’m fine!” I argued. “You were walking sideways even in Forum, on solid floors,” she retorted and held on. And I let her, if only because it felt nice.

Yes, I do sidestep all. The. Time. I couldn’t walk a straight line if my life depended on it. Trust me, I’ve tried. Basically every time I walk alone to our front door, down our little walkway built of bricks, I TRY. I try to walk a straight line along the bricks, but every time I fail after a few steps. And walking the dogs I need to wear shoes that allow me to occasionally step into the mossy forest, because it’s impossible for me to stay on a narrow path.

Climbing on ladders while doing renovation stuff at home? Dangerous. At least after a few hours when I’m tired. And I really do tire of anything physical in only a few hours time. Most likely because I need to constantly focus on keeping my balance while working in spaces and places and holding tools still etc.

Headaches

“Headaches, check”

These actually come and go. I guess a year ago I had a worse headache time going on, which probably was one of the reasons I got my MRI checkup a bit early (I remember asking for it instead of waiting until later in the spring when it was due anyway). Sometimes I have daily headaches for weeks and months on end, sometimes nothing for even longer. Right now I’m quite happily headache free.

Anomic aphasia

“Fuzzy brain symptoms, mainly some amount of dyslexia, forgetting simple words, being confoozled at times, all the while having the sharp problem solving mind I’ve always had. Sort of a conundrum.”

This seems to be getting worse by and by. And it’s not actually dyslexia but most probably anomic apahasia.

I am verbally talented, I have always been verbally talented, having a vast vocabulary in my two main languages (Finnish and English) since a young age (earning me comments about how I’m so precocious) and picking up new languages easily. Now I can barely speak either of those two languages properly anymore. I’ve long called myself semi-lingual (or, the better version I saw a while ago somewhere: bye-lingual), because I keep forgetting words in BOTH languages equally.

At some point I thought it was due to my home language changing to English and Finnish becoming sort of the secondary language in my life (though, ok, work language and also spoken with my kids), when I moved together with my now husband in 2012. But more probably my lingual decline has to do with the AN and/or the surgery. My husband often files my speech problems away as “English not being my native language” (though I’ve spoken it since I was 5 years old; it was my school language). What he doesn’t see (hear) is that I encounter the same problems in Finnish. So yes, it’s a systemic issue, not related to one language or the other.

It’s difficult for me to really pinpoint when this issue started, so I’m not sure if it was already due to having that tumor bugger in my head or if it was caused by the surgery. Hell, it could even STILL be caused by the tumor remnants in my head, for all I know.

All I know is that the issue is gradually getting worse. Usually aphasia caused by surgery is temporary and subsides within months or a year or so. But sometimes it persists. It’s rare-ish, but that specific type of aphasia called anomic aphasia, and the symptoms fit me like a glove:

Anomic aphasia is a mild form of aphasia in which the individual has difficulty with word-finding, or naming items.
In anomic aphasia, speech is typically fluent and produced with seeming ease. However, the individual might have trouble retrieving specific words, especially nouns and verbs.

A person with anomic aphasia will typically speak in complete, grammatically correct sentences. However, they might use vague words like “thing” or describe an item that they cannot name. For instance, someone who cannot think of the word “apple” might say, “I ate a red, round fruit for lunch.” Speech therapists can work with people with anomic aphasia on tasks to improve their naming and word-finding

CHARACTERISTICS OF ANOMIC APHASIA
People with anomic aphasia usually have good comprehension; they can understand spoken messages
They usually are able to read
They might have the same difficulty with word retrieval when writing as they do when speaking
People with anomic aphasia are often able to successfully communicate using strategies to work around their word-finding difficulties
People with anomic aphasia are sometimes able to produce the word when given a cue, like the first letter of the word

From https://www.aphasia.com/aphasia…/aphasia-types/anomic/

It’s annoying as it has started to affect my ability to work. I work with customers a lot and sometimes, especially when I get tired after a tirade of meetings, my ability to form sentences and say what I’m trying to say gets real bad, and I feel a bit embarrassed about it. My speech comes out haltingly as I struggle to find the correct words and often times I need to figure out alternative constructions instead as the intended word simply does not emerge.

It’s easier when writing because I can stop to fumble around in my mind and if I come up with the word in the wrong language I can google translate it. It’s more difficult when talking, when it should flow and I would need to appear a competent expert and then I can’t even get the simplest words correct on occasion.

Sensory overload

“Sensory overload – when it happens it’s instant and nearly causes a panic attack and I just need to get away.”

Sensory overload doesn’t actually require a loud environment like a party or something. It can happen just because too many thing happen at once. Like husband comes through the door, dogs bark and rush to the door, my phone rings (read: buzzes on my wrist) and husband tries to hand me a bag of groceries.

Or we’re out for a walk with the dogs, husband chatters about something, a car goes by, and the dog I’m walking keeps pulling this way and that, requiring my attention.

Or we’re sitting at the table, husband is talking and *something* in my clothes is bothering me. A dog hair that’s weasled its way into my shirt, a sock that is crooked, the remnants of a label I cut out but now has a loose string.

It may actually have more to do with my neurodivergence and HSP (high sensitivity) than AN, but being single sidedly deaf and having defective balance sure don’t make things easier.

As I wrote about noisy environments, even with these smaller cases I really need to get away or reduce at least some of the input. Like get husband to stop talking for a while, fix my clothes, manage the barking, just get to a place with less sensory input. Sometimes it’s close to a panic attack, sometimes I’m simply really irritable and might snap at my husband – can’t you just shut up for a while! Can’t you see my shirt has a little pinprick somewhere causing me constant irritation!

Be as it may, I can’t stay in the situation, it needs resolving one way or the other.